122. The Fall – Albert Camus

At the back end of last year The Fall (or La Chute in the original french) fell into my lap (you see what I did there right?) and I couldn’t resist finishing off 2018 with a little existentialism. In my poking around online I have come to discover that this was the last completed novel Camus wrote, but it is far from his lightest. I have consumed a small nibble of absurdist writing and all of it Camus, I had mixed feelings on The Outsider and adored the bittersweet heartache in The Plague, but there is something about Camus that just keeps me coming back for more. There is something intoxicating about the style of writing, that I just want to absorb or embody, or wear as clothes.

Much like The Outsider, the narrative in The Fall contains seemingly meaningless events that cause something like a fall from grace. But this novel could be argued as a larger allegory for the fall of man. This fall is something inevitable and necessary and unforgiving. This is not a larger narrative that you piece together slowly. It’s framed as one of those unfortunate moments where you bump into the one drunk in the bar that will talk your ear off and not leave you alone. That drunk is Jean-Baptiste Clamance – and his confession is yours to judge.

The Fall – Albert Camus

Camus uses a seemingly innocent encounter and a way of writing I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. It is written as if you yourself are stood at the bar with Jean-Baptiste Clamance, in silence, letting him unload his confession. With minor pauses and phrases as if questions from the reader are being repeated and answered. I was in quite a rapture with this style of writing as Camus builds the characters you and this Clamance are easily. You are both men, in your forties and from Paris and you find yourself in Amsterdam at the same bar night after night listening to this seemingly helpful stranger.

Clamance states that he started out as a good man by his own measure, he was once like the listener to the tale, a magistrate where he lived a fine and satisfying life in Paris and believed himself a model citizen. But the illusion is broken when walking by the Seine one night he witnesses a woman flinging herself from the river bank to her death in the water bellow. It appears her fall triggers his own. And continuing on in his Solipsistic monologue he states how from that point on he was awakened to the reality of both his own, and the whole of humanity’s guilt.

Like some sort of vessel for the human race’s guilt, Clamence retreats from his life choosing instead to spend his days recounting his story in the hope others will be awakened as he has been. All to alleviate the burden he himself carries. He is candid about the opinion of himself saying that he is both condemned and condemning, a sort of judge-penitent and although he says he has taken to his misanthropic life with ease there is no hope to his words.

As the story unfolds, it is clear that although Clamance claims to want clemency for himself and others he is far more obsessed with himself and his self given job of judgement. Preoccupied with his own mortality early on in the novel he only seeks to do good acts when watched by groups of people. He only seeks to warn others of the danger of ‘the fall’, while both attempting to awaken listeners to the failings and delusions of humanity.

Although Clamance, as a respected lawyer should be seen as the face of morality, he seems to belong easily to the gap between reality and illusion. And I must admit a great deal of this novel seems to be about unpicking the ambiguity of Camus ideas which at best can be tricky and bleak.

Clamance is not a character I root for, but neither do I root for him to fall further and horribly and as deep into the abyss as possible. I want to try and pity him, and I watch his journey with particular morbid interest. There is a lot of selfish humanity in him, as a character life seems to fall into his lap easily, and although he struggles with genuine friendship and committing to women. He wants to possess women and their affections wholeheartedly but not being possessed in the slightest himself. And I struggle to connect with him as there isn’t anything redeemable to him in my mind.

I wholeheartedly haven’t riddled out this novel and I can’t decide if Clamance is trying to entice the reader and the listener into abandoning a prospering life. Or if his intention is simply to derail the reader so you can judge him and separate yourself from that behaviour and watch him slide into his ravings. I’m stumped on that one. I just don’t know what his actual intentions are because I don’t trust him as a narrator. And as a character I find Clamance both fascinating and repugnant, intriguing but utterly repellant. Which incidentally is exactly how I feel about 90% of the people I have bumped shoulders with and started a conversation with at a bar.

This is an interesting read, but difficult, and there is a fog of ambiguous ideas that I personally would probably need another read and a good discussion to unpick. Camus writes brilliantly as ever but I have a hunch this one in particular would be better read with his other work to support it. A good book to end a year on, or close a chapter on.

121. A Darkling Plain – Philip Reeve

You may remember how much me and my inner nerd child adores this series, and now upset we both were after Infernal Devices. There is just no getting away from it. That was a skid in the wrong direction for me. After the first two novels Mortal Engines and Predators Gold feeling so much like the same novel, so much like two halves to Reeve thoroughly grabbing the story by it’s ankles and turning it upside down. I was disappointed and a little heart broken. I was dreading reading this book after Infernal Devices and I am well versed to the low point in a quartet or trilogy now, I come to expect it. But that book, did not inspire me to finish the series in the slightest.

BUT! I have good news for you all, A Darkling Plain reclaims all the ground that was lost in Infernal Devices. There is resolution and there is an emotional end to the series that is satisfying, there is the sharp twist and turns and the dark unexpected that we know and love from Reeve in the first two novels. The dread of “what if its awful” is quickly soothed away because Reeve has this novel, he commands it rather then it drifting, and instead of turning everything inside out this novel it returns to how the first two feel. I can’t help but wonder if this series should’ve been a trilogy rather then a quartet which is why Infernal Devices was so weak and weird and disappointing in comparison.

Again he is toeing the line between YA fiction and some adult themes and doesn’t condescend to his readers but scoops them up during the adventure.

A Darkling Plain – Philip Reeve

Had these novels been directed at an adult audience they would’ve been incredibly violent and dark war stories. Because realistically his world building screams that. We are in a world that has been ravaged by technology and a 60min war which left the majority of the USA a mush of toxic slag. And with 21st Century civilisation destroyed bar for the relics of ‘Old-Tech’ like CDs and ancient submarines, human beings have pulled themselves back together. In a steampunk world of traction cities, cities that hunt and eat smaller cities for scrap and fuel, it’s a world of Municipal Darwinism rallying against a rebel group, the Green Storm, who would rather live static lives.

Earth is faced with a potentially cataclysmic event, a face off between traction cities and the Green Storm. Both sides trying to out do each other in a conflict that looks to have no resolution any time soon. But there is more! Of course there is another weapon that has been unearthed, left high in the sky by the Ancients – those idiots who almost destroyed civilisation the first time round.

It could be pretentious, it could be toxically masculine, a boyish and poorly a thought out war fantasy parodying literature like Broken Angels. Or the insipid emotional vacuum that is Ready Player One (don’t get me started). But instead Reeve actually weaves a good story, on a background of solid world building, and has an elegance to his storytelling that redeems the minor clunkiness that may arise.

There is a lot going on in this novel, there are a lot of location changes, different groups of characters to follow and a few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Because although I am better practised and my dyslexia is less of a fog that keeps me from the meaning of literature, I still found myself disorientated at times.

So. The narrative.

Hester is less angry and violent and villainous and has stopped being the main antagonist of the novel and has become a relatable character again with a complex emotional world and trauma. (We can just forget the rubbish that happened in Infernal Devices can’t we?) Tom is less an ageing decrepit father and is taking agency again! He is sad and a bit bumbling (aren’t we all?) and is still naive but he has the ability to do what needs to be done again!

Wren is back again and I found myself liking her more in this novel, and Theo actually has a personality outside of the teenage romance of Infernal Devices. He goes off and does his own thing and is his own person outside of the infatuation with Wren.

Naga and Oenone Zero have gotten married and are the figureheads of the Green Storm. In an attempt to initial peace Zero finds herself as an ambassador and Theo agrees to be part of her body guard transporting her home. After the convoy is attacked due to a mole, Theo and Zero wind up in the company of Hester and Mr. Shrike.

Meanwhile Wren meets a handsome boy who has his own Suburb. And her and Tom are flying around getting money where they can. Rather then being the ‘will they’, ‘won’t they’, insipid teenage romance, Darkling Plain is a little more organic. They’re thrown together by chance and both find the still smouldering ruin of London and each other.

Somehow London, or New London, has survivors and they’re trying to build a new life in secret for themselves in between getting caught in the cross fire between the traction cities and the Green Storm.

Fishcake is back and has somehow fixed the Stalker, Anna Fang. But Fang seems to be having an issue with her hardware as there are two personalities breaking through, the first the gentle original Anna and the second the Stalker Fang who is hard and murderous. Stalker Fang takes them to Popjoy to ‘get rid of the error’ – the original Anna personality who has her memories and sadness and cares for Fishcake.

There is talk of a weapon, Odin. Mr. Shrike appears to be unable to kill anymore and blames Zero for tampering with him. Pennyroyal appears and for some reason, ends up again being the best example of how people are both good and bad and somehow redeems himself a little in this novel. Fear is a big motivator in this novel, a battle of wills, and complete chaos where two sides are fighting the wrong person.

But it comes right in the end, but I’m not going to tell you how.

There is something bittersweet in the end and I think Mr. Shrike possesses my most favourite epilogue that I’ve ever read. The tension of the book releases just at the right moment and gives way to relief and that makes this novel that much more satisfying. This book would be a spectacular film if they did it right. Because even in reading, Darkling Plain is a cinematic experience that tugs on the heart strings just right.

As a quartet I highly recommend this series. Just expect some labour with Infernal Devices and pretend that is a trust fall into A Darkling Plain.

120. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

So. Lolita. Where do we begin?

As customary practice to starting a blog post I always do a little bit of writing into the post, re-read some of the notes that I made while reading (which this morning includes a long time reflecting on the amount of times I used the term ‘heebie jeebies’) and doing the customary google search. This google search is one of the most important parts of the routine when it has been months between reading (and in this case doing any writing at all). The first link that appears, sandwiched between the panel of book covers you can peruse and purchase at your leisure and the reviews from the New Yorker, GoodReads and other blogs like this one is a link I’ve never seen before. “WARNING: child pornography is illegal: if you see it, report it.”

And this leads me straight into Lolita. I do not endorse this as a love story. I do not endorse this as a young character ‘leading on’ the older male. No, she is not ‘asking for it’. Sometimes I reflect back and have doubts that Dolores Haze is even present for most of the story or if she is simply transformed into ‘Lolita’ and carried around as the fantastic delusion of an unreliable narrator. There are obviously split opinions about this book and a great deal of debate over it’s content. Some are utterly convinced by Humbert Humbert that it is lust and love that is true and Lolita is wicked and bad. Some are utterly convinced that Humbert Humbert is a figure head for a sort of every man so utterly obsessed and consumed by the thing he wishes to possess she ceases to be a human being. I’m not sure where my opinion fully resides.

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

And that is probably because this is the only book I have wished to harm while reading. Beyond my usual dog-earing of page corners and spine breaking (which to me is a tenderness that I leave behind, a sign of my occupation much like leaving a bed unmade, or foot prints on the doorstep) but if only, I could have this novel feeling itself being flung across the room in utter disgust. I had to remind myself that my emotional reaction was the fault of the content and not the book itself, and after all the book itself is innocent.

It was a weird sensation being full of such utter revulsion, yet being so morbidly fascinated by the path the novel takes that I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. It is a book that creeps up on you, where as the reader you almost feel complicit and passive and guilty for witnessing this happening.

But are you witnessing it? Humbert Humbert is such an unreliable narrator that the lines of reality and fantasy are so utterly distorted I am not certain. There is a point near the end of the novel I am uncertain whether or not any of this has happened. Perhaps that is my own rationalisation trying to soothe away the discomfort of the novel. Because the alternative is a man muscling himself into a young girl’s life, becoming her sole guardian and then kidnapping her and road tripping through America. It could be idyllic. It could be boy meets girl, boy and girl run away together.

But instead to me, it is is pure narcissism, justified by supposed flirtation and titillation. It is power play, domination, and possession. And ironically if you want to put a larger lens on it, it is exactly a comment on capitalist America fetishising youth.

So what is it about? I’ve been skirting around the issue. It is about a middle aged pervert and his affair with a 12 year old girl. The novel itself purposes itself to be a manuscript of a man waiting for his trial for murder and the writer crouches behind the name Humbert Humbert as that “expresses the nastiness best”. But it is not the long drawn out whining, but rather his life, from the Hotel postcard mixed european parentage of his youth and his first clumsy encounters at 13 to his later adventures with Lolita.

This early part of the novel is set up as an investigation, perhaps justification for his blighted choices in romance. He suggests that his initial encounter with Annabel is solely to blame for his permanent preference for young girls. He muses that there is something about young girls, between the ages of 9 and 14 that links them to Annabel. From then on Humbert Humbert’s insidious narration is almost comic.

Later on we journey with Humbert Humbert’s feigned attempts at marriage (with adult women whom are by all accounts boring to him) and ultimately to his obsession with his landlady’s daughter, Dolores Haze. It is from there he seduces the mother, and in a freak accident she dies leaving him the sole guardian of Dolores, or Lolita. Throughout the rest of the story he abuses drugs, isolates her, and then go on the run before she slips his grasp.

Lolita is altogether a voiceless character throughout the novel and I do not believe that Humbert Humbert could give an accurate account of the reality of his fantasy if his life depended on it. The Lolita he presents is flirtatious at times emotionally abusive to him, aloof and altogether more complex then an ordinary 12 year old. Which is entirely the point of the novel. This is not a love story. This could be a manuscript that is a half hearted apology or love letter for Lolita. But in no way do I see Humbert as anything but a predator dominating his prey, or perhaps reclaiming the true events of the narration and embellishing.

This novel is beautifully written, and quite frankly haunting. I really enjoy the way Nabokov writes and if you can stomach reading this novel just once then you should. I would like to say that I will go back and read this again someday but I don’t think it’ll be any time soon. I don’t think this book could be written any other way and be as much as a success, because while taboo is successfully propelled forwards in this narrative Lolita (although the victim of the story, the powerless, the possession, and the dehumanised) is somehow the antagonist.

This novel has had much the same effect on me as Mary, that is to say I really want to read more of Nabokov’s work. Lolita is beautifully written at times and I want to fall into Nabokov’s verse and live there. But this is also highly triggering book and made from the stuff of nightmares, so tread with caution.

115. Nymphomation – Jeff Noon

And so we go down the cyberpunk rabbit hole again. It has been quite a long time since my last post about one of Jeff Noon’s books (95 would you believe). The other two I’ve read, Pollen and Vurt, are still two books that stick out in my mind because I find Noon’s writing a little electric. These are book that belong to the weird and wonderful, plants vs. zombies, substance abuse, incest, robodogs, lawbreakers, the working class and homeless of Manchester rallying against capitalism, or reality, or any authority figure. There is just something about this imagined dystopia, cyberpunk, Manchester that can make a lot of anything else you’ve ever read just seem… well… a little beige.

In my experience Noon’s books are books to remember. And this one is no different.

But to pin it down into what it’s really about is a little difficult. Is it about gambling? Is it about family? Is it about the plight of the working class and homeless dregs of society taking down capitalist overlords? Is it about ridiculing mainstream consumerism? Is it about Mathematics? Obsession? Murder? Sex? And uncovering truths you’d rather not have known? Well yes. It’s about a little of all of that.

Nymphomation – Jeff Noon

I really enjoyed this one. More straightforward then the others though I found myself listing for a while because it struck a pace that was quite slow. I rarely read the blurbs of my books let alone have a fair idea of what it’s about when I pick it up and 70 pages in I had the deafening question what is this even about!?!? But with a little perseverance the story began to unfold.

I’d say that after Vurt (which sadly isn’t reviewed on this blog), and Pollen, Nymphomation is the weaker novel (marginally). It isn’t as jarring. With the other two novels I had become accustomed to dropping right into the thick of a place I do not understand or am even sure I like. Nymphomation is slower and more gentle in this regard. I was a little disappointed with this to tell you the truth, until I got further in, but I am certain some would be perfectly fine with this gentle slide into madness. On the surface this world is very pedestrian and almost giving an illusion of being beige. But never fear, it’s just a trick of the light and before you know it you are swimming in unknowns and weirdness.

“In 1993, post-rave, where things were still jumping but they were starting to get a bit dark … Jeff Noon was the sound of post-rave.” – Jeff Noon Life in Writing, The Guardian

I think what I adore about Noon’s writing is that there is a sense of rebellion beneath the pages, or dismantling, where borders of expected reality do not remain static and often they become fluid. There is a melting and fusing, as if the very atoms that build up the pages would shag the ink and the covers and your hands if they could (and they may very well be, this is Jeff Noon after all).

This goes for the feel of Nymphomation, although it starts slow, it gathers up it’s shopping bags of rave culture and druggy fantasy, with overlays of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, tucks away the weird math in it’s pockets and digs cyberpunk’s bellybutton for lint, gets aroused, and eventually runs for the bus.

So what’s it actually about then as I am just purposefully teasing you by not outright telling you. Well. To put it simply, this is about a group of underdogs trying to crack the secrets of the lottery. But that lottery is based on a game Dominos due to go world wide. Adults buy dominos displaying two constantly changing numbers. Once a week these numbers will solidify at the same time Lady Cookie Luck displays the winning numbers. The person who’s domino matches exactly wins! Anyone with double six becomes the new Mr. Million. Anyone with a double blank wins the Joker Bone (the booby prize – which everyone knows is bad – although nobody knows what it is).

Surprise surprise all of our characters are relatively poor, ordinary people with messy lives so they all play! But one or two of them have a head for maths, or hacking or hacking DNA and while the air is thick with Blurbflies – living adverts that have been created by the AnnoDomino Company – they may have bitten off more than they can chew.

For such a slow start, this book really gathers speed by the last third. After setting up all of the backstory and characters and intrigues it suddenly gambols and goes on a wild ride of scenes I’m not likely to forget anytime soon.

Our narrators (to name a few) are Daisy Love – an 18 year old Mathematics student (who is a bit of hot shit when it comes to numbers although she’s never beaten her alcoholic Dad at dominos). Jazir Malik a physics student who works at his father’s indian restaurant (who is Daisy’s landlord). Eight year old Celia Hobart (who is habitually given spare change by Daisy as she goes to work at the bookshop Celia begs outside of).

Now I’m sure you’re thinking what has Mathematics have to do with any of this? Oh oh OH well…. it’s a weird and wonderful backstory, involving a group of competitive academics starting a publication, a labyrinth, a computer program, a dabbling of black magic and what happens when numbers stop being singular, and begin to multiply through, Nymphomation.

And that is all I will say on the subject because it is too weird and wonderful to completely spoil. So if you want to understand the secrets of Nymphomation and understand what blurbflies are and Play to Win, Win to play, you’re just going to have to get on and read it aren’t you?

Never would I have thought that I would’ve enjoyed a book about the lottery.

I really enjoyed this book and I’m certain after this, I’ll go back Vurt and Pollen and finally get around to reading more of Noon’s work. While I think this novel could stand on it’s own quite well and be a great gateway drug to anyone wanting to give Noon a go. I would really encourage you to read Vurt or Pollen or both, first. There is just a wonderful easter egg at the end of this novel that makes it that much more satisfying.

There is the action, the big reveal, and then the lovely sweetness of how this novel links to Vurt. So without giving anything away, it had me in the most blissful delight for days, because who doesn’t love an author giving you the most unexpected detail so casually like it’s the gift you deserve?

112. The Ice Palace – Tarjei Vesaas

There isn’t much in the way of international literature on my shelves (actually less shelves more piles/mountains as I do not own bookshelves), but I am slowly and surely changing that. With a little of this and a little of that I find myself in the position of creeping, albeit slowly. The reason this one took my eye is because I am very fortunate to know a wonderful bunch of Norwegians. It is also very overdue that I start jumping into some Norwegian literature. I must admit I do sometimes shy away from translations, because some of the meaning might be lost, or it may be an awful translation and distort the original story completely and how would I know. But also, and perhaps more concerning is that the music and poetry in another language might be completely lost in English. Sometimes English cannot stand up, it can only do it’s best with the tools it has and they may be lacklustre.

As I knew nothing about Tarjei Vesaas I decided to do a little research for you in case you didn’t either so you’d have an idea of where the Ice Palace may be heading before we even get to it:

Vesaas (Born in 1897 Vinje, Telemark, Norway) is widely considered as one of Norway’s most important writers of the twentieth century. Poet and author, he may be the most important Norwegian writer since WWII. His authorship spans nearly 50 years and his work is characterised by terse and symbolic prose. Although simple, his stories are often about simple rural people undergoing psychological drama. Vesaas often revisits the themes of death, guilt, and angst, while uses the Norwegian natural landscape as a prevalent feature in his work.

So what is the book about before we go to the cover image: Siss is a regular 11-year old girl living in her rural community, and her life is about to change in ways she can’t imagine when Unn moves to the village to live with her aunt.

The Ice Palace – Tarjei Vesaas

To give you a little more idea of the plot, Siss and Unn are the opposite sides of the same coin. Siss is very outgoing, popular, and inviting and Unn is withdrawn, alone, and a little sad. They become aware of one another at school and there is an intense curiosity, a wild magnetism between them that almost verges on obsession. All Siss can think about is the excitement of Unn and spending the afternoon with her. I cannot decide if this is innocent because she has known everyone her entire life in her village and Unn is strange and exotic. Or if there is the implication of a childhood crush there because there is an intensity that did make me feel a little, not uncomfortable, but questioning.

They spend the afternoon talking for a while and after she has shown Siss a photograph of her family, Unn persuades Siss that they should undress just for fun. They watch each other and everything is so highly charged the book practically split the paint from my walls with electricity. Everything is implied and nothing is really said and nothing is fully laid bare but maybe it is? Honestly from what has gone from what I assumed was quiet a naive and misleading book about rural childhood gets turned up to eleven when Unn confesses she has a secret and she’s afraid she’ll never get into heaven. She of course promises to tell Siss what her secret is the next day.

Siss runs home and on the way passes the Ice Palace. A naturally forming ice structure that has been created by a local waterfall. She is in a flurry of emotion, as is Unn, and the next day Unn decides to skip school because she is embarrassed.

Here the novel becomes intimately sober and really starts to reveal some of the deftness of Vesaas’s skill as a novelist. Unn goes into the Ice Palace to hide and explore and the worst happens.

It is a troubling book that deals with enormous themes in a way that can be resistant to reading. Sometimes I felt as if I was reading the Ice Palace as if I myself was staring at the pages through a sheet of ice. It can be simplistic and almost resistant, and at times have a weird hallucinative quality that is almost queasy. Often I forget that Siss and Unn are children. Because they are both treated by their community as equals, and also Siss fights so incredibly to be recognised as more then just a child and as another pair of hands to be useful. But also because the other children around Siss recognise her need to grieve in her own way.

All of the children in this novel are so incredibly good at handling things that are difficult that some of them seem to do it better then the adults in the novel.

This is a bit of a terrifying fairytale that demonstrates intractable human emotion. At times it reads like a light and fluffy story that will have a happy ending and it could be argued it has a moral like a fairytale. The contrast between what is a relatively simple, rural life and what is an intense, and sometimes frightening, emotional world is pretty incredible.

I have said some reviews that believe that Siss and Unn are undeveloped characters and that this is tedious writing that is a children’s story written for adults. And in a way that is correct, but generally those reviews also confessed with not sticking to the novel to finishing it out. I went into this novel and found it uncomfortable because it pushed back at me as much as I pushed back at it. I found it tedious at first, I found it difficult, and unyielding with it’s secrets. And like all classics and most literature worth reading it revealed itself to be more than meets the eye.

I’m not saying I’m ready to re-read it tomorrow because I don’t think I’m ready for Siss and Unn again yet. But I am saying that I really want to read more Norwegian literature. This story is entirely mysterious, subtle, and satisfying, and I highly recommend it.

I found another book review here if you would like more information on the novel. If you would like to explore this and other Norwegian classics here is a list of ten books, some of which have been added to my to buy list. And of course any information I found and paraphrased about the the author (and a bit more) is found here.

110. Babylon’s Ashes – James. S. A Corey

Wow, so we’re in Book #6 of the Expanse series already. After Nemesis Games opened up some gaping emotional wounds and read like the first half of a larger novel I was suspicious of Babylon’s Ashes. I think I described Nemesis Games as the novel in which ‘everything falls to shit.’ The ending is not really an ending it’s a catastrophe. Naomi Nagata’s character is dismantled and her crazy ex-boyfriend Marco turns up with a bunch of idiots and blows everything up. Oh and they have a son, Filip who is for some reason pushing himself to do things he doesn’t agree with to try to win the approval of his crazy father and is really hating himself. And Marco does the one thing that will cripple the Universe and rains hellfire down on Earth.

As far as I understand it Earth is still a sort of lifeblood in the universe, the Colonies around Jupiter’s Belt and Mars supposedly cannot survive without Earth. But Medina Station has changed all of that and situated at the heart of the ring gate, with the only functioning navy in the solar system it is the ultimate statement if independence. With the gratitude of millions of belters, surely, Marco can’t loose can he?

Babylon’s Ashes – James S.A. Corey

Nemesis Games took the rule book and threw it out the window. Babylon’s Ashes might at first seem like the novel to mop up the mess of Nemesis Games but it’s more then that.

This is a novel to walk into where the stakes are already pretty high, right? The stress and tension that built in Nemesis Games is still there as you arrive into Babylon’s Ashes but the duo writing under the pseudonym, James S.A Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) give you a little time to reacclimatise to the world that is the Expanse. The scale of disaster in this novel is a little incomprehensible and Marco Inaros sits at the centre of overseeing it, and how does he feel? Why, the way all villains should feel: energised and trilled with victory.

But is it too good to be true Marco? Is it? Is IT? IS IT?

In the eyes of millions of belters he can do no wrong, the charismatic figurehead of the Free Navy has dictated a sort of justice on those who have oppressed them. But behind the smiles are reckless decisions, and a sinking suspicion with those nearest Marco, and his own son, that Marco hasn’t a clue what he’s doing now.

Some have really criticised this novel for Marco. That he is a ‘lame’ villain. But I actually think that this is a bold move by the authors. They gave a competent, charismatic, driven character the tools to build and execute a plan, and after that is done he has nothing but power driven mania.

Michio Pa has her doubts about Marco when one of his sneaky hair-brained schemes almost endangers the person she’s trying to protect she breaks from the Free Navy. Her ambitions to help people, are still firmly rooted as only reason she joined the Free Navy in the first place was to avoid her and her people being used and exploited by larger power structures. In breaking away from the Free Navy she becomes something of a ‘Pirate Queen’ and her and her family and crew decide to redistribute aid that would otherwise go to waste to those in need.

Of course, this act of compassion makes her an enemy in Marco’s eyes. A dangerous thing to be if the opera of Nemesis Games is to be believed.

Interestingly Babylon’s Ashes sees the return of some voices we know and love, but others that are completely new. The core four take a back seat while some of these further scattered voices reveal twists and turns and intricacies the core four simply couldn’t. Of course, Holden, Amos, Naomi and Alex are major players, but this novel is simply just more then just about them. For once this isn’t about Holden’s big mistake, it is about everyone in the universe and the narrative structure does that justice.

But you’d think with all these faces flying around it would loose focus right? It would maybe not be as accessible, and you’d feel lost at times right? Wrong and wrong. Babylon’s Ashes seems to widen the net of characters but tighten it’s focus.

I think my favourite part of this novel was seeing Prax settled and happily married. But more so for his perspective on the workings of the OPA and witnessing the obvious corruption that has penetrated the organisation. It isn’t all smooth sailing with the belter fractions squabbling amongst themselves, and has rebellious plot line was one of my favourites even if it is a quieter one in the novel.

Speaking of smooth sailing: politics. Politics, getting more friends that can be trusted, and trying to knock that mad bastard out of the sky are central to Holden’s plot line. Easier said then done while everyone is metaphorically stood in the same room putting guns at one another. In Babylon’s Ashes we seem to temporarily have forgotten about the proto-molecule (let’s hope to see more of that in the next one hmm?) and ancient ruins and worlds on the other side of the Ring. But let’s be clear here those who would criticise this, if someone burnt down your house would you’re first thought be about exploring the abandoned factory over the park or trying to put out those fires.

There’s a lot of emotional strain in this novel. The universe suddenly seems like a dangerous place and after the rollercoaster of the first four books the tone of the series has changed. Everyone is at breaking point and running scared. The vulnerability of humanity is really noticeable in this one. But it is less in the Frontier ‘new world, new rules’ sort of way, or ‘new disease, zombie alien vomit everywhere, run for your life’ sort of way, or ‘radiation sickness enjoy that’ sorts of way we’ve seen before.

Babylon’s Ashes is a novel about tragic events, so I don’t know if I can say it’s a high point in the series for me. I miss the days where our biggest concerns were organisms making us blind and poisonous slugs or searching for missing children. But that doesn’t take away how wonderfully written this series is and how it continues to keep me on my toes. I was doubtful after Nemesis Games that the series could make a comeback in my opinion. But it packs a punch and it feels as if we are back on track, albeit a very different track that is less fluffy.

So where oh where, do we go from here Corey?

109. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

Here is one of the many blind spots in my knowledge. Sadly I have never read any Woolf before. I have a smatter of knowledge from my time in university and from some of the circles I moved in, but I am a little ashamed to say it was not a puddle I dropped myself into until now. Particularly from writers and feminists I’ve known A Room of Ones Own is one of those texts talked about in deliberate, hushed voices that implore you to take it up. It is a seminal work and that if you do not read it, all you are doing is injuring yourself.

And yes, I’d agree, I wish I had come to this text far sooner – not just because of the content, but because of the richness of Woolf’s writing and some of the humour and mischief.

Woolf was asked to write a speech on Women and Fiction and instead writes a creative philosophy, supporting a woman’s need for an income and a room with a lock to be creative. She takes us through a walk on a meandering route, that begins at university doors barred to women through a quick history of women writers. She makes sure the reader can see how brief and limited a history it is and of course, why it is so.

A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

I can really see why some people would take a scan at my entire personality and put money on me having read Virginia Woolf. Because this is a text to get behind, it is a rally call that has never been out of print since the revised edition was published in 1929. Because this text not only presents the history of women writers, but justifies the need for more of them.

Woolf states that we should honour our ancestors, who managed to breakaway from the battlements of running a household, rearing children, and perfecting embroidery for five minutes to scribble lines for Jane Eyre, Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice. Because it is against all adversity that these novels were conceived. With a lack of agency, a lack of autonomy, not possessing their own income, and surrounded by a thousand practical interruptions it is a miracle that the women writing these texts weren’t given over by the shame of wasting their time on the ‘frivolous’ act of writing.

However some point to the central argument of A Room of One’s Own being a mild account that one must be independently wealthy to be creative and possess a space away from others that one controls. That this alone stretches the notion of attack. I believe that independently from the bowels of the text, yes, this independent argument almost seems frivolous. But it is not a notion that stands alone in this text, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with literary history and allegory – so easily it becomes a logical step in the text. But it is not one taken from a position of attack in my opinion.

I believe that through A Room of Ones Own, Woolf attempts to dispel negativity towards the vocation of writing. Her thoughts are balanced and logical and persistently demonstrate that women writers have held greater adversity through writing and it should be celebrated and recognised. While some, like George Eliot and George Sand were more comfortable writing under male pseudonyms, it took Jane Austen twenty years to be published.

Woolf also points out that writers like Mary Shelley, the Brontes and Austen have Aphra Behn to thank for breaking into the vocation. As Aphra Behn was the first British woman to write as a profession.

These are not notes of attack to the male sex. These are notes of celebration that despite great odds the desire to enter into the vocation of writing has been strong enough for some women to fight into. She remarks that Austen does not adopt any style but her own. She cannot write about wars or politics – because these are arenas women have not won into yet. In Austen’s limited sphere of knowledge she instead writes about what she witnesses – her life in the sitting chambers of the houses of the gentry.

As Modern Women, Woolf states it is a duty to honour those ancestors for five minutes and then turn again into creativity and break with form and frameworks and find a sexless voice. This sexless voice that is ‘man-womanly’ or ‘woman-manly’ is the only one in which to write enduring classics. She predicts that in a hundred years the literary cannon will be at 50/50 and at last a reflection of the population. There is also a warning not to squander everything the women’s movement fought for at the end of the text which I believe is apt.

This is a text that encourages women to take up pens and begin. It is a reminder not to forget those that have come before. That Judith Shakespeare (William’s imaginary sister) would’ve died a pauper in the street tortured by ‘no’ at every playhouse. A Room of One’s Own is a celebration of women writers, a history of women that entered into the vocation of writing when it wasn’t a space welcome to them.

On this footing I believe it is no large step for Woolf, or anyone else, to conclude that to enter into writing a woman needs means to support herself and a room that is entirely her own to inhabit without interruption or invasion.

I really adored reading this and I have no doubt I’ll read it again. I am not sure I would’ve have appreciated it the way I do, had I read it earlier. Says the person who has finally gotten themselves a real desk chair for their creative space and is appreciating not having a bad back while writing for the first time in two and a half years.

107. Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan

I found Altered Carbon initially on Netflix. I binged it in a couple of days, told everyone I knew that would listen about it (obviously… I’m a nerd who shares my found treasures). And then I found the paperback in a bookshop and I got very flappy hands excited and bought it within five minutes. It was then I realised I could be very disappointed with either the Netflix series or the novel and that I had put myself in a position of a bit of a gamble.

This is quite a meaty novel. It’s a Neo-noir detective story set 400 years in the future. Somehow we’ve managed to download all of that personality stuff that makes us us into ‘cortical stack’, I imagine a sort of organic friendly usb drive like a disk. If our body is subject to serious organic damage – or murder – our survivors can either have us transferred into another sleeve or visit us in virtual reality. Yes you are correct, bodies are a bit like shoes in this novel. And some people have more then one pair of feet. The future also has aliens! But they seem to be an ancient race that colonised space before us and their ruins seem to leave little clues about who they were. They just seem to have disappeared.

And of course, because nothing changes, the future also has religious warfare, politics, sexual violence, murder, prostitution, and drugs, and hotels have A.I intelligence and can assist us with pretty much anything (ALEXA! MAKE THE ROOM BLUE).

Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan

So Takeshi Kovacs the ex-envoy (think violent super marine possibly weird voodoo), now-convict, killer for hire is woken up into a new sleeve by a billionaire, Laurens Bancroft who has an offer he can’t refuse. Bancroft has more money then sense and is very upset that he does not know who killed him but is convinced it is not him. He has a 48hr back up which backs up his stack elsewhere by needlecast. And a dozen clones of his sleeve on ice (just in case) and he is convinced he did not kill himself. (Even though the authorities and his wife think otherwise.)

As you might’ve guessed by now resleeving is financially out of reach for most. Effectively if you have enough money you can be immortal. The rest of society have to deal with storage fees for their loved ones. If said loved one had the misfortune of committing a crime it is common practice for the sleeve belonging to that person to be rented out or sold. This means you may see them being ‘worn’ by someone else anywhere.

Speaking of crime, beyond organic damage you’re probably thinking that maybe there is no ‘true death’ or ‘real death’ now right? Wrong. If you do not have enough money to back yourself up like Bancroft and someone rips out your stack and stomps on it with a truck – you are dead and gone. (Or you know, they shoot you in the right spot because they have less imagination.)

As anti-heros go, Kovacs is a hard arsehole. Formally trained by the Protectorate -basically a conservative U.N body formulated to respond to the culture shock of interstellar colonisation and the new world of post-sleeve – Kovacs has skills and built in tools and some weird freaky memories that haunt him from his war days frighting rebel uprisings. He is a little unlikable, but he grows on you like a barnacle, a smoking, angry, spitting barnacle that’ll bite and not let go.

Working for Bancroft on Earth in Bay City (formally San Fransisco) Kovacs investigates the ugly edge of the city and finds the ‘Bancroft Problem’ is the tip of the iceberg as it goes for conspiracies. It goes up, it goes down, and it goes sideways. Morgan of course throws a cop into the mix, Kristin Ortega. Who, just for fun is on and up Kovacs ass like a rash. But it’s not for fun at all, it’s for insurance! As Kovacs is walking around in the sleeve of her ex-lover.

And dun dun DUNNNNNN Ortega is one of the cops that has decided Bancroft’s “murder” was a suicide and refuse to investigate further. But that doesn’t stop her getting stuck in Kovacs affairs.

At time Altered Carbon seems to be warning about the powers of technology and how that may encourage us to loose our humanity. And there are assassins. And criminals beating on Kovacs because they don’t know the sleeve has been resleeved. And knife shopping. And hacking. And virtual reality torture. And well… this novel is a bit of a whirlwind, right!?

Some of the sex scenes in Altered Carbon are surprising… but generally I think Morgan uses violence and sex to push back at the reader. For world building Morgan really hits the nail on the head for me, the plot is interesting, it is full of conflicts and moving pieces. But my only criticism of the novel is that sometimes it reads like a wet dream.

At points this novel is a blood bath of gratuitous violence that would put some off. And it is the same with the sex in this novel, it borders the erotic with pornographic that sometimes teeters into laughable. But for a criticism it’s a really small one and I am of course speaking for my own tastes as some wouldn’t even register it the same as me.

Another slight hiccup is the A.I hotel who is so readily omniscient and assisting to smooth the way through investigation and double crossing.

Altered Carbon ticks enough of the right boxes for me that it is a novel I will sit down and turn my brain off too. Any tiny criticism I have now, didn’t register at the time. The series and the book are different enough, but share enough, that you can enjoy them independently and take slightly different routes through the narrative. Netflix has pushed Altered Carbon into the highly consumable binge-worthy show that just seems to scream Blade Runner, that the novel doesn’t quite reach for me. Perhaps the book seems to be trying a bit too hard at times and that is transcended in the series.

Overall this is an adventure I recommend you take both, novel and series. It’s worth the gamble.

105. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Lord of the Flies is one of those sticks of dynamite that caused the avalanche and my slippery descent into (madness) obsessive book love. (And if that isn’t a tag line that whets your appetite I don’t know what is.)

On the very short (I’m not kidding) list of influential books from my youth you will find Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Terry Pratchett and bizarrely, Lord of the Flies. Out of all the texts I studied as a teenager at secondary school this one is the one that comes to mind the most vividly and it is a novel that I have been meaning to reread for about thirteen years. I guess that I loved Lord of the Flies before I felt really settled in the books I was reading and before books had become a comfortable space. The sad (and surprising) truth is that I am dyslexic and when I was young found it difficult to feel settled within my own language before I found ways to work around obstacles. Lord of the Flies marks an important turning point in my personal history with literature, it is one of the few books I thoroughly fell in love with before I knew what “book-love” was.

The irony is, Lord of the Flies is not a squishy adventure story. I am not talking about a group of children stranded on an island with pirates and indians. These are not the lost boys of your J.M. Barrie daydreams. This is a story about fear, a fraught face off between reason and violence, narcism, and the animalistic savagery that comes with the break down of societal values.

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

This is a bitterly harrowing and violent novel. It’s full of tribal activity and changing allegiances, and a bunch of kids being awful to one another while attempting to survive being stranded. In part the novel demonstrates how quickly society can and will break down for a group of children stranded on an island without adult supervision. But I believe it goes further then that and it is not exclusive to children. If adults in the novel represent some sort of managing, governing body, then a person of any age could potentially act out the violence in Lord of the Flies under the same circumstances.

Those being – when stranded  on an island far away from the moral guidance and expectations of a collective ‘civilised’ society.

The novel follows a large group of boys but the main characters are Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon. Ralph is voted in to being the ‘leader’ and when he blows a giant sea shell that Piggy has found and called the Conch, all the boys come running to the meeting. Then the idea is that whoever holds the Conch can speak. Piggy is unfortunately a chubby, bespectacled boy with asthma and is bullied relentlessly by everyone regardless of his good ideas.

Ralph and Jack have a sort of rivalry that starts very early on as Jack is a Choir leader and believes himself to be better in a leadership role. They all make a plan to make shelter which they will all help in, keep a fire going to signal to passing ships, and to find food in the forest.

Simon is a quieter member of the cast but he seems to have fits and visions while he is unwell. In his fear he brings news of a ‘beast’ which cause frictions between the boys on the island. It divides the group permanently with fear and pushes the boys into hiding behind a force of strength (Jack) rather then a force of reason (Ralph and Piggy). Simon also has a habit of creeping off alone during his visions, hallucinations, delusions – whatever they are. In these scenes Golding has written a very squeamish sort of quality into the novel and Simon meets the Lord of the Flies – a pigs head skewed on a spike and smothered in flies – who speaks to him.

While Simon is being a sort of prophet in the background early on Jack has formed his ‘Hunters’ and is determined to kill one of the wild pigs that live on the island. The ‘Hunters’ eventually become a sort of army that Jack rallies as his show of strength to depose Ralph as Leader. The fear Simon brings to the group sets in also coincides with the boredom the boys begin to show for the game of ‘survival’.

The signal fire goes out, and Ralph calls meetings to try and motivate them to work as a group and build shelters together. Meanwhile Jack is obsessed with hunting, and killing, and getting meat.

After a few attempts Jack kills a pig and feeds the other boys.

Ralph and Piggy become firm friends are very slowly left alone on their beach as more and more of the older boys go over to Jack who is a sort of Chief because he can hunt. Jack gains a sort of mysticism, a mythology, and high status because he is able to provide meat. Fear and desperation seem one in the scenes before his first kill and during it there is only ecstasy. It is never sure if the other boys idolise him or fear him or simply feel safer with him because he is prone to violence.

But what is clear is a break down in reason, what may have started as a game has become harrowing with ritualistic killings of both pigs and human beings. Dances that lead frenzies driven by chanting and sated hunger. The novel eventually ends with Jack and his tribe ‘hunting’ Ralph and setting the entire mountain (and island) on fire in an effort to ‘smoke him out’.

The end of the novel is so desperate, and such a poor choice. Burn everything, and yes you may get your foe, but you’ll burn all the food, all the shade, all the shelter. You forget that the boys are children right up until the very last few pages of the novel and some of the choices they make do not consider consequences.

When I first read this novel I really didn’t fully appreciate the violence and the brutality of the novel. I didn’t quite see the divide in reason and violence and how fear has motivated them. I didn’t see the helplessness and fear ruling that. There are scenes that are truly haunting. There is something tribal, there is confusion, and delusions that touch on the magical.

Narratively Lord of the Flies is relatively simple, but I could read it again and again and never fully feel done with it. From revisiting it I am reminded that book-love is really very strange. I mean – this is a brutal, disturbing and violent book and it does all of it’s work with children. 

I really cannot recommend this book enough. If you’ve never read it before or are in the middle of a reading slump or if I have just managed to make you plain old curious – just get hold of a copy.

103. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Sadly, I never got to read this one in school because I was put in a higher set (through complete fortune and kindness) and studied Lord of the Flies by Golding instead (don’t worry that one I have reread recently and is on the way). I have been meaning to get some Steinbeck for a while but the opportunity just hasn’t arrived or it hadn’t until I decided to cross Of Mice and Men off of the ‘I want to read this’ list. There are so many things that I want to read that I often forget I want to read them, until the impulse returns and I am faced with the undeniable truth that now is the time. Usually I am stood in book shops and a title grabs me.

If you haven’t read it, Of Mice and Men is a story of two outsiders trying to make the best of it and it’s a relatively simple story. But their are tensions and boredom and people swinging dicks around to make life more difficult. And there is just one very innocent, sweet guy, who doesn’t know his own strength, and his name is Lennie Small.

Lennie, for me, is one of the most endearing things about this novel. It’s like he is the gentle giant that has been dropped in from space and doesn’t belong there. He confuses easily, he doesn’t grasp how easily he can hurt people, and mostly he just wants the story of where him and his best pal, George Milton tells him they will be. The story goes they get their own land and farm away from everyone else and live for themselves with no interference and no boss.

Lennie is the sort of character that can be really frustrating to read because he simply does not understand, and the characters around him sometimes make no allowances for that. It is one rule and one way and there is no air around him to be, well him. Society makes no allowances, and to paraphrase a conversation I had recently: if society broke down the day after he got to the ranch and ceased to be, Lennie would be fine in the wild making his own way as his disability isn’t a physical one. Society is his disability.

When he is quiet in his blunderingly clueless way he fades into the background and works harder then any other because of his enormous strength. But it is difficult for him to keep his head down because he is completely childlike and trusting and vulnerable and when he comes across small fury things he just wants to love them.

George is trying his best to look after him and keep a promise. George seems to play mediator for most of the novel, I get the sense that given the right opportunity if George’s sense of loyalty was lessened he would have ditched Lennie a long time ago. But instead George is a bit of a father figure and doing his best with a big guy who grasps the world like a child does. George is trying to do the right thing and to protect Lennie as best he can from the world.

The two of them drop lucky on a ranch that hasn’t heard of them. They’ve been on the road, run out of town because of rape accusations. (Lennie touched a woman’s dress and wouldn’t let go because it was soft and he loves soft things and as she was hysterical the town put the rest together without any other questions.) They get themselves settled into their beds and the next day fall straight into the middle of the ranch drama.

Of course we find other characters that share the dream George and Lennie have, and the ranch and it’s inhabitants become a sort of microcosm for American Underclass at the time.

In this despondent novel there is very little joy. Curley – the son of the farm owner – is having trouble with his unhappy wife who seems to be giving the eye to every man she comes across. He calls her a tart and seems possessive and jealous and is overcompensating for something.

Old Candy’s dog is taken out back and shot, because it is infirm and ill and at the end of it’s life. This is done in posturing and dick-swinging sort of contest, and the power play leads Old Candy very unhappy he hadn’t done the deed himself. And in itself it’s very sad.

Crooks, the stable buck and cripple, agrees to go in thirds with Lennie and George for a piece of land. He is at first distrusting but then seems to recognise something in Lennie that is within himself. Alienation and disconnectedness are big themes in the novel and I’d like to think that Crooks, recognises that in Lennie.

Of course these are tiny parts of the story that just amount to the vivid detail that Steinbeck builds the novel with. Unpretentious, naked, truthful writing that seems to follow the characters rather then push them towards the frying pan. This is a novel of destitute people lacking agency and it shook me awake at every turn with reality.

But this novel also had me convinced that maybe it would be a happy ending. Ha. Ha ha ha. (Laughing bitterly while crying) *Spoiler alert*

Lennie pets Curley’s wife’s (no she doesn’t have a name that I can remember other then tart?) hair and of course, she panics. In the struggle he kills her by accident and then runs away from a lynching mob. Perhaps luckily, or perhaps cruelly, George is the one that finds him and while lulling Lennie into a sense of false security (because he trusts him, HE TRUSTS HIM) he shoots Lennie in the back of the head. There is a part of me still mourning for Lennie because this novel executes (poor choice of words on my part) something very real and very stark and very unpredictable. And like Lennie, I was lulled into the false sense of security of hope that they would get out of this drifting life and buy their land and have a porch.

And Lennie would get his rabbits.

George doesn’t shoot Lennie out of rage or out of the hysteria of the mob. He shoots him to save him from being lynched. He shoots him to spare him (and probably them as he wouldn’t go down easily). It is the right thing, but it is the difficult terrible thing.

I regret that I didn’t read it when I was in school because this book makes a big impression and there is a lot to take away from it. I may never get over Lennie and George, and the gilded knot that lumps in my stomach whenever I think about them. But I will read this again at some point. Steinbeck demonstrates that a book doesn’t have to be loud or big or artful postures and a flourishing peacock to deliver some very real messages and morals. And as a result I don’t think I’m done with this one yet, I need to read it again. There is just so much more I could say.