Flood - Stephen Baxter

This is a Sci-Fi experience book.

Embracing the spirit of the experience, I chose Stephen Baxter because I’ve not read any of his work before. I saw Flood when I was browsing the SFF shelves for inspiration of my library and thought it rang a bell – turned out it was because it was included in Book Smuggler Thea’s top reads of 2009. You can read their review of Flood over at their blog. After finishing it, I realised that it's part one in a duology (d'oh!) and the second book, Ark, has been recently released and is now reserved for me at the library!

The Blurb: “Four hostages are rescued from a group of religious extremists in Barcelona. After five years of being held captive together, they make a vow to always watch out for one another. But they never expected this…

The world they have returned to has been transformed by water—and the water is rising. As it continues to flow from the earth’s mantle, entire countries disappear. High ground becomes a precious commodity. And finally, the dreadful truth is revealed: before fifty years have passed, there will be nowhere left to run.”

Living in Norfolk, under the new policy of non-maintenance of coastal defences, and with the Broads providing a watery gateway into the heart of the county makes me already rather conscious of the potential impact of a relatively small rise in sea level.

The story of the flooding starts out in the UK so as the sea rises places I know start to go underwater and that makes the scenario Baxter describes really rather real. The book is divided into sections tracking significant rises in sea levels with accompanying (unnerving) maps as the catastrophe progresses.

Although following the experiences of a handful of individuals linked to the original hostages, this book is very much about the impact on humanity as a whole. There are massive human migrations that follow flooding events and the governments soon are stretched to breaking points as money is spent on sea defences that are overwhelmed before the projects can even be completed. With land reducing, agriculture is hugely impacted and it's not long before salvage platforms are built over submerged cities to extract tinned goods and other materials to try to enable those still alive to survive. There's plenty of food for thought in this book about the tough choices that would need to be made as land mass, and infrastructure, vanishes and people need to take to the extreme highlands, or rafts, to survive.

The impact of the rise in water levels is so huge that I found it hard to get to grips with most of the characters let alone to understand them as fully realised individuals. For most of them, there was little to empathise with and several of them seemed to be in the book just so that they could witness another flooding milestone. Or to die! I started the book being absolutely thrilled by it but if I am honest by the last few chapters I just wanted to know who "made it" through. I would say though, in fairness, that the story itself is so massive that it would be hard to keep the excitement of the first two thirds goin. Also, it can't have been that bad because I will absolutely be reading Ark because I am genuinely interested in following this story's journey.

Remnant Population - Elizabeth Moon

This is a Sci-Fi Experience 2010 read.

I realised when choosing my next book to read that my Sci-Fi experience so far has been dominated by books from male authors. Last year, in an effort to redress this balance, I read a book by Ursula le Gruin so this time I thought I’d better try out a different female Sci-Fi author Elizabeth Moon and the book of hers that I chose to read is one of her (rare) stand alone novels, Remnant Population, a 1997 Hugo Award finalist.

The book’s central character, Ofelia, lives with her son and daughter-in-law on a colony planet that she came to with her husband when it was first settled. Along with the rest of the community the family is due to be re-homed onto a new world when the franchise is lost. Deciding that she does not wish to be forcibly evicted and start again on a new planet, Ofelia hides in the woods and evades the evacuation.

For the first time in her life, she finds herself free to do exactly as she pleases without having to consider the restrictions on her behaviour imposed by society. As the only person left on the planet, she has the freedom of the still functional abandoned settlement and for the first part of the book we follow Ofelia’s first steps to independence.

Her carefree way of life changes when, by chance, she is listening to the radio as new settler ships arrive on the other side of the planet. She hears them being slaughtered by a previously unknown, and presumably sentient, native population and this changes her attitude towards her solitary lifestyle.

After a slow build up, the book now turns into a "first contact" story and Ofelia becomes the link between the indigenous peoples and the skeptical scientists who soon arrive to investigate the loss of the colony.

I enjoyed Moon’s writing style and enjoyed watching Ofelia grow as a character and seeing her grow in confidence and capability. Although not explicitly stated, she has clearly had a hard, restrictive life and, judging by the attitude towards her from the human scientists, age is no longer respected. Again, Moon doesn’t explicitly describe how human society has developed and it was interesting piecing together snippets of information that implied what the human political and social development.

Overall, as a sci-fi experience this was another opportunity to try out a new-to-me-author and again it was a success! On the basis of this I’ll happily seek out Moon’s work again - starting with Sheepfarmer's Daughter from the Legend of Paksenarrion series which is available for free download from Baen Books!

The Magic Flute - P. Craig Russell

Phew- managed to squeeze this read in only just in time to hit the deadline for this Graphic Novels mini-challenge! The brief was to read at least one classic novels in graphic form within the month of January 2010.

I wanted to read an adaptation of a story that I didn't know and that discounted all the options in my library's very small selection except one! This made choosing rather simple although it was a complete coincidence that the book I selected for this challenge was also illustrated by P Craig Russell who provided the artwork for Murder Mysteries which I read earlier this month.

The internet tells me that he is actually best known for his “Library of Opera Adaptions” series from around twenty years ago which have now been re-released. The Magic Flute is the first in this series and is, unsurprisingly, a 138 page graphic novel adaptation of Mozart’s opera of the same name.

Although a fan of musicals, I’ve never actually seen an opera and I wonder if I should start with the recent Magic Flute film adaptation, directed by Kenneth Brannagh…

For those, like me, who are unfamiliar with the story, it’s a farcical fairytale (is that even a sub-genre?) following the noble Prince Tamino’s quest to rescue Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of Night, from the clutches of the evil Saratro. Accompanying him on his journey is the comic-relief providing bird-catcher Papageno who is on his own search for true love.

The plot/characters are not as complicated to follow as it might appear from the above synopsis and, from the point of view of someone who does not know the story from any other source, I thought it felt complete although I am sure that some elements were very simplified!

The panel layouts were absolutely excellent but the one issue I had with the book was that sometimes the illustrations themselves felt very dated. Pamina, in particular, looked as though she should be gracing the cover of a very old Mills & Boon which I found quite off-putting. If you want to get a flavour for the artwork, there's an extract here. Then you can make your own mind up!

January Reading Round Up

Outside there are gorgeous blue skies, the current temperature is -3 and and my garden is covered in snow. Whilst I wait for Mr B's football game to be called off, I'm going to enjoy being warm and curl up in my reading chair with a graphic novel. And probably both dogs heaped on my lap as well! Snug.

I've eventually decided what to do after last year's Year of Readers. I am still going to "fine" myself £1 per book I read but rather than pay it all to one charity I am going to add it to my Charities Trust "freedom account" as an additional monthly top up. This money will be ring fenced for literacy-related donations and that (hopefully) means some decent money once my normal payroll deduction is taken into account as well.

This month reflects some post-Christmas impulse purchasing and I have read a few for the Sci Fi Experience so my list is a bit on the eclectic side!

Graceling - Kristin Cashore
Space Captain Smith - Toby Frost
The Stepsister Scheme - Jim C Hines
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Fire - Kristin Cashore
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
The Real Story (Gap Sequence) - Stephen Donaldson
Forbidden Knowledge (Gap Sequence) - Stephen Donaldson
Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman & P. Russell Craig
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
A Dark and Hungry God Arises (Gap Sequence) - Stephen Donaldson
The Magic Flute - P. Russell Craig

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

I was two (and a bit) books into Stephen Donaldson's Gap Into space opera series when I suddenly realised that I had Space Sickness and needed some antidote.

Deep in the throws of an attack of Bibliocolicism earlier this month, and for reasons I no longer remember, I purchased Sarah Water's novel Fingersmith (which was shortlisted for both the Man Booker and Orange prizes) and it has been the absolutely perfect read to break up a Sci-Fi overdose.

Told from the point of view of two orphans of a similar age, this is a great spin on one of my very favourite sub-genres – the Victorian crime novel.

Susan Trinder is the orphaned daughter of a hanged murderess who has been raised in London by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby in a household with dubious moral values. The home’s lose family unit has an enterprising approach to making money including baby farming and the expert laundering of stolen goods.

At the age of seventeen, Sue is drawn into a plot to help Richard “Gentleman” Rivers woo an heiress. To help him to achieve this, she needs to play the part of a lady’s maid, befriend her new mistress and convince her to marry Gentleman. At which point, he will have the girl confined to a madhouse, claim her fortune for himself and pay Sue (and Mrs Sucksby) a healthy fee.

To this end, she travels from London to the very different environment of a lonely and crumbling country house, where she enters the service of Miss Maud Lilly – who was also orphaned as a baby. Maud’s mother died in a mental institution, where she was placed by her brother, and Maud was brought up by the nurses there for a number of years before her Uncle sent for her to take up secretarial duties and help him to compiling a dictionary of sorts.

As Sue gains Maud’s confidence, and grows fond of the lonely girl, she begins to doubt her ability to go through with the con and she wrestles with the conflicting need to bring home money to her adoptive family.

The book is split into three parts with Sue opening and closing the story and Maud’s point of view over the same initial time period taking the middle section. I found Sue to be a more sympathetic character but Maud’s narrative really helped to add another layer of perspective to events as they unfolded.

This is a book with a cracking plot and nobody’s motives are quite as straight forward as they seem. I really enjoyed reading it and feel an urge to delve into Victoriana for a while. Or buy Sarah Water's other books as, other than this one, I've only read Night Watch.

I've just discovered that Fingersmith was made into a BBC drama in 2005 so I am clearly well out of the loop on this one! I would rather like to watch it but might have to leave it for a while to give me a chance to forget some of the plot twists.

Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell

This is my first Graphic Novels Challenge 2010 Read.

Murder Mysteries is the graphic novel adaptation of one of Neil Gaiman's short stories that appears in his collection Smoke and Mirrors. I've not read the source material so I can’t comment on how well it transferred to this format but taken by itself I thought it worked nicely.

Murder Mysteries has been on my wishlist for a while and yesterday I was looking at the Graphic Novel section of my library for Classic Graphic Novels mini-challenge (more on that in a few days) and I was very pleased to see it lurking on the shelf! "What's it about?" I hear you ask. Well...

The angels are hard at work constructing the world when one of their own is discovered dead, which prompts Lucifer to dispatch Ragual, Angel of Vengeance, to find the culprit. Hearing about the story of the first ever murder, from a stranger who borrows a cigarette from him, is a young man in contemporary Los Angeles for reasons that are initially unclear but become (slightly!) more so as the story progresses. Interestingly, Ragual’s investigation, and what he uncovers during it, provides the possible rationale for Lucifer’s eventual revolt against God.

In spite of the size of the book, this is a deceptively deep story - which I suppose I should expect from Mr Gaiman. In it's handful of pages it covers some meaty questions* and packages it up in a page turning whodunnit with a great ending. For a great review of this book pop over and visit The Book Smugglers - should have known it was their fault it ended up on my wishlist in the first place!

The adaptation to comic book was carried out by P. Craig Russell (who by coincidence also provided the artwork for the book I will be reading for the classic graphic novel challenge) and I really like his style. Very elegant, simple and with a lovely colour palette – I especially liked the very stylised images of the City where the angels live and work.

If I am honest, I’m not sure I’d have been as pleased with this book if I’d bought it unseen in hardback (which is quite hard to do as it seems to be out of print) as it is a very slim volume indeed. Given I borrowed it, I can’t but be delighted with the value for money and I very much enjoyed the unexpected story of an Angel of Vengeance. I really should get around to reading the Sandman books this year...

* Like the concept of free will v. pre-determination - now that brings back some ancient memories about my history of medieval political thought classes!

Happy Blogiversary to meeee!

Wow. It's two years today since my first The Bookling post. In that time I have read around 275 books, thousands and thousands of reader feeds from fellow bookish bloggers, taken part in some fun challenges, "met" some incredible people and had a great time expanding my reading horizons.

I honestly believe that I would not have read even half of the authors I've discovered in the last couple of years without the recommendations, and support, from other online readers so thank you!