Memories of Lives left behind

When we left our hero, Hero Regen, gambolling freely with her ruc-pard companion Fink at the end of Hero – The Hero Rebellion Book 1, so much seemed rosy. Many of her enemies were dead or incapacitated, while her friends, the important ones, are back in health. But because this IS Hero Regen, it isn’t long before challenges and obstacles start to pile up.

As the book opens, Hero and teammate Norah Joshi – her best friend and racing team partner, another special or Jørgen like Hero, and her lynch-adder, Harish are preparing to participate in still another illegal street race. Hero is steaming because Timon Dane her main competitor called her a pixie. She doesn’t know what that is, but it has to be bad – right?

As the race progresses it soon becomes clear, that this is a very changed Hero. In Book 1, she was a sulky but still likeable teenager; here she seems so full of rage and anger that she can barely control let alone understand her murderous impulses – nor does she seem interested in controlling these mad rages. After alienating Norah with her temper, an isolated, angry and paranoid Hero takes refuge in her computer labs, determined to learn how to control the power of the explosive jwak.

Soon her old friend The Librarian is back with a new, more dangerous and more critical task. “Cumulus City is failing … the ground-side machines that generate the magnetic fields on which the city is kept aloft are no longer sufficient to the task. The outer burbs will fall first.” And on this Hero and her increasingly anxious friends, which in a stunning reversal come to include Timon and his snooty toa-mare, Phara, are off on another hair- raising adventure which includes facing off against giant roaches, evading agents of various organisations trying to kill or capture them and, when they reach the surface, discovering Fink’s original family.

As much as I enjoyed the chases, races and battles, I’m not a teenager; although I heartily recommend them to you if you are. They are taught and sharply written. However, for me, the real fascination is the towering sky scraper world that Ms Crawford has created in Cumulus City. Anchored to Old Terra, these almost limitless tower blocks have been allowed to thrust ever higher into the upper atmosphere.  And, like so many man-made projects, insufficient thought or care has been given to maintenance or repair. Down here on earth, my first thought was to ask why haven’t the municipal authorities been doing their jobs properly? One answer is that there don’t seem to be any. The towers of Cumulus City seem to be totally under the control of a plethora of mercantile entities which include Bayard Corp. Hero’s mother’s nominal employer. Any book set in a far-future fantastical world is only as good as its world –building. In the Hero books, the complex places and creatures described are endlessly fascinating; so complex that the existence of telepathy between characters is only a part of how messages are transmitted. Far more provocative is the way in which the presence of colour and scent announce the arrival and mental state of a particular individual. When the friends finally get down to Old Terra, the colours and creatures of this semi-abandoned world are described so vividly, it is a joy to read about them

It is often said that the second book in a series is often the most difficult, but in Riven, Belinda Crawford has brilliantly expanded the depth and interest of this creation.

Happily 5*****

Belinda Crawford, Hero – The Hero Rebellion Book 1, Odyssey Books, 2015, ISBN:978-1-922200-30-3 (pbk), ISBN:978-1-922200-35-8 (e-book)

On a private luxury shuttle heading toward the main city of a terra-formed planet a sulky teenager is sullenly contemplating their approach to the space port, and in the way of teenagers from forever, hating her mother and her minders. For Hero Regen is special, which as far as she is concerned is a colossal pain in the you know where. This means she has to wear a silver bio-comp bracelet that allows her mother’s doctors to monitor her every movement and she isn’t allowed to do any of the interesting things that other young people on Jørn do – like illegal street racing through the streets of Cumulus City. Hero’s specialness takes a number of forms; the ones she knows about include an uncanny ability to manipulate any and all manner of the devices that control and support everyone’s life on planet Jørn’s as well as others that her mother only hints at. It also means she must take medications to control her abilities which is the worst insult of all as the noxious green goop deadens her extraordinary senses.

As she sees it her only friend is her ruc-pard, Fink, a genetically engineered creation “… mixing a little bit of rat with a little bit of leopard and a whole lot of alien to create something big and strong and scary enough to walk the surface with impunity.”

Fortunately for her she and Fink are able to communicate telepathically, which, during the course of this first adventure in what is a promised series about Hero and the friends she makes, first at school and later in the tunnels, towers, streets and back alleys of Cumulus City, proves not only useful but frequently life-saving.

There are dangers afoot on this very odd little planet and despite the best efforts of Hero’s mother and her minders, Imogene, the Lamb, and Tybalt, bodyguard and butler, the task of saving the city and Jørn are falling squarely on Hero’s scrawny little shoulders.

Technically this is YA level fantasy that resonates with many of the same themes and wonders of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern. Which is totally fine with me, as, despite my …er…advanced …age, I still reread these - regularly. My love of fantasy was created early when I encountered the friendships between Lessa, F'lar, Ruth, Lord Jaxon and all the others. How often I wished for a sentient dragon to tell my troubles to and to take me flying high above the everyday problems of growing up in a boring little Massachusetts town.

Equally the Morague Academy with ordinary students, mean girls, haughty star athletes and outsiders who become Hero’s friends openly calls up the Harry Potter books – to very good effect. These are all people and situations that younger and older readers can identify with and enjoy.

This first book introduces us to some wonderful creatures and characters and sets the stage for Hero’s quest to save and make sense of her world. And while I loved much about it I was concerned that all the identified characters seem to have bright blond hair and pale skin. I would have thought that in a world where bio-engineering is so prominent a more diversified population would have been created. This also impacts on my willingness to recommend this to YA readers of colour.

nwhyte on LiveJournal gave me this year. I should start by mentioning that 1982 was probably the single most eventful year of my life.

My age then: 39
My age now: 73

Relationship status then – still (just about) married to Tom since 1995. At the end of 1981, Tom and I had agreed to divorce and I had moved out of our apartment in Greenwich Village.
Relationship status now – single/divorced/whatever since the end of 1982

Occupation then – Unemployed and seemingly unemployable. Truth is, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, other than get out of America and live in Greece.
Occupation now – semi-retired English teacher and rural community development activist (Don’t ask! That string of words covers a multitude of sins, projects and activities)

At the start of 1982, I was living in a brownstone on Cherry Street in Brooklyn Heights which I bought as part of the impending divorce settlement. By the end I was renting a house with a garden on the edge of Chania, Crete, Greece

Now, I and my aging bad-tempered cat, Neri, have lived in a Soviet era-built apartment on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia for more than 12 years. In fact, next June I will have lived in Estonia for 20 years. How the F! did that happen?

Was I happy then? I was far too busy to consider the question of happiness. The challenges and mistakes of learning to live in a totally foreign environment kept me hopping for several years and through several changes of country.

Am I happy now? Content comes closer. I don’t like the restrictions that encroaching age and health problems are imposing on my ability to do many of the things I used to take for granted. I still ride my bike every day though.

Kids then? Just the one. Catie was all the child I ever wanted
Kids now? Still 1, but she has given me 2 (usually* Her word, not mine) wonderful grandsons.

If you ask, I will give you a year.

Tracy M. Joyce, Asena Blessed, Book Two in the Chronicles of Altaica, Odyssey Books, 2016, pages 660, ISBN 978-1-922200-49-5 (ebook) ISBN:978-1-922200-48-8 (PBK)

Book I of the Chronicles of Altaica, introduced a story-topic that is all too familiar in today’s world – the harrowing experiences of refugees fleeing invading armies. There, we were introduced to a diverse group of vulnerable individuals desperate to survive and find a safe haven.  In Book Two, Asena Blessed, the refugees have been rescued, brought to the island kingdom of Altaica, and are now tasked with the challenges of adapting to their new home and with winning the right to remain and be accepted by their new communities.

But refugees, as we in Europe and Australia know, no matter how worthy, are also people with their own skills, fears and agendas. In Asena Blessed, jealousy and suspicion of Isaura, the gifted, brown-skinned girl who had led them to Altaica, intensifies as her special talents develop and she moves into leadership circles. The small refugee group must deal with their fear of magic and resentment of Isaura if they are to survive, for Altaica is at war. The violence prone regicidal dictator, Ratilal, is determined to destroy the Horse and Bear Clans to claim total hegemony over the entire country. Not all the incomers will be able to meet this challenge successfully. How this plays out is an important element of Book Two.

Also in Asena Blessed, some of my favourite elements, from Book One, the giant magic wolves, the Asena, become major characters in the unfolding story. Their leader, the Matriarch has appointed herself Isaura’s guardian and thus a supporter of the beleaguered clans. Romances are budding as so often happens during times of war, but above all, this book concentrates on preparing the Bear and Horse clan members for the coming battle.

It’s all delightful! The writing is vivid; characters, even the foolish or bitchy ones, are believable. And despite being a fantasy set in a mythical country, the issues raised and the solutions and failures presented are so relevant to our current world situation that the book made me think and question even as I read; like scarfing a whole box of wonderful chocolates only to discover the centres were full of things that are good for you!!

Second books can often be an iffy thing, but in Asena Blessed, Ms Joyce’s’ writing skills have matured and developed. The characterizations in particular have become more rounded and vivid. The events are believable. I can’t wait to get my hands on the concluding Book Three. (Hint! Hint!)

I’m happy to give Asena Blessed 5***** I received this book from the publishers in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. It is not their fault that I enjoyed it so much.

Gosh! It's been a long time since I posted a book review. Having an infarct will do that to Ya, I guess. Thankfully, I seem to be genuinely on the mend, so, back to the metaphorical grindstone.

Odyssey Books, Australia, 270 pages, 2016, ISBN 978-1-922200-52-5 (pbk) ISBN:978-1-922200-53-2 (e-book)In the first book of this thought provoking series, Sannah and the Pilgrim, Sue Parritt introduces an all-too possible view of the future, a world where people of colour, have been herded together in enclaves, ‘for their own safety’, slaves in all but name.

In their zone, the ‘brown skins’ live a tightly controlled existence. White governors and troopers are assigned to police most of their activities. Curfews are rigidly enforced, and after work, people are expected to attend story-meetings presided over by Tellers of Tales. Sannah, the heroine of Book I, is one of these. She has been trained in the official history of her people and in the techniques for correctly delivering these in the gatherings. This tells the story of her meeting with a mysterious traveller from another planet and their battle alongside the Women’s Line, a modern version of the Underground Railway of the American Civil war period to recue friends and colleagues imprisoned in the underground camps of future Australia.

Book II, Pia and the Skyman, picks up one year to the day after the exciting and calamitous ending of Book I.  Pia, Sannah’s daughter had escaped to Kauri Haven, a community established on the coast of Democratic Aotearoa. Here she had been attempting to come to terms with her despair and frustration, and to continue the work of the Women’s Line in rescuing people caught trying to undermine the vicious government of apartheid Australia.  In this she has been supported by the stranger from the sky. Kaire, now an integral part of the Brown resistance movement, has become her best friend and treasured companion.

Now the work of the Women’s Line is threatened by informers from inside the group and Kaire’s home planet, Skyz50, is facing a catastrophic environmental crisis. He is being recalled home by his leader Commander Breta. How Pia and Kaire meet these challenges form the plot lines of this engrossing and enjoyable sequel.

Equally, Ms Parritt has used these to raise a number of thorny and currently very relevant social issues, especially the challenges of receiving large numbers of refugees and the very difficult choices that must sometimes be made in deciding who will be admitted into safety and who will be left behind. That she is able to do this within the context of an exciting story without pontificating or propagandising is all to her credit.

I think it is obvious that I enjoyed this book very much. Sue Parritt writes in a clear crisp style that makes events move along swiftly, dragging the reader with her. I am happy to give this ***** 5 Stars, and am eagerly awaiting the third part of this story.

Since I have been informed that the above is a thing.
Neri and I offer the followsing images of our teddy, Tommy Too, at home and at work - which are one and the same thing. After me, Tommy is Neri's best friend

Collected Fiction, Hannu Rajaniemi, Tachyon Publication, 2015, pages 386, ISBN: 978-1-61696-192-3 Trade Paperback

In 2010, Hannu Rajaniemi seemed to explode into the SFF firmament like one of the extraordinary flying objects that inhabit the strange worlds he creates. The Quantum Thief was the first book in a trilogy that established him as a major new star in hard SF writing. Now he has just published, Collected Fiction, a masterly batch of stories that explore an immense range of styles and characters, including humans, semi-human replicants, bio-engineered talking cats and dogs, goddesses, ancient and modern, angels, ghosts and lots of Finns, who may or may not be a different species of human altogether.

This is delightful collection. Perhaps you think this is an unusual choice of adjective for modernist, hard Sci-fi stories, but, in almost all of the stories, there is an underlying sweetness, a touch, a gentle stroke of romanticism. None are saccharine or overly sentimental but neither are they cynical. In a world where so much futurist sci-fi is resolutely and usually depressingly dystopian, the positive world view that Rajaniemi presents is almost shocking. He doesn’t present an easy future, but it is one in which creatures of good will and good heart can overcome most obstacles. And, shock, horror! Rajaniemi believes in love. Although I do hope he’ll forgive me for giving away his dirty little secret.

The stories are great fun to read. Hannu uses words with pyromaniacal glee, piling up technical terms and concepts into glittering towers of demented, lego-like constructions. Fortunately, it isn’t absolutely necessary to completely understand every term or concept, (After all, how many of us have doctorates in Quantum Physics?) as long as you give yourself up to the ride, the meaning is ultimately revealed through the ride.

For example: “the warm infrared dreams of Dyson spheres…”  or “the dark matter neutrolinos annihilate each other in its hungry Chown drive heart…

Or this from The Jugaad Cathedral,” a brilliant take down of an app-controlled future in which success at dating or fame is rigidly predicted by Cloud-based algo-rhythms:

“He had engineered a protocell batch that could live in grids printed on fabrics, arranged them in cellular automata patterns…. and made patterns of themselves, Turing-complete clothing , living designs that kept changing as long as you sprayed the fabrics with nutrients regularly.”

Who wouldn’t like to live in clothes that could change with our moods?

Despite the verbal hijinks, there is a unifying theme in the collection; how life in the future, inhabited by created life-forms with all-to-human emotions might be lived on the interface between human and not-so human beings. Unlike many other writers, Hannu’s vision is strangely positive.

It is also deeply imbedded in his Finnish background and roots. This is the best example I’ve yet seen of, ‘You can take the boy out of the woods, but you can’t take the Finn out of the man.’ The award winning story, Elegy for a Young Elk, in which rescuing his son from a bubble-enclosed city positively impacts on a Finnish Hunter/Poet and his friend Otso, the Bear, illustrates this perfectly. In 2010 it won the ARESFFT award for translation, a translation Hannu made himself.

My favourite from the collection was “Invisible Planets (with apologies to Italo Calvino)”, not the longest story but the one that provoked the strongest reaction in me personally. Here, an ambassadorial dark ship suffering a crisis of confidence begins to examine her memories of the planets she has visited; planets that feed on the dead, greed and selfies, dimensions and horizons, ruins, reading, writing and books.

“What if the gift it carries, the information written onto tons upon tons of endlessly coiled DNA strands that hold petabytes in a single gram, is nothing more than a scrawled message in a bottle to be picked by a fisherman on an unknown shore and then discarded, alien and meaningless.”

The answer arrived at is one that will resonate powerfully with every restless spirit out there.

The final sections showcase two brilliant experiments “Snow White is Dead”, developed with a grant from New Media Scotland, is an attempt to explore the possibility of getting text to change in response to brain activity. Using Emotiv EPOC Headsets, the experiment involved the reader (perceiver?) in directing the text according to perceptual cues.  According to the author, as the project has taken on a life of its own, the texts presented here are only a part of where the story may be going.

In this, and the following “Unused Tomorrows and other Stories”, 140 character Twitter stories including the very radical, half-human, half mummy, hard-boiled detective, “Imhotep Austin”  Hannu continues his explorations into the next great divide in literature.

More radical than simply choosing between paper or electronic versions of a text, the future according to Rajaniemi will offer a broader range of possibilities for experiencing and inter-acting with the material created and read.

For anyone not already knowing him, Hannu Rajaniemi was born and raised in Finland before moving to Edinburgh where he completed uncountable degrees in subjects  impossible for this mere human to comprehend. I was privileged to meet him at Eurocon 2011 and have been a hard fan ever since. If you haven’t read The Quantum Thief trilogy and want to try a sample of Hannu’s work, or if you have, and need something to fill the void until his next full-size book comes out, these beautifully crafted stories are an excellent choice. Five well deserved *****

The Real Lives of Roman Britain, Guy de la Bédoyère, Yale University Press, 2015, pages 264, ISBN: 978-0-300-20719-4

Back in the grey mists of time and fantasy, floated a mythical island populated by wise Druidic priests and beautiful Celtic warrior princesses. Sometime after the birth of a carpenter in a far off land, this idyll was destroyed by the arrival of the evil Julius Caesar and his marauding soldiers. Truth or Fantasy?  Many people claim to believe in this mythologised Britain, but the real truth is that we don’t know; and for all intents and purposes we cannot know.

As far as we do know, the Druids and Celts were not a literate, record-keeping people, so there are virtually no records of what life was like before the coming of the Romans. Any readily accessible information comes to us via the writings of historians like the infamous Julius Caesar, or Cassius Dio, whose 80 volume Roman History includes several chapters on Roman Britain. The noted historian, Gaius Cornelius Tacitus was the son-in-law of Gaius Julius Agricola, and whose history not only talks about battles he observed but gives us some of the earliest descriptions of native Britons.  As with any histories composed by the agents of conquerors, these have to be regarded as biased.

More up front and possibly honest were the inscriptions placed on monuments and tombstones. Fortunately, not only military personnel but tradesmen and artisans, as always have put their marks and inscriptions on their work, leaving a tantalising glimpse of their lives for posterity. Guy de la Bédoyère, author of this extremely readable new book appropriately titled The Real Lives of Roman Britain, has performed an obsessive yeoman’s job of reading and translating hundreds of these artefacts. He has scrutinised everything from the Vindolanda tablets to inscriptions on coinage, building tiles, buried hoards, temples to Gods, minor, major and, synthesised Roman and Celtic. From objects deliberately left behind, like tombstones or treasure dropped, thrown or hidden and never recovered, the author has reconstructed or posited a picture of the ordinary people who lived under and with the occupying Romans.

We get stories of slaves freed, lovers, wives, children mourned, business disputes or hopes for success in business. Vicious inscriptions found in the vicinity of temple remains around the country attest to the particularly nasty practice of ordering lead curse tablets, and call to mind some of the ugly flame wars we find on today’s Twitter.

Places of pilgrimage, and especially healing were an important element in the Roman world. A population composed primarily of soldiers would be in particular need of medical and recuperative services. To meet this need, the Romans established religious and healing centres all over their empire.  Here would gather the civilian and military sick: hypochondriacs and the genuinely ill, administrators, scribes, priests, soothsayers, inn-keepers, souvenir-makers, tourists and thieves. All required services of one kind or another and many lefty behind some token of their time at the centres. In Britain, Aquae Salis in Bath has been an especially rich source of inscribed material for the first two centuries of the Roman time.

Later, from the third century, as instabilities and difficulties in other parts of the empire drew attention away from Britain, the practice of erecting tombstones and monuments declined. Now the author draws his material from the host of buried treasure finds that are the beneficence of those obsessives who quarter fields with metal detectors. Composed of coins, jewellery, silver or other plate, these were buried sometime in the distant past and never recovered by their owners. Their return to the light, has allowed the author to posit a fascinating picture of life in the declining years of Roman Britain and happily many of these are collected in major museums around the country.

Using the inscriptions and writings found in these myriad of sources, so we armchair historians don’t have to undertake the intensive work of visiting all these locations, Guy de la Bédoyère has decoded massive numbers of inscriptions while making intelligent guesses about the lives of those who created or commissioned them. The result is a vivid and thought-enticing book. While by no means an academic text, it is as detailed and credible as this conscientious author can make it. This is a book that anyone interested in the history of Roman Britain can read and enjoy. I would recommend or buy this for any number of my friends. 5*****

Eating Rome, Elizabeth Minchilli, St Martin’s Press, April 2015, 230 pages, ISBN: 978-1-250-04784-7 ebook


Some people buy cookbooks intending to cook from the recipes; others buy cookbooks to read, regarding them as armchair travelogues with tasting notes. For me, books about food are among the most evocative writings about places and times, so I count myself firmly among the second group. It’s a moot point these days whether books with recipes have any future in a world where almost anything you want to cook can be found at the click of a google. There are still exceptions. The wonderful collections of recipes by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi are books to read and use. Their extraordinary Jerusalem is both a usable collection of recipes and an extraordinary chronicle of a remarkable city.

Elizabeth Minchilli’s Eating Rome, a delightful memoire of one American woman’s Italianization aspires to this tradition. It’s a tough act to follow, but Elizabeth manages to bring wit and passion to her stories of food-life in Italy.

When she was barely twelve years old, her suddenly peripatetic parents decided to move her and her two siblings to Rome. That experiment lasted two years, and left the author with an unquenchable passion for Italy. Later, university studies in Florence and marriage to Domenico from Puglia sealed the her fate.

Within the twenty-five food-centric chapters of Eating Rome, ranging from How to Feed a Roman Dog / How to feed a Roman Baby, through How to Eat Gelato, to Learning to Love Grappa, the reader gets a crash course on what Italian food is really all about, and in the process, is given a wry, loving portrait of life in modern day Italy.

Most of the chapters follow a similar pattern: an introductory section presenting the issues, followed by suggestions, where to buy ingredients, recommended cafés or restaurants and closes with two or three recipes.  I’ve used Chapter 15, To panino or not to panino? That is the Roman question. As an example to stand for the rest, as it is typical.

Beginning with the vexed question of when do Italians eat panini, she explores the difficulty of persuading her Italian husband and daughters that ‘sandwiches’ can in fact be a real meal.

The next section, Anatomy of a Roman Panino, moves onto the construction,: the bread, with explanations of the different regional types used; followed, of course with: the filling: mortadella or … and finally after explaining the difference, several suggestions for enjoying old and new styles of panini. The concluding recipe section includes the Italian picnic and beach favourite, panino di frittata.

It’s a format that works extremely well. We get an sauce pot full of useful and accurate information about eating in Italy in an amusing, pain-free manner. The photography throughout, which is Mrs Minchilli’s own, is as delicious as the food she is describing.

My only real criticism is the America-centric-ness of it all. You do have European readers after all. I especially wish that metric measurements had also been more consistently provided alongside the American cup style. Nonetheless, for armchair travellers or anyone planning a trip to Rome in the near future, this will help you get through the long winter, or the weeks until your departure. 5 tasty *****

Caveat emptor: As a long time reader of Elizabeth’s blog and follower of her Twitter and Instagram accounts, when the ARC for this became available on NetGalley, I jumped all over it. My expectations were more than met.