Book Review: Axiom's End, by Lindsay Ellis

So here's why I was pretty excited about Axiom's End, the first novel by Lindsay Ellis.  Like a lot of science fiction set in alternate histories (and this one in an alternate 2007), newspapers clippings and stories are found before and between chapters to help expand the world and give the reader a sense of what is the same and what is different from our own world.

The specific document that starts this story, a government document describing a potential alien language which had been leaked to a website (the creator of the site is the main characters father), and being the researcher I am, I went online to check it out.

Without spoiling it for anyone else, the result let me know I was in excellent hands, so I dove straight in.

The novel follows Cora Sabino, a university grad who is working in a dead end job (for her mother) and is about to be swept up into a first contact story with one of the most interesting aliens I've read about in some time (and over the years I've read a lot of science fiction).  I don't really want to get into any specifics (as the book came out two weeks ago, and if you'd like spoilers there are plenty of places online to find those.

What I loved best about the book was it's focus on communication and truth, and just how important those things are for any type of relationship, and the book does a great job of showing just how right (and wrong) things can go in any relationship when these aspects are respected or ignored.

Also I loved the alien, just a really great character.

Definitely worth the read.

Book Review: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Each month I make sure to read some science fiction, partially because I like a lot of the tropes: dystopias, Utopias, time and space travel, aliens, robots, and the FUTURE! but another key reason I like to read the genre regularly is that in many ways it is dangerous fiction. It gets me thinking about concepts and my own preconceived notions, looking at problems from another angle, and in many ways, seeing how the human spirit endures.

This doesn't mean I don't like reading some good meat and potatoes style space operas, but it does mean I get to look forward every month to reading something that might really surprise me.

A case in point is Phillip José Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go. This 1971, Hugo Award winning novel, and the beginning of his Riverworld Series. The conceit of the novel is simple, what if after dying you woke up on a strange world, and everyone was there? Literally everyone, all of human history, going to our prehistoric era and ending at the Earth's demise. You just wake up, find yourself in a field and back in your mid-twenties, along with people from across Earth's space and history.

There's no clear messaging, no one to tell you what to do, and yes, although many people believe you're now all in heaven, something don't match up - the stars are different, and many of the people here are not the people you thought would be rewarded with any sort of afterlife...

Why are we here, and for what reason?
The book follows famed British explorer Sir Richard Burton as he awakens and tries to makes sense of the strange new world he finds himself in.  Societies and religions begin to spring up, but again there is no clear answer as to why everyone is brought back and exactly where they have all ended up.

The novel is largely one of exploration, both physically, as Burton travels down a river which seems to connect this entire world, and existentially, as everyone he meets seems to have a clear understanding of the reasons, but with no proof.  I found it to be a fascinating read, and will keep an eye out for any other books in the series in future.

Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo

One of my favourite things about my wife is her ability to find out about stories that are exactly my thing and send them my way before I've even heard of them. Case in point, Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, an excellent Horror/Fantasy novel set in the Secret Societies in Yale University.

The novel follows Alex Stern, a university freshman on scholarship, recently moved from California and now working for an organization which monitors the activities of the schools eight secret societies. In Bardugo's world, the societies are each able to perform different styles of magic and Stern has just joined the Lethe, who work to ensure that none of groups step out of line and upset the balance at the New Haven, Connecticut Institution.

I found the book an excellent read and think that those who grew up on Harry Potter and want to find something darker and really engaging may have found a new home in Bardugo's world. I am definitely looking forward to the sequel.

Book Review: The First Man in Rome, by Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome is the first of her Master of Rome series; and this series of seven books (published from 1990 to 2007) cover near 90 years of history, will be my guide through the end of the Roman Republic over the next seven moths.

Following Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla through the events of Marius' rise from new man to soldier and eventually consul, the novel was a sweeping story of politics, war, economics, surprising romance and some really eye-opening examples of what kind of leadership qualities were needed to help the Republic evolve and grow.

A long but fascinating read, and one that has me really looking forward to the rest of this series.

Book Review: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann

The first David Grann book I read was The Lost City of Z a few years ago for a book club. The story, focusing on the disappearance of explorer Percy Fawcett in the Amazon in 1925, was pretty great, and really got me interested in both what drives people to explore and to see the costs that come with it.

Last year I found a copy of his 2014 book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI at a used book store and added it to my "to be read" pile.

The book begins with a single murder in Oklahoma in the 1920s, and then begins to spin a story including incredible wealth, Texas Rangers, the FBI, Oil Tycoons, and the systemic failure of a country to protect people it has declared its responsibility. The book was fascinating, eye-opening, and I could not put it down.

In the end I found this book incredibly compelling, what started out as an apparent random killing spreads out over time as part of something so horrific I could not believe this was the first time I had ever heard this story. Definitely recommended.

Book Review: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

So I've just spent a month away from pretty much all of my regular tech (including this blog!) and it's about time I explain what is what.

In late May I picked up Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, and found myself agreeing with a lot of what he had to say. At the simplest level it came down to the following three principles:

1) Clutter is costly
2) Optimization is important
3) Intentionality is satisfying

Looking at my technology usage overall I found there were a lot of things that were taking up more and more of my time with less and less return for my effort.

So, I decided to follow the author's advice and spend a month (June) in a state of declutter - I dramatically dropped my (non-work) time online, cut myself off from video games, YouTube, Facebook, and cut down TV watching to a pretty low level (for me).

The result was to find that I'd been spending much more time on being passively entertained than I was comfortable with. So it's time to make some priority changes.

Luckily for the readers of this blog - it actually was one of the big things I really missed - writing out to all of you is a fun part of my week and something I definitely want to make a higher priority for myself - so thanks for all the reading over the years!

The book itself is a pretty simple to follow guidebook on how to cut down your technology use in your day-to-day life, and my only actual complaint was that the author should have ended each chapter with key points or added an appendix putting them all together at the end. Readers can do this for themselves (I know I did), but it's much simpler if it's all spelled out in a way that can easily remind you what the goals are.

Well worth reading and full of advice I'm hoping to take going forward, Digital Minimalism was a pretty great read!

Book Review: Ship of Rome, by John Stack

John Stack's 2009 novel, and first in his "Masters of the Sea" series is Ship of Rome, which takes place at the beginning of the First Punic War (Rome vs. Carthage) and follows two men, the captain of a pirate-hunting ship named Atticus and his friend Septimus (leader of the ship's marines). Much of the first book moves back and forth between the two men's world views (Atticus is of Greek descent and seen basically as a second class citizen throughout, while Septimus is a member of an old Roman family and resents his work on a ship rather than the work with the legions he began his career in).

The novel follows the two men through the initial outburst of the war and was pretty fun overall; there were romance subplots and a pair of senators who duel for control of the early republic, but the book really stands out in the depiction of naval war, yes there re some anachronisms (specifically the use of slave galley's for the era), but the scenes are pretty action packed and the tension gets quite high throughout.

Well worth the read and it definitely has me looking forward to the sequel.

Book Review: Roma, by Steven Saylor

One of four rereads for me on David MacClaine's list of 50 Historical Fiction novels set in Ancient Rome, I read Roma a few years back when I was reading Saylor's mystery fiction following his character Gordianus the Finder.

Roma takes place over more than 1000 years, from the earliest days of what would become Rome but was simply a good place to find salt, through its time as a trading post, a city, a kingdom, and eventually the Republic. The novel is basically eleven interconnected short stories following the ups and downs of a family line while also showing how Rome as a city grew over time.

As a follow up to Alfred Duggan's Founding Fathers, it gives a nice overview of where the first half of this fifty book list is going to cover, and also does a nice job of giving a flavour to the setting, but shying away from one simple character we get to follow priests, leaders, warriors, slaves, vestal virgins, and more, giving a much more complex picture that one protagonist could have given us.

A great way to introduce yourself to both the subject matter and Saylor's work (of which I'm a pretty big fan), Roma is an excellent read and well worth your time.

Book Review: Hazards of Time Travel, by Joyce Carol Oates

So I picked up Joyce Carol Oates Hazards of Time Travel simply because I liked the title and I'd enjoyed her 1995 novel Zombie. The book starts in a dystopian future and follows a young woman named Adriane Strohl through her last few days of high school and her subsequent imprisonment in a University in 1959 Wisconsin.

On the surface, the book felt a lot like 12 Monkeys to me, wherein our protagonist is punished by being sent somewhere that is arguably better than where they came from. Are there problems? Absolutely, Oates has found a great way to highlight the negatives of late '50s America by showing it as a University based on blandness, everyone working hard to be consistently forgettable. Renamed Mary Ellen, Adriane stumbles through her first year learning and relearning exactly how closed off America was during the period and for me, some of the greatest strengths of the book come from the character study of Mary Ellen/Adriane, rather than the dystopian future or the science of the time travel.

An interesting read that left me with more questions than answers, but honestly, isn't that what we want from speculative fiction?

Book Review: Someone Like Me, by M.R. Carey

My fourth novel by Carey in the last three years, Someone Like Me is a really interesting look at what we do and do not control in our lives.

The book follows a woman named Liz Kendall, who in the very first chapter is being attacked by her ex-husband Marc. But as he begins choking her, something different happens; Liz loses control and quickly defends herself, incapacitating her ex and saving her own life.

Unlike the post apocalyptic setting of The Girl With All The Gifts, Someone Like Me takes place in modern-day Pittsburgh and although there are a number of genre elements (I don't want to get too specific to avoid spoilers), and works all the better for it. The novel feels like a ghost story mixed with a thriller and had me fully invested in the lives of Liz and her family almost immediately.

Although the violence may be an issue for some, in the end I found the book to be really hopeful and powerful in its look at how we deal with trauma and how it can affect ourselves and those around us.

A really great read.

Book Review: Founding Fathers

Aflred Duggan's 1959 novel Founding Fathers begins at the earliest days of the city of Rome, specifically the creation of a town by two brothers, Romulus and Remus and the bloody outcome of that founding (sorry for the 2700+ year spoiler!). The novel includes that fateful event, the capture of the Sabine Women, and the issues of succession after King Romulus.

What really stood out for me in this book however, was its shifting cast of protagonists, including Latins, Sabines, Etruscans, and Greeks, both used as a way to show the early days of the city from different viewpoints, and also to show how the city truly was greater than any of its individual citizens.

By following each of these characters, the strength of the city, its citizens clearly comes to the foreground. The novel moves quickly and does introduce many setting and institutions that will later play a large part in the history of what many call The Eternal City.

I found the book off of a list by David Maclaine at Historical Novels - you can see the list here, and having just spent three years reading his curated list of Ancient Greece, I found this to be a fascinating first read of the Ancient Romans, and although I'll be reading off of this list for the next four years, if Founding Fathers is any indication of the quality of books, I'm going to have a really good time with it.

Book Review: The Sun's Bride, by Gillian Bradshaw

Last month I read Gillian Bradshaw's The Sun's Bride, a novel of Rhodes in Ancient Greece and the final book in a 36-book list I'd been reading my way through for the last three years.

First of all, a big thanks to David Maclaine, for both putting together a really great list of historical novels set in Ancient Greece which cover both the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods. Secondly, a big thanks to Mr. Maclaine for following up that list with a 50-book list of historical novels covering Ancient Rome - the reading of which is my reward for finishing the first batch.

Although written before The Sand Reconner, Bradshaw's The Sun's Bride was a great way to finish off this series of books - it follows a young man named Isokrates and digs really deep into the subject of pirates in the ancient world and Rhodes business as pirate hunters. The novel has a lot of action and adventure, as well as a really great female lead in Dionysia, a character who starts out as a damsel in distress but then becomes much more interesting as the story progresses.

A really great read and if you are interested in visiting Ancient Greece through historical fiction, I can certainly vouch for the list as well.

Book Review: The Chrysalids

A side project I've been working on in 2018 is catching up on readings books that have been sitting on my to-read shelf for years, and this year that meant getting back into John Wyndham.

I had read a number of his books during my teen years (Midwich Cuckoos, The Kraken Wakes, The Day of the Triffids, etc.) but as Wyndham wrote books from the 30s through to the 70s, I had never got to them all.

The Chrysalids (1955) follows a young man in a post-apocalyptic era wherein society has fallen back into agrarian levels. His community, a close-knit, heavily religious one, focuses on the purity of mankind and deplores any who are different. 

David, our main character, is the son of a local leader, and has a pretty big secret - he's telepathic. This allows him to pass as human, but if anyone were to ever find out, it would certainly mean his death, and likely that of his family as well.

Having now read through Wyndham's earlier work (and some of it has some pretty big problems), part of what I think really works in the novel is the use of David as a our first person narrator, rather than simply have him as the protagonist - seeing the world through David's eyes as a child and becoming a young man made the book much more immersive for me and I think kept the writer much more on task.

A great read and a wonderful introduction into science fiction if you happen to be looking.

Book Review: The Sand Reckoner

The next-to-last book on my survey of Ancient Greece through historical fiction was Gillian Bradshaw's The Sand Reckoner (2000). The novel tells the story of Archimedes of Syracuse, the inventor most famous these days for the whole water displacement discovery (Eureka!).

The book begins with a young Archimedes returning home from Alexandria to Syracuse which is in a war with Rome. A mathematical genius, Archimedes hopes to find work as an engineer for the city and perhaps help out his family, and very quickly his value to the city becomes apparent to its current tyrant, Hiero, a surprisingly positive example of the type of leader we classify as a tyrant today.

The story parallels it's main narrative with that of Marcus, Archimedes personal slave, and for me, the much more engaging character in the story. Archimedes is interesting, but so in-his-own-head, it can sometimes be frustrating to watch him. Marcus, on the other hand, is much more aware of the world around him, both in terms of the city itself and the larger world.

I had never read Gillian Bradsahw before and honestly just loved this book, it reminded me a little of L. Sprague de Camp's The Arrows of Hercules (1965), but I found it much more engaging.

I'm really looking forward to next month when i complete my list and get to do it with another of Bradshaw's books!

Book Review: Ararat

Having read my way through all the Bram Stoker Award winners for Best Novel a few years ago, I look forward to the new winner each year as a way to see what's going on with the Horror genre lately, and the 2018 winner; Christopher Golden's Ararat was a pretty intense story of survival and mountain climbing, mixed with some aspects of both The Exorcist and The Thing.

The novel follows two adventurers Adam and Meryam, who together have made a business of archeological discoveries and adventure tourism over the years on what might be their greatest discovery yet, the discovery of an ancient ship entombed in Mount Ararat in Turkey, the biblical end point of the story of Noah's Ark.

Without going into too many spoilers, the novel nicely mixes aspects of mountain climbing with sheer survivalist horror tropes as the adventurers and their guides end up exploring the ruins with two other teams and end up finding more than they had bargained for.

Although I felt the story was a little too long and had a much bigger cast of characters than was necessary for my tastes, it was a thrilling story that seemed to care about the secondary characters and didn't rely too much on jump scares.

A fun read!

Book Review: Tyrant: Funeral Games

Continuing to work my way through a list of Ancient Greece in 36 Historical novels, I hit #32, Christian Cameron's 2010 novel Tyrant: Funeral Games. This was actually the first time in the entire list where I was being asked to read volume three in a series, so of course I quickly read one and two.

Tyrant Mini-Review
This 2008 novel follows a Greek mercenary called Kinneas and his interactions with the Scythian people during the reign of Alexander the Great. The book was a lot of fun, showing a little known corner of the era.

Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Mini-Review
This 2009 novel follows Greek mercenary Kinneas and his battle with a Macedonian army led by one Alexander the Great's generals. A lot of action, as well as an interesting look at Alexander himself in the latter days of his reign.

Ok, so back to Funeral Games. The novel follows the children of the leads from the first two books as they navigate the collapsing Macedonian Empire after Alexander's death. Twins Satyrus and Melitta begin the novel around age twelve and allow the reader to examine how nobles from different cultures viewed gender, roles, and responsibilities against a backdrop of action, intrigue, and adventure. I think it's fair to say that this list very nicely led me to two great authors, Mary Renault and Christian Cameron.

Book Review: Funeral Games

Funeral Games, Mary Renault's final novel, and the conclusion of her Alexander trilogy follows the aftermath of the death of the Macedonian King, and how quickly everything can fall apart without any plans for succession.

The story is bloodthirsty and often heartbreaking, following both those who lust for the power left in Alexander's wake and those thrust into positions of power with little but their wits to protect them. In previous novels Renault largely focused on male protagonists, but here she has his widows, mother, sister and cousin all feature prominently and although history clearly shows how his empire worked out after his death, I couldn't help but root for many of these characters.

A fascinating look at how quickly events can turn on just about anyone, Funeral Games was well worth the read, and will have me looking for other Renault books in the future.

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

In Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's 2017 novel The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. mixes the speculative fiction concept of time-travel with government bureaucracy and although it was a touch long for my taste, it was, in the end, a fun examination of how bureaucracies can ruin pretty much everything.

The novel follows a Linguistics doctor named Melisande Stokes, who after having a particularly disastrous run in with her academic supervisor, runs into a mysterious government officer who offers her a job.

The majority of the novel is told from Melisande's point of view, and is written as a document she has deposited in a bank from Victoria England, where she has been trapped in the past.  Other characters and story elements get focus through internal memos, newspaper clippings, personal journals, etc.

The novel focuses on exactly how a government agency might go about setting itself up with a time-travel based department, and the increasingly byzantine obligations put on it as its importance raises over time.

Although it works strongest in concepts, rather than person to person interaction, in the end I found it to be quite a fun read.

Book Review: God of War

Christian Cameron's God of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (2012) is the last on my list of historical fiction set in Ancient Greece to focus on the Macedonian King during his life.  Although I've still got six more books to go (and another by Cameron), this was the last to deal Alexander as a living man, rather than the legend he became.

For me, the novel had a lot of great strengths; putting the perspective character as his general Ptolemy was an excellent way to view the character from a different perspective (much as Mary Renault did in The Persian Boy) and also to slyly write a novel about the (arguably) greatest successor of Alexander, the battle scenes (as with all of Cameron's books I've read to date) were phenomenal, and the turning points in Alexander's life, where he goes from boy to man, man to king, and king to emperor, and at significant personal cost, were really striking to see from the point of view of a good childhood friend.

My biggest problem with the book was actually the length; at just under 900 pages it was fairly massive and I thought it could have either been pared down considerably or split into two novels, either way would have been fine by me, but I think that the narrative would also have moved better in either situation.

A really fun read, but perhaps not the first book I'd recommend for someone who wanted to read more about Alexander the Great.

Book Review: The Afghan Campaign

My fifth book by Steven Pressfield, and his fifth on the list, The Afghan Campaign (2006) takes a look at a specific era in the Macedonian King's conquest of empire during 330 BCE when he attempted to subdue the Afghan kingdoms (modern day Afghanistan). The novel focuses on a recent recruit called Matthias who begins the book by running away from home to join the military, where both his older brothers have enlisted.

Following Matthias on his journey the book begins to feel like a young man coming of age story, then a love story, and then a meditation on the costs of war. Much of the novel focuses on cultural differences between the Macedonian army and those it battles, and Matthias makes a number of clear missteps throughout the book from a place of good intentions but almost total ignorance of the people he is either liberating or conquering, depending on your point of view.

When I tell people I've spent the last few years working my way through this specific list, I'm often asked what draws me to these stories of Ancient Greece, and with certain novels, like John Gardiner's The Wreckage of Agathon or this title by Pressfield, I find the answer is that much of the issues dealt with at that time are still very close to us here are the beginning of the 21st century.

A fascinating read.