Kim Miller

While Ender was growing up in a loving family and only have to negotiate his place with an older brother and sister, Bean was having to fight his way upwards from the streets of Amsterdam.

The nameless kid, four years old but looking like two, manipulated his way into a street gang so he wouldn't starve in some back alley. His quick wit and intelligence equipped him for understanding the motivations of the street and although the smallest of his cohort, earning him the name Bean, he survived in their company.

He was picked up from there by a well meaning religious sister who had links into the space force battle school. She recognised Bean's intelligence and his aptness for training. So he finds himself in battle school, even though he is well below permissible age. And there he hears of Ender Wiggin, the hero of the school and somehow not so much older or taller than himself.

It is not until half way into the story that Bean meets Ender as a member of his battle army for training. They do not form any kind of friendship as Ender treats Bean with the same harshness that the teachers have formally treated Ender. Bean cries out internally for recognition but is constantly the target of barbs and laughter. However, by the 75% point Ender is promoted to Command School and Ender is made the leader of his own training army.

As the pressure to get these students battle ready increases the entire cohort is graduated and sent to the command post, built inside a far flung asteroid, to more actively train for the battle against the ant-like alien Formics.

The novel is firstly the story of Bean before we meet him at the battle school in Ender's Game, where he is minor character, and secondly the story of the training and the battle of that book but told through Bean's eyes. In this story we see him as highly intelligent, perceptive, and ready to face down his superiors if he thinks they are treating like a child. Yep, irony there for our six year old hero.

While Ender's Game is more plot driven, Ender's Shadow is taken up with the inner dialogue of the ever-thinking Bean. We see his military and political analysis, his resourcefulness, his ability to subvert the command structure of the battle school, and his struggle to find a place in the hearts of the other students. OSC demonstrates his command of military history as Bean researches the great battles of history, and his understanding of human interactions.

The book is emotionally demanding at times as we read of the abuse, and sometimes murder, of children by each other and by adults. The deep loneliness of Bean at the school finds some relief as his friendship with another boy increases with time. Ironically, the other boy sees Bean as looking like his own infancy photos and so sees him more as a younger brother than as a friend. His view is well placed as we find that Bean is the result of embryonic freezing and cloning that was kept secret from the parents, and is, indeed, the younger brother. Not only brother, but genetically his identical twin although born some years later. The book closes with Bean, now with a proper name, being united with his family.

A man walks out of forest ... In what might be an alternate universe story of Paris, Texas, a stranger with no background slowly finds his way home.

An isolated family group finds the stranger, sees his yellow cat-like eyes and thinks to kill him, but decides otherwise. They give him the name Falk, teach him to speak, to hunt, how to live among them. He forms a bond with one of the women, always knowing that he does not really belong here. And so he sets out to find his way to his own people, if only he knew who they were.

On his travels he experiences bad interactions with other isolated forest dwellers who mistrust him, abuse him, and almost kill him. From one such settlement he escapes with another captive and the two of them travel to the city in the west that is somehow in his mind. Once there he is taken captive again while the woman he's been traveling with sides with the captors. It turns out that she has been sent out to find this man and bring him to the city.

Falk finds himself in the custody of the Shing, the aliens who had conquered Earth a millennium before. Their hospitality is kindly and supportive and they say they are not captors and he is their guest for whom any request is fine. He meets Orry, a young man from Falk's original planet and who speaks well of the Shing. Orry tells him his name is Ramarren but someone erased his memory of his real self. The Shing offer to return his identity and fly both Ramarren and Orry home.

Ramarren sees the plot, that they only want to know the planet's position to attack it. He undergoes the mind return procedure, all the while fighting to retain his identity as Falk in a hidden part of his mind. And once the procedure is complete Ramarren knows he's in a duel of wits against the Shing. He needs their ship to get home again, but he can't divulge anything about his home planet.

The final stage of the story rages with energy as Ramarren and Falk fight as two people against the 'mind master' of the Shing, knowing there is this one chance after which all hope will be lost.

First thing - there are two translations. One by Birnbaum and one by Jay Rubin. The Birnbaum translation is called Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I read the Rubin translation, although it shows as Birnbaum in my library list.

Two stories intertwine in this fascinating delving into one man's psyche.

In one story a man enters a strange town and is given the job of reading old dreams. A condition of life in the town is that he has to leave his shadow at the gate and so the Gatekeeper severs the two and the shadow is confined to a back yard shack. The man then spends his time in the library gently holding the skulls of unicorns, reading the dreams that emanate from them.

The second story is of a man who is retained to examine and compile a large batch of scientific data through a process of 'shuffling' which takes place in his mind when he goes into a trance state. The ability to do shuffling results from a brain implant that taps into hidden layers of consciousness in his mind.

As the stories progress there are hints of how these two stories are related. And by about the half way point it's becoming apparent that the two accounts, though different, are mirrors of each other. By 75% in we are guessing that the two men are the same person and one story is of his outer circumstances and the other story is of his inner unconscious life.

Towards the final stages of the book both men face an impossible 'stay or go' decision. And as the two stories coalesce we are left in deep sadness of the outcome.

Murakami's writing is mystical and the stories are phantasmagorical. As the book progresses the prose becomes like a calm sea of warm water that enfolds us such that even as we see the inevitability of the ending, and we hope that it be otherwise, we are comforted by the prose at the story's sad finality.

Two stories intertwine in this fascinating delving into one man's psyche.

In one story a man enters a strange town and is given the job of reading old dreams. A condition of life in the town is that he has to leave his shadow at the gate and so the Gatekeeper severs the two and the shadow is confined to a back yard shack. The man then spends his time in the library gently holding the skulls of unicorns, reading the dreams that emanate from them.

The second story is of a man who is retained to examine and compile a large batch of scientific data through a process of 'shuffling' which takes place in his mind when he goes into a trance state. The ability to do shuffling results from a brain implant that taps into hidden layers of consciousness in his mind.

As the stories progress there are hints of how these two stories are related. And by about the half way point it's becoming apparent that the two accounts, though different, are mirrors of each other. By 75% in we are guessing that the two men are the same person and one story is of his outer circumstances and the other story is of his inner unconscious life.

Towards the final stages of the book both men face an impossible 'stay or go' decision. And as the two stories coalesce we are left in deep sadness of the outcome.

Murakami's writing is mystical and the stories are phantasmagorical. As the book progresses the prose becomes like a calm sea of warm water that enfolds us such that even as we see the inevitability of the ending, and we hope that it be otherwise, we are comforted by the prose at the story's sad finality.

Two stories intertwine in this fascinating delving into one man's psyche.

In one story a man enters a strange town and is given the job of reading old dreams. A condition of life in the town is that he has to leave his shadow at the gate and so the Gatekeeper severs the two and the shadow is confined to a back yard shack. The man then spends his time in the library gently holding the skulls of unicorns, reading the dreams that emanate from them.

The second story is of a man who is retained to examine and compile a large batch of scientific data through a process of 'shuffling' which takes place in his mind when he goes into a trance state. The ability to do shuffling results from a brain implant that taps into hidden layers of consciousness in his mind.

As the stories progress there are hints of how these two stories are related. And by about the half way point it's becoming apparent that the two accounts, though different, are mirrors of each other. By 75% in we are guessing that the two men are the same person and one story is of his outer circumstances and the other story is of his inner unconscious life.

Towards the final stages of the book both men face an impossible 'stay or go' decision. And as the two stories coalesce we are left in deep sadness of the outcome.

Murakami's writing is mystical and the stories are phantasmagorical. As the book progresses the prose becomes like a calm sea of warm water that enfolds us such that even as we see the inevitability of the ending, and we hope that it be otherwise, we are comforted by the prose at the story's sad finality.

This is #1 of the Wayward Pines trilogy.

A secret service agent goes to the town of Wayward Pines in search of two other agents who had disappeared without trace. He wakes up injured and works out he's been in a car crash. The hospital seems 'off' and he walks out and goes to the sheriff's office. The sheriff doesn't believe he's a secret service agent and his wallet and phone etc have disappeared in the crash.

It seems the whole town is somehow against helping him and when he tries to leave the road out of town just doubles back to town again.

This is a mystery with a large dose of horror and too many machetes for me to really appreciate it and I was close to DNF. It is not until after the halfway point that is looks to be heading in the direction of the SF that I thought it was. The final sequences of the story rush us into the SF world as he finds out how much time has passed since he first drove into town.

Station Eleven is a fictional space station in a graphic novel being written by one of the characters over time in the story. A flu pandemic wipes out 99% of the world's population in a matter of weeks. The book is the story of some of the survivors. It has a lot of before/after time shifts in the narrative that took me quite a while to get used to.

At it's heart is the story of a Shakespearean actor who dies on stage the night the pandemic hits. The book goes back into his life and through his three marriages, being carried along by those who were around him at the time. After the pandemic and the survivors start to form communities, some of those people interact but without knowing their connection to the actor. There is a slow realisation of their connection through the book as little snippets of information and memories fall into place. One of those snippets is the graphic novel, Station Eleven.

The survival story is harrowing in places and heartwarming in others. The main group we follow is a traveling orchestra who puts on musical concerts and the plays of Shakespeare. As they travel they are welcomed by some, and attacked by others such as the doomsday cult that gathers around 'the prophet'. It is much later that we find the contact point between the actor who died on stage and the prophet.

Some of the survivors have formed a community in an airport and the orchestra finds its way there. In the final portions of the story some of the earlier narrative finds its way into the present and some loops are closed. The book ends on a sombre note but with a sense of completion that at least the stories of some of the people have found a home.