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

Naked in Death - JD Robb

Lieutenant Eve Dallas is dedicated to solving crime - as a lieutenant in the NYPD she's renown for her single-minded devotion to the task at hand. When a licenced companion, granddaughter of a Republican senator, is found not just murdered in her apartment but shot - a genuine rarity now that guns are primarily collector's items - Dallas is intrigued. When another licenced companion, this time with a very different clientele, is found the same way, Dallas knows she has a serial killer on the loose. At least as alarming is the increasing presence in the case of the planet's most eligible bachelor, Roarke.
Although she has every reason to be suspicious of him, both regarding the case and out of a sense of self preservation, Dallas is curiously drawn to the multi-billionaire, and the feeling appears to be mutual. But what interest could a refined, wealthy, suave and handsome entrepreneur have in a plain, thirty-something with no family, a background in foster care, and virtually no memory of her first eight years on the planet, or even her name?
JD Robb is better known as well loved romance writer Nora Roberts, with whom both Lynn and I have previously had mixed success. A recent thread on SmartBitches, discussing readers' most loved romance couples, revealed a strong affinity for the Dallas/Roarke relationship, which clearly starts with Naked in Death and continues through what Wikipedia indicates is well over thirty books and short stories. Ever a sucker for a good, strong romantic couple, and having discovered some of my favourite authors through SmartBitch recs, I tried the first Dallas/Roarke novel.
The "In Death" universe is set in the near future, after the Urban Revolt on 2016, the Urban wars that destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, and significant legislative change, from the outlawing of guns to the legalising of prostitution. Naked in Death takes place in the late 2050's, when America has significantly recovered from these tumultuous events - the average life expectancy is somewhere between 120 and 160, and there's a vaccine to prevent cancer. Roarke conducts some of his business off world, and there are many innovative technologies.
Perhaps the import of setting the novel in the mid-future (Naked in Death was first published in 1995) is greater in subsequent novels, but I could seen the point in this first of the series. There isn't anything massively different in forensic technology, at least from an amateur's viewpoint, and I found the idea of that much change in such a short period of time - an increase in life expectancy of 50% in under a century, significant non-terrestrial commerce and colonisation - unconvincing, particularly in the aftermath of devastating upheaval and infrastructure compromise. Okay, having legalised prostitution (or 'licenced companions') and a scarcity of guns contributed to the plot, but as someone living in a country where the former is currently legal and the latter rare, needing to move ahead several decades seemed unnecessary, but I could have overlooked it.
I had greater difficulty overcoming the writing, which I found clunky and intrusive - on checking the crime scene, Dallas notes that the apartment was "Neat as a virgin... and cold as a whore." On learning that the first victim "bought it in bed" she:

only lifted a brow. "Seems poetic, since she' been bought there.".

There are big chunks of exposition, so we learn about her abusive past not through an integrated flashback, or a confidence to her new lover, but by Dallas's therapist telling her what she already knows:

"Lieutenant, we both know I'm fully aware of your background. You were abused, physically, sexually and emotionally. You were abandoned when you were eight... For two years between the ages of eight and ten, you lived in a communal home while your parents were searched for. You have no memory of the first eight years of your life, your name, your circumstances, your birthplace..."

I appreciate that Dallas needs to start out somewhat cold and distant, in order to increase the warmth and openness a relationship with Roarke apparently brings. But I found her extraordinarily difficult to warm to. More importantly, nothing about the Dallas/Roarke relationship resonated with me - I wasn't interested in either of them, I didn't feel convinced of their attraction (on either side, let alone mutual), and I got an unpleasantly stalkerish vibe about him as well.
I appreciate that Roberts is well loved by a vast number of readers, both under her own name and under pseudonym. I accept that for a number of fans this pairing is one of the most romantic is Romancelandia (a term I met through SmartBitch creators Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan). but neither of these things is true for me. - Alex

The Rapture - Elliott Hall

Following an arduous debriefing about his investigation into the murder of Brother Isaiah, private eye and returned soldier Felix Strange is drawn into investigating the disappearance of old army buddy Issac Taylor. He owes Issac, not least because Issac saved his life in the field. But a cursory search reveals no evidence that Issac ever existed, a rare thing in a country whose citizens are now so well documented.
And then Strange discovers Issac is only one of an army of disappeared, as thoroughly and tracelessly, terrifyingly gone as the disappeared of south American totalitarian regimes past. But why?
This complex, noir-edged novel is the second in a planned trilogy that explores a post-apocalyptic, dystopia future with a difference, is absorbing and rapid. Unfortunately, like my review of its predecessor, The First Stone, I have waited a little too long after reading to go into specifics. Instead, i give you a taste of the style and tone:

The [mayor] we’d actually elected hadn’t lasted long after the Battle of Christopher Park last year. If you’d been asleep for the last ten years it might have looked like democracy in action: the mayor taking responsibility for not stopping an urban war that had left dozens in body bags and a lot more injured. He had held back the police while militias attacked his own constituents for the crime of being gay. The mayor had held the NYPD back on the orders of the Elders, the assholes who actually ran this excuse for a republic. We still had a Congress that anyone could run for, but every man there (and it was all men now) and even the President never would have gotten elected without their help. Some of the Elders had moved into government, but most stayed at their mega-churches and foundations, content for their power to be an open secret. I sometimes wished that they’d just move into the White House and be done with it, but America though too highly of itself to admit that it was a dictatorship.

I'm very much looking forward to reading the final installment in this complicated three-part series, which I will review immediately after I finish. - Alex

The First Stone Elliott Hall

The American ideological and political landscape, once separate and now one, looks very different in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on home soil. Southern-style fundamentalism has swept most of the country, and the Elders have established their own law enforcement structure, primarily manned by home-schooled, secularly-naïve Daveys. But private eye and former Greater Middle-Eastern War soldier Felix Strange has bigger things to worry about, chief of which is managing the nameless Gulf-War-like syndrome that doesn’t officially exist but nonetheless manages to beset him unless kept at bay by a complicated and expensive cocktail of off-label prescription drugs.

Felix doesn’t work homicide cases, but when Brother Isaiah, Elder council member, is found dead in a hotel room filled with obviously planted pornography and illegal drugs, he has little choice but to investigate at the instigation of Ezekiel White, head of the Committee for Child Protection, better known to the non-faithful as the Holy Rollers. Spurred on by the carrot of enough money to pay for a year’s worth of medication, and the stick of infinite harassment (beginning with, but certainly not limited to, tax audits), Felix looks at who might have had the motive and opportunity not only to kill but also attempt to discredit America’s most trusted and beloved religious figure.

I’m writing this review almost a month after finishing The First Stone, and over many intervening novels, which means my faint recollections are going to do this first in a planned trilogy inadequate justice. Despite this, several elements of the novel remain clear, particularly the stunning Revivalist Holy Sons of American Liberty’s attack on New York’s Christopher Park, in the gay and lesbian heart of Greenwich Village, which was triumphantly overturned by the Gay and Lesbian Self Defence League. The character of Felix is engrossing and unlike any character I’ve encountered in recent memory. The noir style of dames and grittily hard-boiled detectives, usually an uneasy style in contemporary works, sits particularly well in a world where feminist equality and homosexuality have vanished. The alternate history, in which September 11 was replaced by a nuclear bomb on American soil, is fascinating, and the almost unnoticed transfer of power from a secular base to a Christian ideology as fundamentalist as any organization in the Middle East, is chillingly convincing. In The First Stone, the reality of a movement that those on the West and East coasts were able to dismiss as not really affecting them becomes overwhelming evident, and I was left with a sense of their shaken complacency. I was so captured by the premise and the writing that I borrowed and almost immediately devoured the sequel. - Alex

Chris Wooding: The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

In an alternate Victorian London a girl is found with no memory of who she is. Obviously of privileged heritage, and suspected insane, her saviours attempt to reunite her with her family. But their attempts to discover her identity, together with her recovering memory, lead them into uncovering a plot so evil it can barely be comprehended.
Understanding the girl is the key to this abominable plan, they seek to keep her hidden. But she is discovered and kidnapped. She manages to escape (with the aide of a serial killer) but too late to save the world.
With the beginning of the end flaring around them, a motley crew embark on a last ditch attempt to put a stop to the devastation. They do but not without loss and the knowledge that the world will never be the same again.
This young adult novel has a vaguely steampunk flavour with strong paranormal elements. The writing is excellent bringing this world to life. The author doesn’t sacrifice atmosphere for pace delivering a sense of urgency bound up with eeriness-not an easy task.
The characters are very well drawn, behaving believably for their age, time and social positioning. The relationships between the characters are complex and add an unexpected emotional layer to this adventure story.
I hope Wooding intends to use this world and these characters again, if not already.-Lynn

The Sword of the Lady - SM Stirling

Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie and leader of a band of travellers bound together through adversity and all manner of kinship ties, is crossing the breadth of what was once the United States from his homeland in Oregon to the island of Nantucket in search of a sword that has been foretold will allow him to unite his region and defeat the greatest threat since the Change. Along the way they has make friends, and enemies, endured many losses, and decided that their disparate home communities will be united under the name Montival. Their resolve is strong, and they have proclaimed Rudi (whose birth name is Artos) their first High King.
When they finally reach the island, Rudi is stunned to discover densely wooded forest with trees older than any he's previously encountered, peopled by a small population that seem unlike modern men at all and insist they come from another era. When Rudi enters a lone building he discovers the sword he's sought for over a year, and has a vision akin to that he had while injured during a battle. This time, though, instead of seeing Odin he sees three women - an exotic youth, the likeness of his own mother, and a more aged black woman. And when he exits the building, sword raised high, Rudi is forever changed.
Readers of Stirling's Nantucket trilogy will already understand why he set the Change for 1998 - to tie in with the other side of events, where the modern inhabitants of Nantucket, along with their island and a region of surrounding ocean, where transported back to 1250BC. In this final instalment of the second Emberverse trilogy (with another three books scheduled), the worlds cross over briefly - though familiarity with the other series would help a little in the last section, it's not necessary.
There are still battle scenes aplenty, and encounters with different ways groups evolved post Change. I also found a couple of sections that particularly resonated - first when Matilda (Princess of the Portland Protectorate) reflects that if you act as though there's no doubt you'll be obeyed, especially when people are frightened, odds are you will be. And I really liked Sandra, Matilda's atheist mother, when she silently observed that not having anyone to be thankful for can be a drawback to having no faith: "My eternal gratitude, O blind and ontologically empty dance of atoms, just isn't very satisfying, somehow."
And this is not a book to read when you're hungry - the loving descriptions of feasts could be used to entice the appetite-suppressed to dine lavishly.
I was relieved that the quest for the sword was finally over, and glad that Rudi's journey is not yet over. I really enjoy the Emberverse Stirling's created - it's rich and textured, layered and satisfyingly complex. I'm going to take a little break before reading the first in the third trilogy, in part to concentrate on less engrossing and taxing tales, and in part because deferring the reading myself is less frustrating than waiting for their release! - Alex

The Emberverse novels of the change:
1. Dies the Fire
2. The Protector's War
3. A Meeting at Corvallis
4. The Sunrise Lands
5. The Scourge of God
6. The Sword of the Lady
7. The High King of Montival

The Scourge of God - SM Stirling

Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie, and his travelling companions are en route to the fabled island of Nantucket, and arduous cross-country trek made more difficult in this 22nd year after the Change by the increasing prevalence and ire of the Church Universal and Triumphant - in addition to being fanatical, invadingly territorial, intolerant and sexist, CUT members are virtually unstoppable in battle. Even when mortally wounded they manage to fight long after ordinary men would be gone.
Rudi's most immediate task is freeing his childhood anamchara Matilda, princess of the Portland Protectorate and her companion Odard Liu, along with Ingolf Vogeler, himself a target of the cutters. New friend Frederick Thurston decides to join them rather than fight with his brother Martin, in part because it's a fight that will surely end in fratricide.
As they reach Deseret the band come across and join forces with a Mormon group who are also resisting the CUT. Her beliefs are very different from his but Mackenzie member Edain, Rudi's closest childhood friend, falls for the Mormon leader's daughter Rebecca; the tragic result of an impossible task required to allow them to continue their information gathering and quest is made all the more tragic by this fledgling relationship, and foreshadows the rest of the series.
Injured in the resulting battle, Rudi is seriously injured - as his team find safety and shelter so he can recover, Rudi has a vision; the Norse god Odin appears to him and tells him that his life will be short, sacrificed willingly for his people.
The Scourge of God is complex and mythologic in scale as well as content - the synopsis above barely traces a third of the text, and doesn't even touch on the plot winding through the various communities back West, which intersect the questing narrative.
At the same time Stirling continues to explore different ways of dealing with the aftermath of the Change - as Rudi and his group travel zigzaggedly across the continental (former) US they encounter communities that have survived and adapted, including a few religious orders, and the remnants of isolated groups that failed.
Although I am more interested in what happens after Rudi reaches Nantucket, I've accepted that this is a questing trilogy, where the goal is unlikely to be reached until the very end, and in which the journey is at least as important as the destination. The characters do develop, and their relationships too, and even the endless fight scenes are grippingly portrayed. But I did find myself getting a little tired of the repetition, hoping we could occasionally cut to the chase. That said, I already have the next book on reserve, so I'm clearly ready for more! - Alex

The Emberverse novels of the change:
1. Dies the Fire
2. The Protector's War
3. A Meeting at Corvallis
4. The Sunrise Lands
5. The Scourge of God
6. The Sword of the Lady
7. The High King of Montival

The Sunrise Lands - SM Stirling

It's twenty two years since the night when something altered physics, preventing gunpowder sparking or internal combustion, electricity, and steam power work. In the Willamette Valley a comfortable tension exists between the various communities that arose in the aftermath of the Change, and the future looks more secure than it has at any time since 1998.
That is until Ingolf Vogeler, a mercenary from Wisconsin, lands in Mackenzie territory. He says he's being pursued by Cutters, soldiers of a Montana-based church (the Church Universal Triumphant, or CUT), who have follow him - Ingolf is attacked that night and barely survives. When he's nursed back to health he relays a tale that begins with an expedition to Nantucket to garner pre-Change relics, and culminates in a powerful vision that he should "travel from sunrise to sunset and seek the Son of the Bear Who Rules. The Sword of the Lady waits for him."
Rudi Mackenzie, son of Juniper Mackenzie, head of the Clan, and Bearkiller the late Mike Havel, was prophesised to be the Lady's Sword. He sets off on a journey to Nantucket to seek the Sword of the Lady, accompanied by Ingolf, close friend Edain Aylward, and twins Mary and Ritva (Dunedain rangers); they are soon join by Matilda, the daughter of Portland Protectorate Association regent Sandra Arminger, her guard Odard Liu, Odard's servant Alex, and Father Ignatius, a senior priest.
Unsuspecting readers such as I might expect the journey to cover the length of the novel, but they would be mistaken. By the end of The Sunrise Lands, though much has changed, the group has travelled only as far as Boise. Indeed, like the Tolkien classic that colours many aspects of this series, the quest will cover all three of this second Emberverse trilogy.
The writing is as dense and textured as the originals, and the universe Stirling has created is increasingly fascinating. Of particular interest, and an enduring these thus far, is the influence a leader has on his or her people - the structure and driving force behind each of these diverse groups is intrinsically tied with the ethos of their creators, then taken in a direction that is both unexpected and consistent. There are a couple of moments when this is made explicit in the text like, for example, when Juniper Mackenzie explains that the kilts weren't her idea, and that the brogue adopted half mockingly by her peers has been unquestioningly incorporated into the next generation's speech patterns.
I was initially a little dissatisfied with The Sunrise Lands because, as in the very different A Question of Upbringing, I had a different narrative expectation. And, like my encounter with Powell, I've come to see that my expectation got in the way of my enjoyment of the reading. In fact, so absorbed was I that before I even finished The Sunrise Lands I borrowed the second in the new trilogy. - Alex

The Emberverse novels of the change:
1. Dies the Fire
2. The Protector's War
3. A Meeting at Corvallis
4. The Sunrise Lands
5. The Scourge of God
6. The Sword of the Lady
7. The High King of Montival

The Sky People - SM Stirling

When Soviet probes discovered life on Venus in 1962, everything changed - we were no longer along in the universe. With only minor differences in gravity and air composition, Venus was home to Earth-like flora and fauna, including dinosaurs and at least two humanoid races - H. Sapiens and H. Neanderthalensis. These similarities are far closer than evolution would account for, and are the subject of much research by the US base; an uneasy Soviet/American truce exists on Venus and on Earth, but the USSR keeps its work secret, and its base is miles away.
When Cajun ranger Lieutenant Marc Vitrac welcomes a new shipload of colonists it's 26 years later; Marc's been on planet a year, and is well accustomed to Venusian life. When the US forces are asked to help rescue the crew of a crashed Soviet shuttle, Marc is tapped to join the crew, along with newcomers Cynthia Whitlock (an African-American geologist with paleontology and information system skills) and supercilious Brit Christopher Blair (who, like Vitrac, has specialties in ethnology, linguistics and power systems, and flies lighter-than-air craft), Soviet scientist Jadviga Binkis (wife of the USSR shuttle commander) and Captain Tyler. After a couple of incidents the airship is unrecoverable and the team must decide whether to continue the rescue attempt or head home, but their choice is reduced to no choice when they stumble on a battle between the inhuman and inhumane Neanderthal-like natives and the far more human Cloud People.
The Sky People is shallower and less compelling than Stirling's Change series, and less engaging than Conquistador - the characters seemed less fully fleshed out, the villain was too obvious from the outset, and the scientific interest in this parallel world development was insubstantial. There was a secondary plot about a masterless monitoring AI that I found more irritating than useful, and which seemed to serve primarily as the launch pad for a sequel. The world building was intriguing, and I'd not be averse to reading another novel set in this universe, but this is far from my favourite of Stirling's work - Alex

Harry Turtledove: The Disunited States of America

A young man and his mother travel to a parallel universe where the United Stated didn’t actually unite and North America is a patchwork of individual nations.
While away on a day trip there is an outbreak of a highly contagious, and highly deadly, virus resulting in the country of Virginia quarantining its citizens. The young man is reasonably confident that immunisations from his own universe will be effective in preventing him from contracting the disease but he is nonetheless stuck in a small town and worried about his distant mother.
It is here he meets a young woman, a Californian visiting family, who is likewise stuck until the quarantine is lifted. Her political views are vastly different from those of the locals; particularly her belief in racial equality and the young man finds it hard to maintain the façade of racism required for him to pass himself off as a true Virginian. But letting his cover slip would endanger not only himself and his mother but his entire universe.
When it is discovered that the virus is a genetically modified version of measles deliberately released upon the Virginians by the neighbouring nation of Ohio war is declared. Virginia soon finds itself fighting on two fronts as the native black population take advantage of the war to rise up against white oppression.
When a soldier billeted in town dies of the virus the young man slips into the soldier’s uniform and makes his way back through the war torn countryside to his mother, getting caught up in active fighting along the way.
As armies advance the young woman and her grandmother escape the town and head for the city in hope of escaping back to California. When the grandmother comes down with the virus the young woman seeks out the young man for help.
He convinces medics in his own universe to send a cure which he gives to the young woman for her grandmother before returning with his mother to his own universe.
When I got this novel I didn’t realise that it was the forth book in a series (though how I missed the fact when the cover clearly states Crosstime Traffic book four I don’t know). I can only assume that the questions I had about world building, particularly the technology involved in jumping between alternate universes, had been addressed in previous books since it is not mentioned in this one. Having said that this story stands alone well and though familiarity with the previous stories in the series, and a better knowledge of US geography and history, would probably have given me a deeper understanding of the story it wasn’t strictly necessary.
First for the good: while the story focussed on racism, it also addressed a number of other issues, running the gamut from when profanity might be considered acceptable to the morality of war. The complexities of the issues are not over simplified for the target audience, the historical, social, political and emotional aspects of them being acknowledged, though the conclusion of their moral value strictly adheres to modern mores. Character growth, via flashes of understanding, is minor but brilliantly done making me think this author is capable of much more than we see here.
BUT: I can’t help but feel that the author bit off more than he could chew with this book. The concept is great but for the main part the writing just wasn’t up to it. Ideas are reiterated frequently with no new insight, giving the feel of a repeated lecture that quickly loses reader interest. This is to the detriment of other, equally important, issues which could have been explored in more depth but were not. The main characters, supposedly in their late teens, think, behave and speak as though they were much younger. And there is no clear explanation as to why the young man is there in the first place (though this might have been presented in earlier works).
Not a bad book but perhaps a bit too much going on at once. I don’t think I’ll be following up earlier instalments in the Crosstime Traffic series.-Lynn

The Peshawar Lancers – SM Stirling

In the late 1870’s a string of meteors hit Earth, destroying cities, changing the environment and reversing the course of history. Acting on the advice of her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria authorised the evacuation of as much of London as possible, relocating in India. A hundred and fifty years later England is a backward wasteland of cannibalistic savages, and technology has for decades taken a back seat to survival, so boats are steam powered, cars are a novelty, and flight is only by dirigible. The British Empire, now centred in India, rules over most of the globe, while the Imperial Czar heads Russia and is the other major world leader. Eventually there will be a significant conflict between the two super powers.
His Majesty King John II has a loyal army, with no more dedicated soldier than Captain Athelstane King. As a chain of events unfold, Captain King will play a pivotal role in the outcome of not only a covert plot against the British Empire but also in the lives of the royal family.
I’ve enjoyed all of Stirling’s alternate history novels, preferring his Change series to the Massachusetts trilogy but finding all of them quickly absorbing. This is unusual for me – I have most often found alternate history fantasy overly militaristic and dull. While neither of these qualities apply to The Peshawar Lancers, I did find it considerably less accessible than Stirling’s other work. Part of this is undoubtedly because of the more significant world building required - the other series consist of present day Americans either going back in time and changing events themselves, or going forward after the world is changed for them, whereas this novel is set in a world that has diverged from ours at a significant point in history.
There are several interweaving narratives and I found it difficult, particularly at the beginning, to keep track of when we were, what was happening, and how the characters and plots connected. I think some of this would have been eased had Stirling written a prologue then jumped forward instead of having the nineteenth century events and response appear as the vision of a twenty-first century psychic. Similarly, while it makes sense within the context of the novel that place names would have changed, a table of comparisons and perhaps a map of who controls where, would have been helpful, along with a glossary of Indian words – while some of them were evident from the text others weren’t, and I’m sadly monolingual. Stirling has included a list of the King Emperors of the post-Fall British Empire and five appendices – a detailed description of The Fall and its effects, a timeline of the exodus and post-Fall aftermath, a description of the Angrezi Raj/British Empire, some notes on Imperial English and other languages (focusing on pronunciation), and an explanation of technology and the economy. Some of this information would have been more useful at the beginning rather than in retrospect, and some of it I found irritating – I appreciate thorough and internally consistent world building but (like sausages and laws) don’t want to be aware of how it’s done.
Perhaps it was that my expectations of Stirling were a little too high. Certainly I enjoyed The Peshawar Lancers, at least for the most part, and I did finish it with a smile, but for the first half of this ~460 page (plus notes) book it was something of a struggle and on a couple of occasions I persevered primarily because I had no other books available. Fortunately I’ve found two more novels in the Change series, so this will not be my last Stirling experience. - Alex

Mary Gentle: 1610-A Sundial in a Grave

Astrologer and predictive mathematician Dr Robert Fludd has seen what the future holds for mankind and it isn’t pretty. He calculates that disaster can be averted if he acts now to change the course of history. His unwilling tool is a disgraced aristocrat and spy escaping France after failing to prevent the murder of its king.
Together with a young duellist and a shipwrecked samari, the spy is manipulated to achieve Fludd’s end. But not everything can be calculated for and this spy is not the puppet he pretends to be. He throws Fludd’s plans into disarray not understanding how his actions are changing the future of the world.
Eventually he comes to believe in the truth of Fludd’s abilities. This results in a transglobal chase of Fludd, his capture and imprisonment.
Having his eyes opened to the bigger picture the spy and his companions start to work with Fludd to form a secret society (the Rosicrucians) that can monitor the world and steer events so as to avoid future calamity.
There is a passing reference to a sundial but never is one found in a grave.
This is more a work of alternate history rather than the historical fantasy it claims to be. The only fantasy element I could identify in the story was the reality and accuracy of predictive mathematics. Once it became clear that I was not reading a typical fantasy and adjusted my mindset I should have liked this book but it simply left me flat.
It was extremely slow to start and though the pace picks up a little during the second half of the book it simply moves from glacial to snail’s pace. There are a number of seat edge action sequences interspersed with very long periods of nothing much happening. The historical detail seems accurate and is well blended into the description but there was far too much of it in my opinion. Excess description made an already slow pace drag.
Hints of sexual perversion sparked my interest and could have given the characters more depth but they are never followed up. And the inconsistency of one particular character irritated me somewhat.
For all that this isn’t a bad book, if you like a long wallowing tale. I liked it enough to not only finish it, eventually, but also to read the Hic Jacet. But, personally I think it could have been three hundred pages shorter (it clocks in at over 700pp) and would have been the better for it.
This book was a lot of work for little pay off and left me thinking Eh.-Lynn

Against the Tide of Years – SM Stirling

Some ten years after the island of Nantucket was inexplicably taken back to the Bronze Age, its inhabitants are settling in to their new lives. After an initial position of isolationism, Nantucket's government is realising that the renegades, headed by former Coast Guard William Walker, mean that this is no longer a viable option. As he builds an empire on the back of 'magic' like gunpowder, the Republic is at risk of invasion, but the populace in general is more interested in building commerce than tracking Walker down and dealing with him. That is until his native accomplice Tartessos leads a sneak attack on the island.
This is the review I'm saddest not to have been able to write contemporaneously - due to surgery and recuperation I was able to read but not write or type for a few weeks, and Against the Tide of Years is one of the richly plotted, densely characterised novels I read in this period that can not easily be captured weeks after the reading. Although I enjoy the Emberverse series more, I am also enjoying the Nantucket trilogy. - Alex

Conquistador – SM Stirling

Tom Christiansen is a California Department of Fish and Game warden, working with the FBI to unmask an animal smuggling organization when he comes across a completely healthy condor. One problem – the Californian condor is almost extinct and this one not only has no genetic connection to the handful of surviving birds but shows to signs of exposure to modern pollution or toxins.
In his search to uncover the provenance of this rare and anomalous animal Tom and partner Roy Tully come across CM&M, a wealthy and apparently publicly-minded business that seems to be at the centre of the smuggling ring. To their amazement they discover that the three founders of CM&M stumbled across a way to access New Virginia, a parallel California untouched by colonisation until the 1940’s and now home to escapees from the America they know. The heavily guarded Gate allows people (and rare animals) to cross realities, and founder John Rolfe VI has a clear picture of the alternate culture he has created.
Stirling’s concept and world building are intriguing and meticulous, though his characters are a little too perfect – Roy, Tom and love interest Adrienne (granddaughter of John Rolfe and an agent who liaises between the worlds) always have the skills and ability to cope with and surmount whatever problems they encounter, and have wholly complementary outlooks and ideologies. There’s action enough to compensate for this, as tensions between New Virginian camps heat up, and the idea of an unspoiled alternate earth is bewitching at a time when we seem to have so completely bollixed up the one we have. Although I didn’t see any scope for a sequel, I did very much enjoy visiting Stirling’s creation, one that is very different from his Nantucket and Change series, though there are explorations of similar themes. - Alex

Bomb, Book & Compass - Simon Winchester

Subtitled Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China this is an account of how a British academic wrote the most famous history of scientific invention in china, focusing on advances and inventions originating decades, centuries and in some cases (like botanical grafting) millennia before their equivalents in the West. Joseph Needham was a biochemist who, during the second world war, branched off into unexpected areas, particularly sinology (the study of China), triggered by the initiation of what would prove to be a life-long relationship with Chinese scientist Lu Gwei-Djen, second only to his (open) marriage to Dorothy Needham.
Bomb, Book & Compass (the title refers to three particularly significant discoveries that initially originated in China) traces Joseph's early and academic life, his marriage to Dorothy, and his relationship with Lu, as well as his first trip to China in 1944. Along the way Winchester discusses recent Chinese history, particularly the effect of the Japanese invasion of China, and what became known as"the Needham question": why did China, initially so scientifically advanced, not built on these discoveries, with the consequence of being overtaken by advances in the West?
I have to admit that not only had I never heard of Needham before this, my knowledge of Asian/Eastern history in general and Chinese history in particular is woefully minuscule. Sadly, reading Bomb, Book & Compass has not significantly altered this, because I was unable to finish the book - from the beginning, where Winchester launches into Needhams' arrival in China in 1944 I was on the back foot. Who was this man, why was he in China, and why should I care? I found the narrative disjointed and distant, and I quit on page 125 (of 265), having learned of no inventions but the aforementioned grafting and that according to Gewi-Djen, or at least her father, "China had made an immensely greater contribution to world science and technology that anyone in the West had ever acknowledged... the two of them were perfectly convinced that China had invented scores of other things of which the West was conveniently ignorant."
Having recently read Doidges' The Brain That Changes Itself, I've resolved to learn a language in the next decade and thereby stave off dementia. Bomb, Book & Compass has inspired me to consider making Chinese that language, though I've not decided on whether to learn it as Cantonese or Mandarin. Otherwise, however, I feel unenlightened by this book on a fascinating topic. - Alex

A Meeting at Corvallis - SM Stirling

It's Change Year Nine, and the Portland Protectorate are becoming bolder in their attacks on Bearkiller and Clan Mackenzie territory. At the same time the newly independent Dunedain Rangers, headed by anamchara Astrid and Eilir, have captured a PPA raider who they want to try in the neutral university town of Corvallis. Aware that the only way they can face down Norman Arminger, the PPA's powerful Lord Protector, with any success is by banding together with the other free states, Lord Bear Mike Havel and Juniper Mackenzie join the Rangers on a trip to convince Corvallis to unite against their common foe. After all, with the proof of unauthorised incursions present in the form of the captured raider, Corvallis will no longer be able to turn a conveniently blind eye to the very real threat the PPA poses.
Still in possession of the Lord Protector's daughter, Matilda, the leaders sally forth, only to become reacquainted with the maxim that the enemy's plan can trip your own plan up - the Protector's wife Sandra is also in Corvallis, to present her side, and is accompanied by her private servant Tiphaine, an assassin. The Corvallis Faculty Senate inexplicably continue to be willfully blind, the proof is assassinated, Matilda is recaptured along with Juniper's son Rudi, and war seems certain.
The third in the Change trilogy, it is a testament to the depth and scope of Stirling's writing that reading this plot summary will not significantly affect the pleasure or surprise of reading A Meeting at Corvallis - there's so much going on and so neatly intertwined are the threads that reading this quite substantial book was an unalloyed pleasure. The narrative switches from one group (Bearkillers, Clan, Rangers, Protectorate) to another with rapidity,
I was a little less annoyed, this time around, with the broadly portrayed Aussie Hugo Zeppelt, in no small part because of the following passage:

"It's the Unspeakable Antipodean," Signe said with a mixture of sarcasm and goodwill. Zeppelt's Australian drawl was as rasping as ever. "Hi Zeppo."
"Still a bit of a figjam, eh?" He laughed back at her. "And grinning like a big blond shot fox, my Lady Signe is."
"Dinner's ready, I hope?"
"Fair dinkum, no fear, "Zeppelt said. "On the bloody table, and it's grouse tucker."
"Did you ever talk like that in Oz?" Havel said curiously, dismounting and tossing the reins to a groom.
"Why, that would have been superfluous considering the culture context, would it not?" Zeppelt replied in dulcet tones.

Well thank god for that! the dialogue is crisp and amusing, the characters interesting and rounded, and the plot absorbing. Most interesting to me is the way that Stirling addresses the question of what happens after a significant devastation on an established society. This is the subject of a number of classic novels, from Watership Down to Day of the Triffids, from The Handmaid's Tale to The Gate to Women's Country and of course beyond. Oft explored, never stale, Stirling's perspective is rich and interesting, and he combines a number of affects in one large-scale whole. - Alex

The Emberverse novels of the change:
1. Dies the Fire
2. The Protector's War
3. A Meeting at Corvallis
4. The Sunrise Lands
5. The Scourge of God
6. The Sword of the Lady
7. The High King of Montival

Island in the Sea of Time – SM Stirling

The first hint Marion Alston, captain of the Coast Guard training windjammer Eagle, had that something’s wrong is when the magnetic card compass started spinning. St Elmo’s fire began darting along the Eagle’s rigging, and then filled the night sky with lightening. When weird bright light, like no electric storm seen before, filled the night sky over Nantucket its residents were shaken but not afraid. Not, that is, until they woke to a world without television, radio or satellites. A world, in fact, where the modern population of humanity has shrunk to just over 7,000. Somehow Nantucket and a circle of water around the island, including the Eagle and her crew, have been transported in time to 1250 BC and there’s no way home.
Written earlier than, but set in the same universe as Dies the Fire, Island in the Sea of Time is the first in a companion trilogy. Though superficially quite different - they have modern technology and knowledge but all around them is underdeveloped – many of the same fundamental issues are the same. These include balancing immediate and long-term survival (the more labour pulled from tilling fields and fishing the less food there is, but neglecting research and development increases workload); managing internal disagreements and schisms; defence against hostile external forces; and building a strong community. The response to adversity includes new pair bonding and a poulation jump (as in Dies the Fire), and brings out the central aspects of character, both good and bad.
I thought some of the overly generous trading, and some of the innocence (like bringing a wily Tartessian trader back from Britain to Nantucket) a little unconvincing, and the consequences foreseeable, though not necessarily predictable. The composition of the population, heavy with convenient historians, was a mite convenient – of all of history to be familiar with, a strong cultural knowledge of the time and place they arrived at, including the folklore of a tribe that left almost no trace in the 20th century – but that’s a relatively minor quibble. I also would have liked a map – the combination of original (versus contemporary) place names with being unfamiliar with Nantucket’s location, let alone its position relative to other countries, meant that I was quite often lost regarding specifically where they were.
In general, though, I enjoyed Island in the Sea of Time. The characterisation was vivid, the scenario both fresh and involving, and the plot moved briskly. I found the reaction of varying groups particularly interesting – the rational leaders, who made plans to maximise outcomes for the groups as a whole; the irrational religious leader, who declared the move to the era before Christ as the work of Satan, and how this was contrasted with more logical religious heads; the dastardly, who plotted in their own long-term best interests; and the hippy dippy eco-romantics, whose attempts as being as one with the native populations were something less than a success.
I think I probably need to take a bit of a break from Stirling, whose novels are dense and thought provoking, but I’ll be continuing with both series once I have a breather. - Alex