Kam

This review is based on an ARC given to me for free by the publisher; it is slated for release on October 3, 2017. This does not in any way affect my review.

But less obvious are the theological references: callbacks to Milton, Dante, Calvin, and other theological authors and philosophers are littered throughout the text. Then there are other, far less obvious references that I cannot tease out due to my lack of knowledge of said texts. On one hand, this makes sense, since Catherine and Laon are meant to be missionaries converting the Fae to Christianity, but on the other the references go deeper than that. They all tie into the themes: questions about the nature of God, faith and the soul are obvious, of course, but there are also more philosophical questions buried in there, questions about how to define truth, and how stories and storytelling play into the creation of truth.

Anyone who has been to the Philippines and lived here for more than a year knows that an enormous majority of the schools are run by Catholic, Catholic-affiliated, or Christian institutions. I myself studied at Catholic schools my entire life - yes, even when I went to university. As a result, I am entirely familiar with the notion of catechism, or, as we called it in grade school and high school, ???Religion??? classes. In these classes we were taught such things as scripture, doctrine, dogma -everything the school deemed necessary for us to know in order to become good Catholics. By the time I graduated high school, my head was filled with a whole host of facts, figures, and ideas about the Catholic Church that I rather quickly forgot unless it had been insistently drummed into my head by constant repetition. This means that if someone asked me to list all of the Twelve Apostles I would probably only be able to name the most famous of them - but I can go through the motions of the average Catholic Mass (my cousin calls it ???doing Catholic aerobics???) without thinking too hard.

However, despite my rather complicated relationship with organised religion in general and Catholicism in particular, I still find myself drawn to the stories told about and within it - in particular, its history. And there is plenty to be interested in - not least the many conflicts and questions that have shaped Christianity into the form (or, more accurately, forms) we recognise today. When I read Reza Aslan???s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, I did so in an attempt to understand the figure at the heart of Christianity. It made sense, therefore, to read Tom Bissell???s Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve, in order to understand the disciples who followed Jesus and who, for better or worse, laid down the groundwork for turning Christianity into the globe-spanning faith it is today.

Apostle begins with an Author???s Note, featuring an interesting epigraph:

My religion makes no senseand does not help metherefore I pursue it.??? Anne Carson, ???My Religion???

The epigraph tells the reader all he or she needs to know about why Bissell chose to write a book on the apostles, though he clarifies it further in the Author???s Note itself:

Even after I lost my religious faith, Christianity remained to me deeply and resonantly interesting, and I have long believed that anyone who does not find Christianity interesting has only his or her unfamiliarity with the topic to blame. I think, in some ways, I wrote this book to put that belief to the test.

The notion that Bissell wrote the book ???to put [his] belief to the test??? is one that resonates with my own relationship with Christianity. While I no longer subscribe to (indeed, am wary of) organised religion, I am still deeply curious about its history and structure and how the most popular forms have managed to survive to this day. My interest in Christianity specifically is only natural given my own personal background - and again, similar to Bissell???s, since it was his own history in the faith that drove him to write Apostle in the first place.

Aside from explaining the raison d?????tre behind the book???s existence, the Author???s Notes also explains Bissell???s approach to his subject:

From 2007 to 2010, I traveled to the supposed tombs and resting places of the Twelve Apostles. ??? This book has no interest in determining which sites have the greatest claim to a given apostle???s remains. It is instead an effort to explore the legendary encrustation upon twelve lives about which little is known and even less can be historically verified.?????? Indeed, since the very beginning of Christian history, the Twelve Apostles have wandered a strange gloaming between history and belief.

These statements, and many others throughout the book, are sure to set off alarm bells in the heads of more devout readers, but that, I suppose, is why Bissell does the reader the courtesy of writing an Author???s Note in the first place. If the reader is looking for information that will conform to Christian doctrine, then he or she will be sorely disappointed, perhaps even angered, by its content. Take this excerpt, for example, which deals with the question of Jesus???s relatives - or seeming lack thereof - in Christian discourse:

Why there is not more information about the influence of the relatives of Jesus has been said by some to be the greatest riddle of early Christianity. Yet Christians failed to preserve and in many cases destroyed the works of countless early Christian writers, including that of Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, and Hegesippus. The likely Gentile Christian response to work that emphasized the enduring influence of Jesus???s family???s descendants is not terribly difficult to imagine. Recognizing Jesus???s family endangered the doctrine of the virgin birth, placed the exceptionality of Jesus himself at risk, and unhappily reminded Gentile Christians that at the beginning there was only Jewish Christianity.

Having asked similar questions to the one posed in the above excerpt, and having encountered people who are not comfortable answering them, I can see how it may difficult for someone who is not very open-minded to wrap their mind around what the excerpt - and Bissell???s book as a whole - is trying to say. If some of the reviews I have seen are any indication, I think it is quite safe to say that Bissell as lit more than a few fires in his wake.

But I think it is also clear that Bissell did not write this book for the narrow-minded set. Apostle is a book for those who, like Bissell, are practitioners of ???the boldly searching Christianity [he] has always been drawn to.??? This is a book for people - believers or otherwise - who like asking questions, and like finding answers to those questions. It is for readers who are driven to address their faith, not with blind belief, but with the desire to ???comprehend the comprehender???, to paraphrase Augustine. It is also for readers like myself, who no longer subscribe to Christianity but are driven by curiosity to understand it anyway.

For such readers, Bissell???s book is easy to enjoy without the guilty squirming someone with a less open mind might feel. His language is easy to understand and get into - especially when he leavens the more serious historical analysis with snarky comments, both in the main text and in the footnotes. The following is one of my favourites, and is related to Bissell???s observations regarding medieval European cathedrals and basilicas:

The peasants who lived in the shadows of these costly, otherworldly churches must have accepted all this as reasonable, just as we somehow accept that earning tens of millions of dollars for pretending to be Iron Man is reasonable.

While the above excerpt does say something interesting about the medieval peasantry???s attitude towards the great cathedrals built in their communities, I think it says a lot more about Bissell???s scorn for Hollywood blockbusters than anything else - something the reader may find humorous, or irritating, depending on his or her preferences.

Aside from the snark, Bissell also tells anecdotes from his travels while researching the book. There are quite a few amusing moments, but he tells one story, in particular, that I find remarkably touching:

???I love Americans,??? she said. ???Do you want to know why????I did, if only because the number of times a Muslim had asked me if I wanted to know why she loved Americans had just increased by 100 percent.???Because Americans can be many things, many ethnicities, and many religions, just like the Kyrgyz people. Because Americans, like Kyrgyz, are free people.??? Then she took my hand. ???You are looking for Matthew???????Yes,??? I said. ???I am. Or I was.??????May God let you find him,??? she said. I tried to retrieve my hand, but she was not yet done: her fingers warmly tightened. ???May God straighten your road. May God put the wind at your back. May God allow the rain to come down softly. And may God bring us together again.???

The above scene takes place in a wooden Russian Orthodox church in Kyrgyzstan, and aside from Bissell and the Muslim woman, there is also a Russian Orthodox priest present - a friend of the Muslim woman???s, with whom she trades poetry. This story is a reminder to the reader (as it must have been to Bissell, I imagine) that religion is not such a hard-and-fast thing as it is so often made out to be, that it is possible for all people, regardless of their religion or even lack thereof, to live alongside each other in peace, if only we are more understanding, more openminded, more willing to see the similarities instead of the differences.

Still, despite Bissell???s language, travel anecdotes, and snarky comments, this is not an easy book to read. Bissell has structured the book in such a way that each chapter is a self-contained essay on its chosen subject, but within each chapter the narrative organisation is not as clear or cohesive as the reader might want it to be. There is a tendency to meander between travelogue and historical analysis, with a pace that varied wildly from relatively snappy to absolutely plodding. I also have an issue with the last chapter, which has an ending that feels like Bissell just throwing in the towel on the whole book. I do not expect any sort of triumphant ending, because this is not a book that requires one, but I do wish that Bissell had chosen to conclude his book in a manner that is more satisfactory than one that seems to say: ???Well, that???s it, that???s all folks!???

Overall, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve can be an enjoyable book, in its own way, but it is also quite a challenging book, especially if the reader is a devout Christian not ready to confront certain ideas about his or her religion. However, for readers who are ready to ask such questions, or for readers who are not religious but still curious about how Christianity came to be, then this is a book will prove remarkably informative and may possibly open up other lines of inquiry in the future. As long as the reader is also willing to put up with Bissell???s sense of humour and the vagaries of his narrative organisation, then he or she should have fairly minimal problems with this book.

... It is as Jose Rizal said: a person who cannot see where they have come from, will never get where they want to go. But what happens when that past is all but erased? What if there is barely anything to see, because so much of it has been destroyed? How does a person ??? a people as a whole ??? move forward after that? This book does not offer an answer to that question ??? or at least, not one that is applicable to a real-world situation. But it does not need to, I think; it???s more important that it asks the question at all, because if a question goes unasked, then it will always go unanswered.

Full review here: http://wp.me/p21txV-Ex

For some time now, I have been considering what to do with my bedroom window???s ledge. My window is on the second floor and faces south, which means it gets a lot of sun - good in colder regions of the world perhaps, but not so good in a tropical country, where the goal is to create as much shade as possible. I have Venetian blinds, but they aren???t very ideal: either I close them to block out the sun and cut off ventilation to my bedroom, or I open them to let in the breeze, but then have to suffer from an excess of sunlight, which makes the room even warmer. The constant balancing act between shade and ventilation is of even greater importance during the summer, when both are vital to my comfort, but with Venetian blinds I have no choice but pick one or the other.

The most ideal solution would be to grow plants on the window ledge. This will create shade without interfering with ventilation, as well act as a privacy screen. A vine-type plant would be ideal; it can be coaxed to grow on the iron grating in front of my window, thus fulfilling my need for shade without sacrificing ventilation, as well as act as a privacy screen. I could even go with shrub-type plants: something with a tendency towards horizontal, as opposed to vertical, spread would provide excellent coverage and shade.

But aside from being a solution to temperature control and privacy concerns, I want plants on my window ledge because looking at them makes me feel better about myself, and about the world in general. In 2001 the American Psychological Association published an article showing the various benefits of even just looking at nature, which range from better focus and productivity to improved post-surgery recovery times. In 2009, a paper titled ???Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being???? confirmed previous research: just looking at nature brings about an overall improvement in both physical and mental well-being; actual contact with nature provides even more significant benefits.

Of course, flowers are a part of the above phenomenon. Looking at a beautiful green landscape is one thing, but flowers might be said to be in a class all their own, laden with their own cultural and symbolic significance. It is these connections, as well as their function and importance in nature, that Stephen Buchmann explores in The Reason for Flowers: Their History,Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives.

The Reason for Flowers is divided into five parts. Part One, ???Sexuality and Origins???, deals with how flowers evolved, and their role in plant sex. Part Two, ???Growing, Breeding, and Selling???, tackles the practice of breeding plants for their blooms, as well as the economics of buying and selling not just cut flowers, but whole plants, as well. Part Three, ???Foods, Flavors, Scents???, discusses what flowers are used for: that is to say, their use in perfumery and their involvement in the culinary arts. Part Four, ???Flowers in Literature, Art and Myth???, does exactly what it says on the tin: tackles how flowers have been presented and used in various cultures all across the world. Finally, Part Five, ???Flowers in the Service of Science???, explains how scientists have been using flowers in scientific research, and the various discoveries that have been made, and continue to be made.

The first thing a reader may notice about this book is just how broad its coverage is. The summary of contents I have given above is a clear indicator of just how much ground Buchmann covers in this book, which leads to some interesting questions. Can Buchmann really cover that much ground? Can he sustain his narrative voice throughout?

Unfortunately, the answer to both is ???not quite???. The first flaw is Buchmann???s narrative voice. There is a certain lack of consistency to his writing that can be irritating for some readers, or at least those who expect a certain steadiness in an author???s narrative voice - particularly an author who is also a scientist. Consider this excerpt, which opens the Preface and, therefore, the entire book:

Most open by dawn???s first light or unfurl their charms as the day progresses. Others unwrap their diaphanous petals, like expensive presents, after dark, waiting for the arrival of beloved guests under a radiant moon. We know them as flowers.

While there is nothing much wrong with such language, I think it comes off as a bit more purple than I might like, at least for a book written in the twenty-first century and which purports to be more scientific than artistic.

On the other end of Buchmann???s occasional bouts of purple prose is a tendency to over-explain things:

Plants have not always had flowers. Certain plants, the angiosperms ???invented??? flowers and never turned back. They chose wisely. (As I hope is obvious, this is anthropomorphic shorthand for a complicated set of biological processes, for the plants did not make decisions; they tried everything, and natural selection [survival of the fittest] ensured that their genes were the result of the most successful ???experiments??? and were reproduced.)

While I have complained about authors who lack an ability to use small words when writing for laypeople (e.g. Richard C. Francis, in his book Domesticated), Buchmann is the exact opposite. For any well-educated adult, the quotation marks around the word ???invented??? are sufficient to point out Buchmann???s meaning; the subsequent parenthesised explanation is entirely superfluous. While I expect a certain amount of ease of reading from popular science books, I do not expect the author to dumb things down to the degree that Buchmann has. I like to think that my education (formal or otherwise) is sufficient enough to allow me to understand precisely what he is talking about without having to tell me (or his readers, for that matter) what natural selection is as if I were a child - and if ever there was anything I did not immediately understand, I like to think I have enough common sense to use Google and look for an explanation there.

This unevenness of tone extends to the overall content of the book. When writing about topics that are (so I must assume) familiar and enjoyable to him, Buchmann appears to be happy to go on at length and in great detail about them. However, when dealing with topics that (again, so I must assume) he is not so familiar with, he tends to treat them in a shorter, rather more curt manner. For example, his discussion of the history of gardens is quite lengthy, which is somewhat-unsurprising considering his background as a botanist and avid gardener. The language he uses is also rather lovely: rather like a ramble through a garden.

However, when he treats the topic of flowers in Renaissance art (or, really, any visual art in general), his text reads as shorter, more to-the-point than the lovely rambles in other parts of the book. I suppose part of it has to do with the way the sections within each chapter have been split up; I get the feeling that, if certain sections had been connected together instead of cut up, the narrative flow would have been a bit more even.

This brings me to the second flaw of this book: the number of topics Buchmann attempts to cover. Since the book tries to tackle so many of them, it does not really explore all of them with any great depth. Oh, to be sure, there are some parts where it manages to do so, particularly in the scientific aspects, but Buchmann???s treatment of other topics (particularly those in Part Four of the book) feels just a touch cursory. I think I would have been happier with this book if the scope had been a little narrower; it would provide some focus, at least, and mean that any topics discussed are discussed with the necessary amount of depth.

Overall, The Reason for Flowers might perhaps be considered a fair introduction to the subject of flowers, but I doubt that the readers that choose to pick it up are looking for an introduction. In fact, it would be fair to argue that this book???s intended audience consists of avid gardeners, floral enthusiasts, and laypeople with an established and fair knowledge of the topic at hand. Unfortunately, this book does not have the depth that such readers might be looking for - it tackles some topics at length, but not all. There are also inconsistencies in tone and narrative flow that readers who are sensitive to such things will likely notice, and which may diminish their enjoyment of the book. If the reader is looking for a deeper exploration of the subject of flowers, it might be better to look for another book entirely, or pick up any number of micro-histories currently available.

When one is reading a series, it's inevitable that one begins to develop expectations, or attempts to make predictions, regarding what will happen next. One grows attached to certain characters, and based on events that have already happened, one may attempt to guess what will happen to those characters, as well as how the rest of the plot will impact them, and how they themselves will impact the plot. Will they die, and will that death be a vitally important one, or will it be some nondescript event that happens offscreen, so to speak? Will they survive and go on to greater glory? Or will some plot twist cause them to fail, or take a course far different from the one the character was originally on? Will they lose something or someone important to them? How will they deal with the loss? Will it destroy them, or strengthen them?

Nowhere are these questions more important than in the last book of a series. The last book is supposed to tie up loose ends, answer any remaining questions (though not all, necessarily - sometimes a few unanswered questions are welcome), and generally provide a sense of closure, one that suits the events that led up to it. I find an undeserved ending very irritating: a happy ending when a tragic one would have been more suitable, or a sad ending when a happy ending could have worked just as well.

But there is nothing more irritating than an inconclusive ending. Such endings make me want to turn the book over and shake it out in the hopes that more pages turn up - and while I've used this to refer to good cliffhangers, that feeling is unwelcome in a book that's supposed to wrap up a series. In some books, that irritation can turn into outright frustration, but in others it remains at a low-level disappointment, a particular flavor of sadness wherein I think a book could have been absolutely pitch-perfect had it not been for that ending.

And that is how I felt after finishing Master of the House of Darts, the final book in Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood trilogy. Set in the ancient Aztec empire before the coming of the conquistadors, the trilogy is narrated by Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, and therefore a servant of Mictlantecuhtli, and his wife Mictecacihuatl, Lord and Lady Death, who rule the realm of Mictlan, the Aztec underworld. Acatl would like nothing more than to lead the regular, relatively quiet life of a priest, but he is unable to do so as he constantly finds himself caught up in the troubles of others - from clearing his brother's name in the first book, Servant of the Underworld, to saving the world from total annihilation in Harbinger of the Storm.

Master of the House of Darts picks up mere months after where Harbinger of the Storm left off. Something's not quite right with the world, and Acatl knows it - he is, after all, the reason why everything feels wrong in the first place. He helped Quenami, High Priest of Huitzilpochtli, and Acamapichtli, High Priest of Tlaloc (and erstwhile enemy, in the events of the first novel Servant of the Underworld) bring Tizoc-tzin, the current Revered Speaker, back from the dead in a desperate bid to prevent star demons from ravaging the Fifth World. Though they've managed to accomplish their task, they've had to leave a part of the Fifth World open to the influence of the other worlds, in order to keep Tizoc-tzin alive. And no one is more acutely aware of this wrongness than Acatl, who, as High Priest of the Dead, knows that Tizoc-tzin ought to have gone down to Mictlan.

But that sense of wrongness quickly becomes the least important thing he has to deal with. When Tizoc-tzin returns from his (unsuccessful) coronation war, one of the soldiers suddenly drops dead during an important ceremony. When Acatl investigates, he finds out that there is magic involved - magic that spreads from person to person like a disease, and begins dropping people like flies. Once more forced to work with Acamapichtli (whose patron god, Tlaloc, also deals with epidemics), Acatl must once again try to figure out what is going on, and stop it, before it is too late. And as if that were not enough, he has to deal with his former student, Teomitl, now the Master of the House of Darts and therefore Tizoc-tzin's heir, chafing at the bit to become what he was meant to be: the leader of Tenochtitlan, and of the entire Mexica Empire.

As with the previous novels, Master of the House of Darts is technically a murder mystery, and it's not that bad as an example of the genre. As with Harbinger of the Storm, I suspect the reason why it's better as a mystery is because much of the world-building no longer gets in the way like it did in the first book. In Master of the House of Darts, this is even more so because de Bodard no longer has to introduce as many characters: many of the important figures in this novel are familiar to the reader from the first two books, which means that there's little need to develop them from scratch.

This isn't to say, of course, that they don't grow as characters, and in this regard de Bodard has done well - at least, with some of the characters. Acatl is pretty much the same as he was in Harbinger of the Storm, though in this novel it appears as if so many important things have escaped him, and he's not so much solving mysteries as he is running from one end of the city to the other, trying to keep up with other people as he tries to find answers. While this lends a rather fun, breathless quality to the plot (particularly since Acatl is the narrator of series), I did find it rather disappointing, because the reason I like Acatl in the first place is that he's an ordinary man trying to do his job, but he keeps finding himself in these situations wherein he's got nothing but his wits and priestly knowledge to get him and everybody around him out of trouble. In Master of the House of Darts, it feels more like other people are doing the work for him, and the only thing he can do is follow them around, desperately trying to piece everything together as fast as he can to finally see the bigger picture.

I also have a problem with the multiple subplots that crop up throughout the course of the novel. I'm usually not put off by having lots of subplots in a novel, as long as I can keep a handle on them, and most of them are resolved at the end of the novel. De Bodard has no problem keeping the subplots in order and making them coherent to the reader, but as for resolving them - well, that's where I take issue with this book. Two major subplots crop up that are not resolved: the question of whether or not Acatl's priesthood managed to close the gap between the worlds just enough to keep ghosts out, but keep Tizoc-tzin alive; and the question of Teomitl's attempt at rebellion.

Of the two, de Bodard attempts to close out the second at the end of the novel, but the attempt feels feeble and not at all satisfying. As for the first, I did not find any evidence that it was resolved at any point in the novel, and I think that would have been the most exciting thing to happen in the entire book. The results would weigh into Teomitl's subplot, as well, considering the stakes involved. Since this is the final novel in a series, I was hoping for a totally conclusive ending - not necessarily with fireworks and swelling music, but something that at least brings some kind of closure to the whole work. Master of the House of Darts does not end that way at all: Teomitl's rebellion is put in abeyance despite the heavy implications that he would fight his brother for the position of Revered Speaker, an action that, based on the previous novel, would probably have won him the approval of Huitzilpochtli and made the Revered Speaker his brother could never be. This could have been a chance for further character development, not only for Teomitl, but also for Acatl and Mihmatini, who is Teomitl's wife and the new Guardian of the Duality.

I find it disappointing that instead of a truly strong, conclusive ending - which I had expected - the ending for Master of the House of Darts instead comes off a bit limp. It promises more, but “more: never actually comes, and may never come, as there has been no indication from de Bodard that she plans to write more of these novels.

Overall, Master of the House of Darts is a disappointing ending to what has otherwise been a really fun series. There is a great deal of promise, at the start: the events arise directly from the consequences of events in Harbinger of the Storm, and the mystery appears to be well-crafted enough in the manner of the second novel. However, readers may find that they quickly grow weary of Acatl not really solving anything so much as racing after other people, struggling to keep up with them while trying to put together the pieces they leave behind to solve the puzzle of the mystery that he's presented with. They may also find that, once they get to the end of the novel, they get the urge to ask: “Where's the rest?” because of some rather large plot lines that are not resolved satisfactorily, or not resolved at all. It is this failure to resolve those two plot lines that I find is the most disappointing aspect of this novel, and which other readers may find disappointing as well.

Since I really, truly got into reading genre fiction, particularly fantasy and science-fiction, a favorite personal game of mine has been: what would happen if I found myself transported into the world of the book I was reading? Would I be able to live in it permanently? Would it be a better to just go for a visit? Or is it so very unsafe that I wouldn't last a minute before something or someone killed me in a horrific manner? And since I got into historical fiction I've begun including time periods in this game: vacations in eleventh-century Kyoto during the springtime, a side-trip to tenth-century Baghdad for the libraries and the poetry - but I would never set foot in twelfth-century Western Europe, not with the Black Death dropping people left, right, and center.

Recently, though, I read Servant of the Underworld, the first novel in Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood trilogy, which is set in fifteenth-century Mexico. Rooted in the rich and bloody well of Aztec history and mythology, de Bodard builds a world where magic runs rampant, the gods are fickle at best and cruel at worst, and where blood - both animal and human - literally maintains the balance of the universe. However, despite all the bloodshed, de Bodard creates a world filled with life: a world where culture thrives, and where political games are played at the highest levels of society. Through the eyes of Acatl, High Priest of the Dead and the novel's protagonist and narrator, this magical version of Tenochtitlan at the height of the Aztec Empire's power comes to life.

It is this world that the reader re-enters in Harbinger of the Storm, the second novel in the trilogy. It's been a year since the events of Servant of the Underworld, and Axayacatl, the Revered Speaker (and therefore the Emperor of the Mexica Empire) is dead. This leaves Tenochtitlan leaderless and therefore vulnerable in a political sense, but there is more to it than that. While alive, the Revered Speaker represented the power of Huitzilpochtli, the Southern Hummingbird, the chief protector god of the Mexica Empire. Without a Revered Speaker, Huitzilpochtli's power is diminished, and therefore leaves the Fifth World wide open to attack from other gods and entities that might want to bring it to an end.

As High Priest of the Dead, Acatl's main duty is to see to Axayacatl's funeral, preparing his body while ensuring his soul travels to Mictlan, the realm of the dead (and of his god, Mictlantecuhtli) without much incident. However, Acatl finds himself caught up in a deep court scandal when a councilman is found dead under mysterious, magical circumstances - circumstances that point to the coming of an entity that no one could ever hope to defeat, and that could spell the end of the world itself. Once again, it falls to Acatl, his friends, and even a few enemies, to figure out what is going on before it is too late.

Despite the magic and the setting, the novel is still, technically, a murder mystery, so I try to judge Harbinger of the Storm as such. In that sense, Harbinger of the Storm is pretty average as far as these kinds of things go, though I think it was better-plotted than Servant of the Underworld. I wondered why that was the case, so I took a quick peek through Servant of the Underworld, and realized that the reason why Harbinger of the Storm seems to be more thoroughly-plotted is because Servant of the Underworld was more focused on world-building. This is no surprise, since de Bodard is trying to establish the setting of her novel as quickly and as best as she can without getting in the way of the plot, but the fact remains that some room for building plot had to be sacrificed in favor of world-building.

This is no longer a problem in Harbinger of the Storm. With the world already firmly established in the first novel, de Bodard uses this newfound freedom to good use, creating a plot that twists and turns in a way that the plot of Servant of the Underworld did not. World-building is not completely abandoned, of course: Harbinger of the Storm expands the world to include places outside of Tenochtitlan (the city of Texcoco), and new strata of society (court life comes into much greater focus and plays a key role), but the plot is much more in focus than it was in the first novel.

Fortunately, though the plot is really average in comparison to other murder mysteries (albeit superior to the first book in the trilogy), the characters remain as interesting and fun to read as ever. Though Acatl has learned to accept his duties as High Priest of the Dead, he's still a bit of a grouch about it, and still as awkward about politics as he was in the first book - actually, more so now in this novel than the first one, because the depth of his involvement in the court changes drastically in Harbinger of the Storm. He's not the most competent of investigators at times: he doubts himself a lot, and makes mistakes, but I like him precisely because he makes those mistakes without being a bumbling idiot. I will always have room in my heart for the genius savant, but I can also appreciate an investigator who's not as competent as he might want to be.

Acatl is a great example of that. What he lacks in sheer genius, he makes up for with sheer determination and courage, along with a deep sense of justice and compassion for those he believes are innocent and have been wronged. He sees what's wrong, and though he's not necessarily the right person for the job, he's going to do it anyway because he knows taking action is the right thing to do. Sherlock Holmes could have probably just looked at the first victim, sniffed the air a little, and figured out precisely what was going on, but then, Sherlock Holmes isn't really all that human. Acatl is completely, thoroughly human, and yet he tries to be superhuman anyway, because if he doesn't at least try, then everything goes to pieces.

Like in the previous novel, I really like how the gods are so “human,” so to speak, in Harbinger of the Storm. There is no such thing as a completely benevolent god in de Bodard's version of the Aztec world: one god may be amenable to cooperating with humans, but something could set that god off, and the next thing one knows, said god is on the warpath and hellbent on destroying the world. Much of the Aztec world as it's portrayed in the Obsidian and Blood trilogy is dedicated to maintaining that balance, to ensuring that the gods are satisfied enough to keep the universe running, and it's that balance that Acatl himself strives to maintain in the face of everything that stands in his way. Harbinger of the Storm proves this to be very true, particularly when the reader begins to figure out just what is really happening in the plot and approaches the climax.

Another interesting development in this novel is the quality of de Bodard's writing. I mentioned in my review for Servant of the Underworld that her language had become more workmanlike and less lyrical, especially in comparison to her short stories. This remains true of the language in Harbinger of the Storm, but I did notice that her more lyrical language comes through more more often and in more obvious ways than in Servant of the Underworld. Again, I attribute this to the fact that there is no urgent need to world-build anymore in Harbinger of the Storm, so de Bodard has greater freedom to write the story as she pleases. The writing overall still hews very closely to the writing in Servant of the Underworld, but only because Acatl is still the narrator, and therefore the quality of his voice has to be maintained. Nevertheless, de Bodard's poetry and lyrical language come through in a few spots, and they're a delight to come across in the course of reading the novel.

Overall, Harbinger of the Storm is pretty par for the course as a murder mystery, but one that functions better than its predecessor. And with most of the world-building out of the way, de Bodard is able to build a more interesting, more layered plot - not as layered as some of the other mysteries that I've read, but still a pretty good read. It also helps that the world itself is pretty well-built and well-established as of Servant of the Underworld, which leaves de Bodard free to not only craft a better plot, but to build her characters up further. This is especially true in Acatl's case: Servant of the Underworld might be considered his coming-of-age, but Harbinger of the Storm is where he finds his metier - whether he likes it or not. He's certainly no Sherlock Holmes, but that hardly matters: de Bodard has built his character in such a manner that the reader will probably like him for the grumpy, stubborn old man that he is. That, really, is all I need to see this series through to the very end - well, that and the explosive events of the climax of Harbinger of the Storm. And if the reader feels the same way as I do, then going on to the last book of the trilogy, Master of the House of Darts, will not be a chore at all.

However, readers who didn't like Servant of the Underworld for reasons of plot and language (particularly the names) will simply find more of the same in Harbinger of the Storm, and though it would be wise to give the novel a chance, if it still doesn't change the reader's mind, then it might be a good idea to skip the last book entirely unless one is determined to see the series through to the bitter end.

Every residential area in the Philippines has its own ???haunted house???: the focus of some morbid combination of scandal and crime (often murder), blended together by the local rumour mill into a story subsequently used to explain mysterious noises and strange sightings around and within the house. In many cases the house in question is a relatively modern structure: the genuinely old houses of Manila were levelled (along with a great deal of the rest of the city) by American bombs during World War II. But outside Manila, particularly in the outlying provinces, there are still a great many old houses standing, some dating back to the Spanish colonial period. These houses are considered the archetypal haunted house in the Philippines, and form the centrepiece for many a horror movie (most famously???or infamously???the Shake, Rattle, and Roll series).

However, for all that haunted house stories are prevalent, there aren???t very many ???good??? ones. I suppose this is because, after a while, every haunted house story starts to sound like the one before it: people die under horrific or tragic circumstances; their spirits are trapped in the house for any number of reasons (???unfinished business??? is a favourite); and there they will remain for the rest of eternity, or at least until someone figures out a way to get them to move on.

When I decided to pick up Sarah Rayne???s Property of a Lady, the first in the Nell West/Michael Flint series, I had high hopes it would be a good haunted house story. I???d seen the buzz around the latest book in the series, Deadlight Hall, and when I found out it was part of a series, I decided that I might as well begin at the beginning.

Unfortunately, Property of a Lady is not exactly an auspicious beginning to a series. It starts out with Oxford professor Michael Flint receiving an email from his friend Jack, asking him for a favour: to look into an old house out in Shropshire, which Jack???s wife inherited when one of her relatives passed away. Jack also mentions that he???s been in contact with an antiques dealer in the nearby town, a woman named Nell West, and if Michael has the time he might want to check in with her as well.

In the meantime, darker things are happening: Nell???s daughter, Beth, is having nightmares, as is Jack???s daughter Ellie, who is also Michael???s goddaughter. Both girls talk about seeing a man with no eyes, while Ellie keeps mentioning the name ???Elvira???, whom her parents think is an imaginary friend. But when Beth suddenly disappears, and when Ellie???s nightmares start getting very bad, Michael and Nell???s paths cross as they try to figure out just what, precisely, happened at the property Jack???s wife has inherited: a place ominously named Charect House.

The thing about horror is that my engagement with it is always about more than just the scare. I???m sure a lot of readers go into the genre solely for the purpose of being scared, and are content if the medium in question (whether it???s a book or a movie or a video game) manages to do so, but I think that horror can (and should) accomplish more than that. It should explore themes that other genres don???t delve into very often, explore ideas that would otherwise be considered too ???disturbing??? for anything else. After all, just because something is ???dark??? or ???troubling???, doesn???t mean it no longer deserves to be explored for the purpose of gaining insight. If the exploration involves being scared out of one???s wits, then that???s a good thing too, since finding out what scares oneself can be a revealing process for the reader, viewer, or player.

In the case of the haunted house story, there are plenty of potential angles a writer could delve into: history, family, and the darker aspects of human psychology can come together in interesting ways in a haunted house story. This is in top of everything else a writer may draw from to create creepy scenes: common household objects, local folklore, and architecture are all potential resources.

In terms of creating creepiness using the latter, Rayne actually succeeds. Take, for example, the first description of Charect House:

Charect House was larger than he had expected. It was a red-brick, four-square building with the tall flat windows of the Regency and crumbling stone pillars on each side of the front door. The brick had long since mellowed into a dark, soft red, and some kind of creeper covered the lower portions. Even with the rain it was possible to see the dereliction. The upper windows had shutters, half falling away, and all the window frames looked rotten. The roofline dipped ominously.

I???ll admit there???s something about that sagging roof that sent a chill down my spine, and in broad daylight, at that. This description of Charect House is repeated (worded differently, but still more or less the same in the important details) at various crucial times throughout the novel, reinforcing the idea of the house itself being frozen in time. The idea of the house being trapped in time, like a fly in amber, is a nice touch; it gives the house the character of a revenant, instead of a graceful ruin.

Rayne also does well with turning ordinary objects into things to be feared. One of the most important items in the novel is a long-case clock, described thusly:

It was described as a moon-phase clock - the face of the moon was set in its own secondary arch-dial above the main, conventional one. ??? Nell supposed it was intended to look a little like illustrations in children???s books of the Man in the Moon smiling benignly down from the night sky, but seen from this angle it did not look at all benign. The face was half-visible, which presumably meant it was midway between moons when it stopped, and although it was probably a trick of the light or dust on the surface, it looked exactly like a full-faced man peering slyly over a wall. A Peeping Tom, thought Nell, studying it.

Like the description of the house, this description of the clock???in particular, of the moon???s face???is repeated at other points throughout the novel, giving it the same revenant feel as Charect House: except the clock does, in fact, come to life, as described in this eerie scene from the letters of Alice Wilson, a character who is important to the story but never appears outside of the documents she leaves behind:

The old clock???s ticking quietly away to itself in the corner, and I???m not sure that it???s quite as companionable as I thought. In fact, a couple of times I???ve felt like hurling something at its smug, swollen face to shut it up. But here???s a curious thing - twenty minutes ago I approached it with the intention of stuffing my scarf into the works to stop the mechanism, but when it came to it I couldn???t. I can???t explain it - but when I bent down and unlatched the door and saw the pendulum swinging to and fro, I was seized by such a violent aversion that I couldn???t even touch it.

Later on Alice adds the following commentary, which just cements the clock as the locus for something dreadful indeed:

What I will admit is that there can sometimes be a vague eeriness about the crossing of one day to the next, or one year to the next, as if something invisible???s being handed from one pair of hands to another. And I have to say that when the old clock in here chimed twelve a short time ago, it startled me considerably. (It???s somehow not a very nice chime either, although that???s probably due to rust in the mechanism.)It was shortly after the chiming of the clock that something happened.

If one is not tempted to eliminate all ticking clocks from one???s household and switch to digital clocks after reading that, then one has a stronger stomach than I do.

There are other instances, of course, that chilled me even when I was sitting in a pool of strong summer sunshine: mysterious banging sounds from behind walls; eerie figures appearing in windows; strange singing heard at the oddest times. It???s clear that Rayne knows how to use plot and setting to create scenes that are bound to scare the living daylights out of the reader.

But does Rayne engage with the deeper ideas I mentioned previously? I don???t think so. Charect House has a lot of character to it, but it does not become a character in its own right. Instead, it functions as a shell for the events that happened within it???events that, while dark and rather terrifying, feel rather tawdry as explanations for the dark shadows that haunt the house and the people who???ve become involved in its history. This is nothing new about haunted house stories: the house might be the setting for some rather terrifying vents, but when it???s all said and done it???s just that: a setting, and nothing more than that.

It doesn???t help that the events that happen in Charect House aren???t all that interesting, either. Oh, to be sure, venomous hatred and murder are all an excellent base for something interesting, but Rayne does not use them to talk about deeper, darker things: not about class (which could have been done); nor about madness (which should have been done); nor about women (which really ought to have been done better). I also think that the clock wasn???t used to its fullest potential as a plot element, nor as a launching point for tackling darker ideas about the line between love and obsession. There was plenty of buildup around it in the first half of the novel, and for it to be shoved aside in the second half was rather disappointing.

And I think that???s what really disappoints me about this novel: the fact that it doesn???t do anything really new with the haunted house story. It???s just the same old pattern, repeated over again: dark and deadly things happen in the house; those events haunt the house just as surely as its ghosts do; and only by bringing the truth behind those events to light does the horror dissipate and, finally, come to an end. All is sunshine and roses afterwards???though not entirely, as this novel ends with a small indication that, maybe, not all the shadows have been chased out of Charect House after all. Still, that ending is the sort of flourish I would have appreciated more had the story actually been worthy of it.

Overall, Property of a Lady may appear to be a promising haunted house story, but it doesn???t quite live up to that promise. If one is only looking for scares, then I suppose it does an adequate job: Rayne is great at using plot and setting to create creepy scenes that are sure to chill the reader to the bone (and maybe have them look askance at certain items around the household). But for readers who are looking for a novel that does something different with the haunted house story, and for readers who are looking for horror that goes beyond the scares and the creepiness, then this novel is certainly not what they are looking for.

One would have to have been living under a rock, or the most extreme kind of isolation, if one hasn???t encountered the dire news about the state of several of Earth???s species. Everyday it seems like one more species dies off, or comes even closer to extinction. Estimates vary, but scientists claim that as many as two hundred species go extinct every day, or roughly around three species per hour. There are also hundreds of undiscovered species that could be going extinct before they are discovered, because they die off before scientists can find them and give them a name. These species are also part of the ???three per hour??? count, which means that there are lifeforms out there???lifeforms that could exist nowhere else except this planet???that disappear before we even know they exist, before we even know what it is they do. There are interesting philosophical questions about whether or not trees really fall if there???s no one there to hear them, but if an undiscovered species goes extinct, other, bigger things are bound to follow, because that???s how Nature works: everything works together, and if something dies off, others suffer too???humanity included, though perhaps not directly, nor immediately.

Given how prevalent the message about extinction is, and how much information is out there, it can be hard to filter the sources to find a clear, understandable summation of what extinction is, how it works, what its effects are, and what causes it. One would think that the Internet could give one all the information one could possibly want about extinction, but so much of it is either inaccessible because of paywalls; is written in jargon the average reader does not understand; or is just badly-written, period. What???s needed is a text that discusses extinction with scientific accuracy, while doing so in layman???s language and a compelling journalistic style.

Elizabeth Kolbert???s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is precisely that book. At the end of the Prologue, Kolbert lays out what she tries to do with the book as a whole, and what she hopes readers will take away from it:

If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It???s also a fascinating one. In the pages that follow, I try to convey both sides: the excitement of what???s being learned as well as the horror of it. My hope is that readers of this book will come away with an appreciation of the truly extraordinary moment in which we live.

Her use of the word ???extraordinary??? is interesting because the word is double-edged: both positive and negative, depending on the context. It???s not immediately clear to the reader whether or not Kolbert uses it positively or negatively, but as the reader progresses through the book, it becomes clear that Kolbert means it very negatively indeed.

The Sixth Extinction is divided into thirteen chapters, each one focused on a specific species deeply caught up in the extinction process. Some are already extinct: the great auk, the ammonite, and the Neanderthal are all gone, with nothing left of them except fossils or stuffed skins. Some species are still around, but their continued existence is balanced on a knife???s-edge: the Sumatran rhino, hundreds of amphibian species, and several bat species are all on the verge of dying out completely.

And then there???s us, Homo sapiens: ???one weedy species??? that has changed the world so extremely that we are, in and of ourselves, an extinction event similar to the Five Great Extinctions that came before: extinction events that nearly wiped out all life on Earth. We are the Sixth Extinction that gives Kolbert???s book its title.

Many readers have called Kolbert???s book ???heavy???, and this is very true, though perhaps not immediately. After all, her prose is very lucid and easy to understand, with very little jargon used???and when it is used, Kolbert takes the time to explain what the terms mean. Her narrative flow is also excellent: many nonfiction writers who don???t have a journalistic or creative writing background often have issues with their storytelling, but Kolbert???s strong journalistic background (she is a staff writer for The New Yorker) gives her the skills necessary to tell a compelling story without sacrificing the facts.

She also has a penchant for delivering bombshells to the reader in a manner that has the most impact???again, something I attribute to her journalistic background. Take, for example, this quote from the first chapter, ???The Sixth Extinction???:

Today, amphibians enjoy the dubious distinction of being the world???s most endangered class of animals; it???s been calculated that the group???s extinction rate could be as much as forty-five thousand times higher than the background rate.???There are all sorts of seemingly disparate reasons that species are disappearing. But trace the process far enough and inevitably you are led to the same culprit: ???one weedy species.???

This is where things start to get heavy. Beginning in this chapter, which describes the beginnings of Kolbert???s interest in the concept of extinction, the book explores the history of extinction as an idea, and how those ideas relate to how we think of extinction today. It is a story interwoven with the stories of palaeontology, evolution, and geology, as well as politics and religion. Some of the players in this story are old: Darwin, for instance, crops up quite frequently, as does Charles Lyell, whose ideas helped lead Darwin to the theory of evolution. Also mentioned is Georges Cuvier, whose concept of ???catastrophism??? was criticised by Lyell, whose own concept of ???uniformitarianism??? was meant to refute Cuvier???s own idea. In the years since Cuvier and Lyell and Darwin, other scientists have proven that the nature of extinction is caught somewhere between Cuvier???s catastrophism and Lyell???s uniformitarianism, with an extra dimension created by Darwin???s own theory of evolution.

Though the history of extinction is interesting, Kolbert puts greater emphasis on the present, on scientists who are out in the field, confronting the causes and effects of extinction day in and day out. There is Edgardo Griffith, a herpetologist who is spearheading an effort to save the Panamanian golden frog from habitat loss from the deadly chytrid fungus. There are the researchers on One Tree Island, way out in the Pacific, who are trying to understand what ocean acidification is doing to the world???s coral reefs. There is Dr. Terri Roth, who is leading an effort to save the critically-endangered Sumatran rhino by pursuing a captive breeding program for the species. And then there is Marlys Houk and her fellow researchers at the San Diego Zoo, where they maintain a ???frozen zoo??? of cell cultures drawn from recently-extinct or almost-extinct species: a last-ditch effort to save what could be???or already is???lost forever.

In every chapter, Kolbert points out that extinction and the things that cause it are natural processes: the world changes, mostly gradually, but sometimes nearly instantaneously (such as when there are massive natural disasters like earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, or asteroid crashes). Species that cannot adapt die off, while those that can live on. However, what Kolbert emphasises, again and again, is that the current extinction event is unnatural???not because the processes are unnatural, but because of the rate at which they???re happening. Extinction naturally happens at a rate of thousands of years???slow enough that it is often measured in geologic time, in the gradual sedimentation and fossilisation (or not) of biological remains. Enormous catastrophes???like the massive Ordovician extinction that killed up to ninety percent of life on Earth, or the giant asteroid crash that wiped out the dinosaurs???can abruptly change life on Earth, but they???re very rare, with gaps of several million years between each catastrophe.

So: what???s changed? In the book???s last chapter Kolbert points out that what???s happening now is something very, very different:

What I???ve been trying to do is trace an extinction event???call it the Holocene extinction, or the Anthropocene extinction, or, if you prefer the sound of it, the Sixth Extinction???and to place this event in the broader context of life???s history. ??? What this history reveals, in its ups and its downs, is that life is extremely resilient but not infinitely so. There have been very long uneventful stretches and very, very occasionally ???revolutions on the surface of the earth.??????The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but ???one weedy species.??? As Walter Alvarez put it to me, ???We???re seeing right now that a mass extinction can be caused by human beings.???

This is why Kolbert???s book isn???t an easy read: the fact that, when all is said and done, it???s humans that are causing the current extinction event, and we???ve been causing it since our species first evolved the ability to create tools and communicate. Humans wiped out the megafauna; humans wiped out the Neanderthals; humans wiped out the dodo and the great auk; and humans are wiping out the Sumatran rhino and the Javanese tiger and many, many other species that have names, and many, many more that don???t. Kolbert ties it all together thusly:

When the world changes faster than species can adapt, many fall out. This is the case whether the agent drops from the sky in a fiery streak or drives to work in a Honda. To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn???t much matter whether people care or don???t care. What matters is that people change the world.

Note how Kolbert states that it???s ???not wrong, exactly??? that people care, that people do whatever they can, however they can, to at least slow down the rate of change currently going on. It???s an idea some people hold: that if humanity can just slow down, or change its course entirely, things can go back to the way they were before this whole mess started. But that ???misses the point???, as Kolbert so bluntly, and eloquently, puts it. Whatever we do, for better or for worse, the change has already happened, and will continue happening because we are who we are: humans, Homo sapiens, specially evolved not just to move with change, but effect it. We cannot turn back the clock and regain what???s been lost; species have already gone extinct, and while we can still rescue (or try to rescue) those that haven???t, the world to which we return them has changed irrevocably. The Edenic idea of humanity ???living in harmony with nature??? never existed in reality, not since the moment one of our earliest ancestors figured out how to use sharpened sticks and group communication to bring down a mammoth.

And even when humans disappear from the Earth, whether because our current course causes our species to go extinct, or because our capacity for innovation allows us to outstrip that extinction, the Earth will not go back to the way it was before our species showed up and started changing things around. Kolbert concludes her book with this sobering message:

Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy.

Overall, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a thought-provoking and intelligent read about what extinction is, and humanity???s role in the current wave of extinctions happening all around the world today. Kolbert combines historical research with investigative journalism and interviews of notable scientists and ecologists to tell the story of extinction: from the major events of the distant past to the ongoing Sixth Extinction caused by humanity. Humanity is a species unlike any other, one that acts as a force of change so great it can change the evolutionary course of all other species on this planet just by existing. In the far distant future, whether our species has gone extinct, or escaped any potential demise through our own ingenuity, we shall have left our mark upon the face of the Earth???and unfortunately, it is not going to be a pretty picture.

As I type this, it has been two days since the draconian Cybercrime Law was passed in the Philippines. I say “draconian” rightfully, specifically where it concerns the concept of libel and the punishment thereof, which include time spent in prison and an exorbitant bail fee just because someone could take a tweet or a Facebook comment or a blog post out of context and have one arrested for “malicious intent.” Filipinos, as a rule, do not take to this sort of thing kindly, since we have had a long history of being colonized and oppressed, and so have reacted very badly to the passing of this law (which was done with unseemly haste). This attempt to control freedom of speech on the Internet, what many consider the ultimate platform for freedom of speech anywhere, has been met with so much condemnation that many of the Senators who let the law pass have now been forced to find ways to amend it, justifiably fearing that they will find themselves without a job when elections come around.

The question of controlling the Internet is nothing new, and has proven challenging and problematic in many ways, particularly for regimes and governments that like having a tight control over their citizenry. They are aware, as a lot of people are aware, of the power the Internet possesses when it comes to information and opinion: how it can be used (often for free) to create or crush support for one cause or another. Nowhere was this more visible than in the Arab Spring movement, in particular the events of Tahrir Square in Egypt back in the early months of 2011. Atrocities were recorded and then broadcast the world over via YouTube; photographs were taken and posted on Facebook; 140-character news updates went out via Twitter. The government tried to slow things down by shutting down the Internet, but that just made things worse until it went back online; by then it was too late for the government. While it's true that it wasn't the Internet alone that contributed to the revolution, it certainly gave it a very large boost by allowing people to freely share and discuss their ideas, and share them with the world.

Alif the Unseen is set in a very similar world: an unnamed emirate on the coast, with a stranglehold on freedom of speech and an Internet surveillance system that has, so far, kept the malcontents underground. That does not mean, though, that there aren't people who are trying to get around that, and one of them is Alif: half-South Asian, half-Arab, who spends most of his time helping fellow subversives get around the government's system. He doesn't have any particular political loyalties; he'll help anyone who has a bone to pick with the government. In the meantime, he's in a forbidden relationship with a noblewoman named Intisar. One day, Intisar is betrothed to someone else, and sends him a book called the Alf Yeom, along with a message telling him that she's pretty much breaking it off with him. The problem is, the Alf Yeom is no ordinary book, and it makes Alif and his friends a target for the man who will stop at nothing until he takes the Alf Yeom and turns it to his own nefarious purposes.

From that premise it's easy to think that Alif the Unseen is a techno-thriller in the same vein as Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon: hacker versus hacker, the Internet their own personal battlefield. Except that's not the case, because there's the element of the Alf Yeom, which isn't quite a normal book. At this point the reader, like Alif, stumbles across a world that exists right alongside ours, except it is one we deny on a regular basis. For the Alf Yeom is a book of tales, but one told by the jinn, and as such, they have a stake in this whole thing. This is where Alif the Unseen becomes a unique creature: a blend of techno-thriller and urban fantasy.

One thing that will immediately strike the reader is Alif himself. He starts out as a sad, sullen young man, and is not exactly the best example of his kind. It's easy to see that his obsession with Intisar is not the healthiest thing ever, and that it can only lead to heartbreak. But he does grow out of it eventually - especially after certain events in the second third of the novel force him to grow up. He is, however, rather predictable and colorless as a character unto himself. He doesn't have any notable, standout qualities, though as a foil for the reader he is extremely successful. He occupies a safe middle ground, which is rather unfortunate since I rather enjoy truly standout characters like Julia from Lev Grossman's The Magicians series, or Locke from Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series - characters who are not only excellent foils for the reader, but also fun on their own.

Fortunately, the characters around Alif make for much better reading. Intisar isn't all that interesting, but Dina, Alif's neighbor, is. She's got lots of steel in her spine and is very intelligent, despite being very traditional in the practice of her religion - and in many ways, it is this very firm grounding in her belief that she draws much of her personal strength. She reminds me a lot of Oe Kanade from the manga/anime Chihayafuru, who is extremely traditional and yet finds strength in those traditions. Dina shows that, contrary to Westerners' sweeping generalization that Islam is oppressive towards women, such oppression is usually the fault of the men enforcing the religion, and not the religion itself, which most women find reassuring and even well-suited for protecting themselves from the unwanted attention of men.

Sheikh Bilal is also another interesting character, and equally important in shattering generalizations and assumptions a Western reader may have regarding Islam. Bilal is the imam of the oldest mosque in the City, and presents an incredible level of wisdom and tolerance that he also attributes to the practice of his faith. He and Alif, and later on he and Vikram the Vampire, have some very fascinating conversations that reveal the wisdom of Islam - wisdom that most people tend to overlook entirely because of the bad press Islam has received in the Western world thanks to extremists. Particularly memorable is Bilal's discussion regarding the nature of the Quran - indeed, of the written word and its relationship to reality - that is difficult to summarize in a few words, but which any reader and lover of books will find incredibly fascinating.

In fact, it is these philosophical conversations, scattered at various points throughout the novel, that are the most enjoyable part about this whole book - on top of the thrilling plot, of course, because this novel as got a pretty rip-roaring storyline going for it. The conversations, however, reveal insight into the practice of Islam and its views on literature as a whole. Islam has a great deal of respect for books, mostly because it respects the permanence of the written word - and the power the written word has to give form to that which is otherwise ethereal and ephemeral. Many of the conversations and a significant amount of the plot revolve around the dichotomies of the ephemerality of thought and the solidity of written language, of the unchanging Word versus the shifting interpretations of it thereof. This is very much like Islam's relationship with the Quran: the Word is unchanging, but its interpretations, both across space and over time, shift like mirages in the desert.

Where does cryptography come into this? Much of cryptography is about symbols and symbolized: code and language are the same in that they make use of symbols to pull otherwise-ephemeral thought and ideas out into the solid reality of the world. When one throws computers into the mix, and the Internet too, well, things get even more complicated because in that one moment one gains a glimpse into the modern crypto-wars currently being fought in cyberspace. Through Alif, the philosophical discussions scattered throughout the book find their practical application in the real world, as Alif uses the Alf Yeom to create something monstrous - and something magnificent, too.

All of this is well and good of course (not least Dina, who is an exceedingly lovable female character, and the ideas scattered throughout the book), but I find the novel isn't quite as meaty as I would have liked it. It moves along at a fast-enough clip, and the characters are interesting enough to hold my attention, but I can't help but think that this novel was written for a somewhat-younger audience than myself. it has depth, yes, but it's not quite deep enough for me. To be sure, I'm glad that it's not as brain-melting as Neal Stephenson's creations, but I do wish it was just a bit more layered, a bit more nuanced, than what it is.

Overall, Alif the Unseen is an enjoyable novel: Alif might not be the most intriguing character, but everybody else is, and the reader can opt to focus more on them than on Alif. There are also some rich ideas embedded throughout the text, brought up by the characters themselves in conversation, and it is these gems that make this novel worth reading in the first place. The only problem is that the novel itself doesn't have quite as much depth as I hoped it would have; it goes by a bit too quickly, and while it does challenge one's thinking, it went down a little too easily for my taste. I think it would be a pretty satisfying read for a teenager, though - certainly it's miles and miles better than anything available on the YA shelves nowadays, barring a very few select reads.

Full review here: https://wp.me/p21txV-HL

“And that is, I think, the aspect of this novel that speaks loudest to me. While it is easy to say ???This does not happen anymore??? and pretend like these things are a part of the past, the truth is that they aren???t. The hurdles women encounter in the twenty-first century do not seem as great as those encountered by women in the past, nor do they seem as numerous, but they are still there; they have simply taken on different forms. Misogyny remains systemic in the twenty-first century; it???s just not as blatant as it was in the twentieth.”

As a rule, I don???t like gambling. I don???t like taking chances on things that aren???t almost guaranteed to go my way, and I???m not especially fond of risking things that are important to me when the odds of me keeping them aren???t as close to a hundred percent as possible. I???ve played card games, of course, as a way of whiling away the time when I???m with family, but those were never for really high stakes: potato chips and candy, mostly, never money???no one likes losing money on something so risky as hand of cards, at least amongst my cousins, and when they choose to do so, it???s always in a very conservative, circumspect manner, the allowable risk already measured and minimised before the bets are placed and the cards dealt or the dice thrown.

The only gambling game I play, and on a fairly regular basis, is with books. Most of the time, I try to minimise the risks: I only read books that are recommended by my close friends and favourite authors, for instance, or try to look for reviews and ratings before deciding to settle on a book and forking out the money for it. But sometimes, a cover catches my eye, or something implied in the blurb on the back of a book makes me want to take a gamble, just go for it and see where and how I come out on the other side. I???ve made some fantastic discoveries this way, and I???ve also encountered some really terrible reads.

In the case of California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout, the first in his Daniel Blackland series, I took a risk because I???d heard some vague buzz on the Internet to the effect that it was really good, and because the concept looked interesting. It was, as it turned out, a risk well worth taking: California Bones turned out to be a really good read, with great characters, excellent world-building, and some very fine prose: dry and spare in a way that I hadn???t encountered in other urban fantasy books before. The fact that it was darker than a lot of other urban fantasy books, not because of the characters, but because of the nature of the magic itself, helped a lot too, as did the fact that it was, at its core, a heist novel.

So when I learned that the next book in the series, Pacific Fire, was going to come out in the last week of January 2015, I was extremely excited. I waited impatiently to finally get a copy and when I did I immediately tore into it, wanting to find out just what had happened since the events in the first book.

Unfortunately, it didn???t turn out to be exactly what I hoped it would be. I had gambled on Pacific Fire being an exciting continuation of what happened in California Bones, but that???s not quite what I got, and as a result, some of the shine that I???d seen in this series has worn off.

Pacific Fire is set ten years after the events of California Bones. Daniel is on the run with Sam, the Hierarch???s golem, protecting what is probably the most powerful source of osteomantic magic in the entire Southern Kingdom of California???a source who has grown into a young man, and whom Daniel cares for as if he were his own son. Sam, for his part, is grateful to Daniel for saving his life, for continuing to keep him safe, and for being the father he never had, but he???s beginning to chafe under Daniel???s restrictions, and at his own inability to be the osteomancer Daniel says he should be: that is, powerful and deadly enough to be even better than Daniel. But when they receive word from Gabriel Argent that old enemies are building an osteomantic super-weapon that could spell war and death for both Californias and maybe the rest of the world, they both know that they have to do something to stop it from happening. But the question is: will Daniel go it alone, or will Sam be able to make him see sense, and take him along?

First of all, I would like to say that I don???t particularly like the blurb the publishers chose to summarise the plot of the novel. It???s deceptive, in that it makes the reader assume that the novel will be told in first-person perspective with Sam telling the story, which is most certainly not the case: it???s still told from third-person limited, like California Bones was, and changes perspective from character to character, with a focus on Daniel and Sam. I also don???t like how the blurb gives away the fact that Daniel???s life is put in extreme danger in this novel: that???s just not something one spoils for the reader, in my opinion.

Another thing that didn???t help was how slow this book was to start. It might be argued that California Bones was slow to start as well, but at least there was a lot of other things going on in terms of character development and world-building. That???s not the case in Pacific Fire: Van Eekhout doesn???t really add more to the reader???s knowledge of the world as he???s envisioned it for his series, aside from perhaps expanding the landscape a little to include parts of California outside L.A., as well as including some interesting questions about what osteomancy can and can???t do.

It also doesn???t help that Van Eekhout???s prose doesn???t really work very well for the first three-fourths of the novel, when the action is slowest. It worked marvellously well in California Bones, keeping the action and descriptions sharp and clear and giving the book an overall cinematic feel, but none of that works in Pacific Fire. Instead, Van Eekhout???s style makes the entire first three-fourths of the novel feel draggy and unformed, doing nothing more than shoving the plot bodily forward in order to get to the more exciting bits in the latter fourth.

This slowness also doesn???t do much to cover for the fact that there???s not a lot of really good, in-depth characterisation being done. Never mind the already-established ones: characters like Daniel, Gabriel Argent, and Max were already fleshed out in the first book, and so there???s really not a lot of need to get to know them and develop them in this second novel. However, new characters like Sam definitely need to be developed, and while some work is done in that regard, I don???t think it???s quite enough. I didn???t feel any real attachment to Sam, which is a pity, because the reader should grow attached to him, should care about what happens to him, not because of his connection to Daniel, but because he is a character worth caring about in his own right. It wasn???t for want to trying: he has all the potential for being a really interesting character, given his background and the fact that he???s a young adult, but it???s really hard to feel anything more than mild interest in him and his activities, which is a pity, since he???s supposed to be one of the major characters of this novel.

I???m also not happy with the way some minor characters were handled, like the Bautistas and Carson. In the case of the Bautistas, I wasn???t happy with how they seemed to be nothing more than a means to get Sam and Em on the road, to give them the mobility they obviously need to continue on their journey. This is made even sadder because of what happens to Sof??a, which ought to have been a punch in the reader???s gut, but doesn???t have the same emotional impact because there just hasn???t been any time to get really invested in her and her family. It???s stated that what she and her husband do for Em and Sam is dangerous, and a great sacrifice because of what they, as a family, stand to lose, but it???s hard to really embrace that emotion because the whole encounter with them is so brief and feels rather flat.As for Carson, it???s a pity that he???s rather one-dimensional in his portrayal, because he???s the first character in the series thus far to represent that particular subset of humanity that most people would recognise as a ???celebrity???. Van Eekhout had a great opportunity with this character to show, not only how the world of celebrity works in his version of California, but also to create an in-depth character study of what such a world can do to celebrities and how they tackle the usual problems that come with fame. But that???s not what happens: Carson is, like the Bautistas, a way to get the plot moving a bit more, to get Em and Sam from Point A to Point B. I found myself wishing that he hadn???t been included at all, because he turned out to be something of a waste; the plot point involving him would probably have been more exciting if he hadn???t been present, forcing Sam and Em to be more creative. At the very least, it would have helped reinforce the heist element of the whole novel.

As for the remaining one-fourth of the novel???the part that???s actually fun???that, at least, is a throwback to all that was good about the first novel: exciting, fast-paced, dangerous, and always that genuine feeling that nobody is really safe. It also revisits the gruesome nature of osteomancy, as well as throws the reader some interesting twists and revelations about Daniel, Sam, and the nature of the super-weapon being created. The ending is also pretty explosive, and leaves the reader dangling on a cliffhanger that promises a great deal of action in the next novel???one that will, hopefully, actually live up to the promises made in the latter fourth of this one.

Overall, Pacific Fire is something of a letdown: there is a lot of slogging the reader needs to get through in order to reach the properly exciting parts???the parts that bear a greater resemblance to the exceptional quality of the first novel. This is rather unfortunate, because the elements that make up that first three-fourths should, by rights, make for a really great read, but the writing feels muddled and slow and generally just half-baked. Characters with great potential are wasted, and plot points that could have been really exciting aren???t handled right at all. None of this is helped by Van Eekhout???s style, which just doesn???t work with the slower pace of the first three-fourths of this novel, making it feel sketched-out as opposed to cinematic. Hopefully the next book in the series sets everything to rights, because it would be a really great waste of a great concept and story if it didn???t.

The word “Inquisition” is, in many ways, one of the most dreadful to hear. When one looks at it objectively, at the level of basic vocabulary, it seems almost innocent, associated as it is with the words “inquiry” and “inquire,” words associated with ideas of polite but focused curiosity. But there is absolutely nothing polite or merely curious about the movement known as the Inquisition, as any student of history knows.

The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God is author Jonathan Kirsch's attempt to describe the Inquisition in all its horrific glory - its motivations, its mechanisms, and its failures - but Kirsch describes the Inquisition not as a historical curiosity, locked in its place in time, but as a continuing, evolving machine. Kirsch insists that, for as long as there are people who wish to control or cleanse the world, for whatever reason, then the Inquisition will never truly die.

And indeed, it was because of control - religious control - that the Inquisition began in the first place. Kirsch begins his history with the persecution of the Cathars in southern France in the Middle Ages. At the time Christianity, which was (and still is, truth be told) never a stable religion to begin with, was still ironing out some kinks in its dogma, still trying to determine what was acceptable in the religion and what was unacceptable. This fluidity of belief allowed for various other movements to evolve, all of them operating under the umbrella term of Christianity, though not under the control of the Church.

It was this inability to totally control what people believed and the way they worshiped that troubled Pope Innocent III, and it would be the impetus behind his creation of the Holy Office of Inquisition into Heretical Depravity - what is now known simply as the Inquisition. Indeed, Kirsch points out that this inability to completely monopolize faith and later on knowledge and learning would be the driving force behind the Medieval and Roman Inquisitions. It was this drive to monopolize what its flock were allowed to know and believe that would later lead to the infamous episode with Galileo and the Inquisition.

But Kirsch makes clear that the Inquisition was also very much grounded in less ephemeral concerns - political power and finance being the two other legs of the Inquisition, and the two main reasons why it lasted as long as it did, beyond the extermination of perceived heretics. Both the Church and Kings saw the Inquisition as a useful tool for gaining more money and more power, and so used it to those ends - oftentimes solely for those reasons. Kirsch offers up the Knights Templar as an example, whose wealth and power were the envy of not just certain members within the Church itself, but also of Philip the Fair. Given the nature of the Inquisition, which allows the inquisitor to take as evidence even the flimsiest of rumor, Philip was able to use the Inquisitorial machine to rid himself of the Templars, gaining both political and spiritual power from their extermination.

This thread of power and greed continues throughout all the variations of the Inquisition, but Kirsch draws an even further distinction when he begins talking about the most infamous of its iterations: the Spanish Inquisition. In Spain, Kirsch claims, the driving force was not so much the thought-crime of heresy, as it was elsewhere in Europe where the Inquisition had a foothold, but it was rooted in the concept of “limpia de sangre:” purity of blood. The Spanish Inquisition was driven by an overpowering anti-Semitic sentiment, and it used the machinery developed since the Medieval period to its own advantage in destroying and rooting out those who were not “Old Christians.” Just like with the Inquisition as it appeared in France and in Italy, there was a thread of monetary and political advantage running as an undercurrent throughout the persecution of the Jews: the excuse simply shifted from “heretical thoughts” to “impure blood.”

Towards the latter end of the book, Kirsch begins to describe the Inquisition not as a movement that died before World War II, but as a machine that could be used by whoever decided it would be a good idea to do so. Thus he calls the Nazi extermination of the Jews an Inquisition, specifically the kind rooted in the Spanish iteration of the movement. The Soviet Union's political machinery while under Stalin's grasp is also considered a variation of the Inquisition, since it uses the machinery of the movement as a means of controlling those who lived within its grasp.

Even the United States, Kirsch argues, is not completely innocent in this. He points to the imprisonment of hundreds of Japanese-Americans in camps during World War II, and then to McCarthyism and HUAC, as primary examples of the machinery of the Inquisition being put to use. Torture might not have occurred, that he agrees with, but the fact that a governing body attempted to police thought-crimes (McCarthyism) and imprisoned people based on their heritage (Japanese-Americans) is enough to dub these moments in American history as Inquisitions in their own right.

While this is all well and good, there are some areas that I feel Kirsch does not explore to my satisfaction, no matter how interesting it might seem. One of those is the link between witch-hunts and the Inquisition. It is clear that witch-hunters used the techniques of the Inquisition when judging their victims, but the Inquisition itself was not very concerned with witchcraft. In fact, Kirsch seems to say that inquisitors were more inclined to let suspected witches go, believing them to be insane, or judging their acts to have originated with a possession by demons, and hence not entirely their fault. The Inquisition, it appears, was more concerned with heretical ideas than with witchcraft. And yet, since the witch-hunters were using the same techniques as the Inquisition, and since the Inquisition was later on allowed to prosecute witches, Kirsch seems to argue that the two were linked.

I feel that the connection between the witch-hunts and the Inquisition is a little loose, despite Kirsch's argument that they are linked. Kirsch has already established that the Inquisition was about policing blood heritage or thought-crimes, so this association with witch-hunting seems rather tenuous. Also, Kirsch has difficulty in explaining why witch-hunts were far more prevalent than the Inquisition, occurring as they did in countries where the Inquisition had very little to no power, such as England and the Netherlands. Even the Salem Witch Trials are described as a mini-Inquisition, but the only similarity I see between them is the machinery of the Inquisition, and not necessarily the motives.

In the final chapter of the book, Kirsch attempts to link the Inquisition with the events in Guantanamo and the war on terror. That link, however, is extremely weak. While it may be argued that the methods of torture developed by the Inquisition were used on the prisoners at Guantanamo in order to extract information, and the Inquisitorial concept of “naming names” was certainly in force, I have difficulty seeing the link between the modern war on terror and the Inquisition as Kirsch has described it beyond those few points of reference. If Kirsch had written more on it, described it more concretely, I suppose I would have seen the connection, but as it stands, the chapter - which could have been the most powerful and most controversial - is the weakest of the lot.

Overall, this book is an interesting and provocative read. On one hand, it can be read as a guide to understanding the Inquisition, and on the other, it can be read as a testament to the fact that, when given power or the chance to gain it, human beings can and will do whatever they think is necessary to achieve and control that power. The Inquisition itself might no longer be around as it existed in its most infamous forms, but that does not mean the machinery has ceased to exist - it is still there, and was used, and will still be used, when those in power deem it necessary.

Before going into the review itself, I need to state that this is the first time I'm reviewing a TTRPG book. As such, I'm coming at it with far more emphasis on things like lore and narrative, as opposed to the more crunchy bits like mechanics. Also, I'm a player and a game master, not a game creator, so I cannot speak to that aspect of this game either. 

But with that being said: THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. I've already got a sense of how well this plays, since I've had the privilege of playing it twice (once with the creator GMing, and another time with one of the artists as GM, and the art director as a co-player), and that was in the pre-First Edition versions of the game. I'm sure that the team behind Gubat Banwa have since smoothed out the mechanics even further, and I bet it plays like a dream now. Fortunately there's rules for Solo Play in the First Edition so I'm going to take a crack at those when I've got a bit more brainspace.

Even without getting into the gameplay though, this book is still incredible. The artwork is absolutely stunning, and not just the big pieces like the cover and Discipline illustrations; even the borders around the pages are gorgeous, as are the font choices and the layouting. The art provides excellent visual cues for players and GMs who are looking for inspiration and an anchor for their characters and games, helping them to ground and flesh out their characters and the setting.

Speaking of grounding and fleshing out things: the lore is EXTENSIVE, which I deeply enjoy and appreciate. The lore works together with the art to provide inspiration and a framework to help players and GMs both to get into the spirit of things. In the lore and the art, the reader really gets a sense of how much of a work of love this book is - a work of love, and of righteous anger. 

Actually if there's any terms that best capture the feel of this book, it'd be those two: love, and righteous anger. As is clearly stated in the Note on Intended Audience of this book, “This game is explicitly written with us in mind, us being Filipinos and other Southeast Asian people.” And the “us” described here are peoples who've managed to somehow, against all odds, survive and continue to survive against the deleterious and erasing effects of colonization, which continues to this very day. If there is love, that is only right; and if there is anger, then that is only right too. Those two things are inseparable - both in the world and in the play of Gubat Banwa, and the reality it springs from, that is the impetus and driving force behind the entire project. It'd be fantastic if more people could get to experience it too.

The Medici family is one of my favorite historical families ever, and this book is a great look at their rise to power, and their fall from grace. What makes this different from other books, however, is that Strathern pays close attention to how Medici patronage of artists and thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo, whether directly or indirectly, helped to create what we now call the Italian Renaissance. It's a bit dry in places, and there's not as much focus on the Medici women as I'd like, but it's a pretty interesting read all the same.

Edit added 6/26/2020: Recently it's come to light that Myke Cole is a serial abuser and sexual harasser, and was so at the time I wrote this review. I did not know that at the time I wrote this since I don't move in the same spaces as his victims, but I'm leaving this note here now to say that, despite my high praise of this novel, I absolutely do not condone his behavior at any point in time, whether I was aware of it or not. Any of his books that I now have will not be reviewed on this blog. Review of any of his future work will depend upon whether he has demonstrated any actual, genuine change in his behavior going forward.

And then there is Heloise. On one hand, I find her mildly irritating, but on the other hand I also understand that my irritation comes from the fact that Heloise is still sixteen ??? a teenager. She reacts to things the way any young woman of that age would: on impulse, and according to her feelings, not her head. This leads her to do and say things that, in more ways than one, help to precipitate the events in the story???s climax. Those events break her, true, but they do not break her totally. That is something I find very interesting indeed ??? not least because this is clearly a grimdark story, and usually grimdark stories don???t leave much room for hope. And yet there it is, a small spark in Heloise???s spirit that continues to burn despite the growing dark. I am very much looking forward to seeing what becomes of her, and her altered circumstances change the world around her.

The core of this novel, however, is not its characters, or its plot, or even its language ??? it???s the themes. On first glance, The People???s Police might not appear to be a very political book, but the reader need not get very far into it to see just how very political it is. It addresses issues such as police brutality, poor economic management by the government, climate change, racism, misogyny ??? just to name a few. Readers with a good grasp of the United States??? socioeconomic and political problems from the last ten years or so will likely recognise many of the things Spinrad is referencing: from Bush???s mishandling of the Katrina aftermath, to the major downturn in the housing market in 2008, to the most recent incidents of police brutality against black people.

Full review here: http://wp.me/p21txV-Ah

It is also clear ??? and quite early on in this novel, at that ??? that this romantic subplot serves no other purpose than to create an unnecessary rivalry between Godfrey and Alexander, perhaps in some misguided attempt to create conflict to further character development. I truly wish that was not the case though, because there are so many other ways to generate conflict between those two characters. One example is that Godfrey is a war-hardened knight, whereas Alexander is an intellectual scholar. That difference alone could be mined for so much potential conflict and character growth, especially when it comes to trying to solve the mystery at the heart of this novel, that I do not understand why the author had to resort to some tawdry romantic subplot in order to achieve a goal that could have been attained in other ways.

Full review here: https://wp.me/p21txV-Ft

So I've been super-excited to get my mitts on this book and its twin The Red Threads of Fortune almost from the moment Tor announced they were publishing them, and the wait was so. Totally. WORTH IT. The twins are absolutely lovely, and their story is heartbreaking (AKEHA!), and I may have a wee bit of a crush on Thennjay but hey, who DOESN'T have a wee bit of a crush on Thennjay?

Now, to be fair, this novella is a wee bit skinny on the story, but I'm guessing that's because I've only literally read just one-half of the whole, since as I post this I'm only about to start the other half. But I'm super-duper excited to do that now, and will do so as soon as this goes up :D.

Some books need music. Not all of them do, of course: a lot of books are best read in silence, with the mind providing any noise pertinent to the story. But some books require a soundtrack, and depending on the book, the contents of that soundtrack (or, more properly, playlist) will vary: it may contain instrumental works from film, television, or the classical catalogue (both Eastern and Western), or it may be dominated by vocal tracks from artists across the spectrum of popular music, or it might even be a mixture of both. Either way, when a book needs music, one has access to a variety of options for listening to that music, as well as a near-infinite number of artists to choose from. Depending on which corners of the Internet one inhabits, one might even be able to find prebuilt playlists for any book???or any mood???one can conceive of, as well as have the ability to build and share one???s own playlists, all for free.

But the amazing variety and ready availability of any kind of music at nearly any time to almost any listener is a relatively new phenomenon. As late as the early 1900s, it would have been difficult for even the most avid music-lover to even hear their favourite song more than twice or thrice a year, especially if said song was part of a long-format work like a symphony. Music wasn???t a cheap hobby, either: getting into a concert could be expensive. Not until the invention of radio, and then audio recording technology, was it possible for the average person to have ready access to music. This introduction of technology would also be the cause of a split between what is commonly called ???classical music??? and ???popular music??????a split that is in some ways more imagined than real.

In his book The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles, Howard Goodall attempts to chronicle several thousands of years of music history in a manner that is both informative and entertaining. He does so for specific reasons: first, to show that classical music (such as most people commonly understand it) is not dead, but alive and well in the musical scores of film and television; and second, that music can and will continue to thrive as musicians share, borrow, and in many cases steal, ideas and techniques from other genres of music from around the world. Music, therefore???especially Western music???is not as monolithic an idea as some hidebound scholars might think (or want to think) it is; instead it is a constantly flowing, shifting, changing, altering landscape, with the old becoming new and the new becoming old and back around again almost as regularly as the change of the seasons.

One of my primary considerations when I pick up a nonfiction book is the author???s voice. Much of my own personal enjoyment can be easily made or broken by the way the author tells a story, and can determine whether I stick with a book or not, no matter how long it gets. Fortunately, Goodall has an entertaining voice to read: a voice honed by time spent as a radio and television host, as he is apparently the BBC???s go-to man for anything and everything to do with musical history and theory. There are, however, some parts that feel a bit dry, or go over my head, particularly when Goodall is explaining some point of musical theory that is really a lot more complex to the layperson than I think he???s aware of. These moments don???t happen very often, thankfully, and an incomplete understanding of those more confusing moments does not detract from understanding the rest of the book.

As for the content, about three-fourths of the book is fairly standard coverage of Western musical history, with some theory thrown in for good measure. It???s all very fun and very easy to read, with Goodall throwing in some interesting (often hilarious in a more acerbic vein) running commentary on whatever he happens to be discussing at the moment. In his chapter titled ???The Age of Penitence, 1460-1650???, Goodall describes the quality of church music during the time period covered by the chapter thusly:

???church music was a rather more sombre affair, and the ordinary churchgoer prior to the Protestant Reformation is likely to have found singing in church a miserable, largely non-participatory activity. To ask forgiveness, repeatedly, was what congregations were mostly expected to do, all the while listening to choirs and priests singing at great length abut the same sentiment.

Take, too, this sharp criticism of the practice of creating castrati: male singers who were castrated while still young boys to maintain their soprano singing voices through into adulthood, in the chapter ???The Age of Invention, 1650-1750???:

The practice of castrating young boys so that they could continue to sing soprano for the rest of their adult lives was promoted in the sixteenth century by the Vatican, envious of Protestant church choirs that had young women singing a soaring top line. Women were forbidden to sing in Catholic churches so the competitive cardinals chose instead to mutilate children.

Goodall readily applies his witty, easy-to-read, occasionally sarcastic voice to Western music???s greatest musicians, too, comparing Haydn and Mozart thusly in the chapter ???The Age of Elegance and Sentiment, 1750-1850???:

The main difference between Haydn???s style and Mozart???s s really quite simple: if you can instantly remember the tune, it???s by Mozart. A brutal assessment, but a true one. Technically, Mozart???s approach was similar to Haydn???s - the same orchestra, the same chords, the same architecture - but he had the melodic gift of a god. If he composed it, a tune sings like no other.

As the selections above clearly show, reading Goodall???s writing is the farthest thing from a chore, even if he can get a bit confusing at times when he tries to tackle something a bit more theoretical.

What really makes this book worth reading, though, are the last three chapters, which deal with music towards the end of the nineteenth century all the way to the music of the early twenty-first. This is where Goodall discusses the issue of white mainstream musicians borrowing???or stealing???from non-white, marginalised cultures, musical traditions, and musicians. He talks about this early on when talking about rock music, which began with black musical styles and black musicians:

All that was now needed to turn this cocktail into a mass youth movement with electric guitar at its throbbing centre was for some white guys to repackage this black music for an even wider audience. We have already witnessed black music being ???bleached??? for greater commercial appeal a number of times, often to the dismay of its original performers. ??? But there was no stopping the inexorable takeover of rock and roll by big-name white musicians, and there were plenty of candidates to become the heart-throbs of a generation.

Goodall shows that rock???a genre dominated by white performers, as it has been since Elvis Presley swaggered his way onto a stage???is, at its core, based on the innovations of black musicians, a fact which most people have forgotten; certainly very few people claiming to be rock aficionados are aware of this, or if they are, they perhaps choose to ignore it. This particular issue still resonates today, as white artists like Eminem and Iggy Azalea infringe on hip-hop and rap music, which have generally been dominated by black artists. Increasing awareness as led to an increasing amount of pushback: a notable example being the recent revelation that Iggy Azalea plagiarised content from Kendrick Lamar.


Also in these chapters, Goodall makes some very powerful statements regarding the split between ???classical??? and ???popular??? music, which was not only due to technology, as it turns out, but also due to a brand of elitism that began as a tiny seed with Richard Wagner, and reached its full flowering with Arnold Schoenberg. Goodall had this to say about Schoenberg???s innovations:

Schoenberg???s theoretical rebellion, which later acquired the labels ???serialism??? or ???atonality???, produced decades of scholarly hot air, books, debates and seminars, and - in its purest, strictest form - not one piece of music, in a hundred years???-worth of effort, that a normal person could understand or enjoy.???One thing is for sure: Schoenberg and his fellow-travelers in the redesigning of the Western note system were not courting a mainstream audience. When, during the next half-century, audiences reacted with hostility to serialist works, it seemed to confirm to the movement???s adherents that it was a cause so noble that ordinary, lesser mortals without ???the knowledge??? would inevitably reject it. ???Elitist??? is an overused word, tinged with resentment, but in describing serialist self-justification of the twentieth century it is spot on.???

Goodall later points out that this dedication to serialism is the main reason why there are no truly famous classical composers from the early twentieth century to sometime in the seventies or eighties; it wasn???t just that popular music became more widespread and more commercially viable, it was also that the most well-known composers of the time were those who worked in what Schoenberg and his disciples would have scornfully called ???popular??? music: musicals, dance (especially ballet), and the growing industry of film.

Later on in the book Goodall follows up the above with another interesting assertion: that classical music (as it is popularly understood, meaning instrumental music a la Mozart and Beethoven and all the rest) never really died, it simply found another venue. That venue was???and continues to be???film:

To this day, millions of people who might never set foot in a classical concert hall thrill to the symphonic sound of film scores that are often made up entirely of classical orchestral styles and techniques. If anyone tells you classical music is dead in the twenty-first century, all it means is that they don???t go to the cinema.

While it might do to remember that this confident statement is being made by a man who does a lot of composition work for the BBC???s movies and TV shows and is likely biased, there is a very large grain of truth to it, as well. For many listeners of classical music in the late twentieth century to today, our first introduction to classical music is via film and TV scores. Some of us continue the engagement by not only listening to the works of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, but by actively seeking out and listening to film and TV scores by Howard Shore, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Ramin Djawadi.

But why stop at film and television? This gap is probably more an indicator of Goodall???s age than an intentional snub, but his assessment ignores another place where classical music may continue to thrive the way it does now in movies and TV: video games. While it???s true that the tinny 8-bit musical accompaniment to many arcade classics cannot be compared to John Williams??? sweeping scores for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies (except in terms of nostalgia value), rapid advancements in technology now mean that there???s a trend of video games moving increasingly towards a more cinematic approach to visual style and storytelling???as well as an equally more cinematic musical score. From the East-meets-West, past-meets-present compositions of Japanese composers like Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy) and Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts); to the grandiose, epic drama of Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim); to the quieter, elegant musicality of Austin Wintory (Journey); video games are a new frontier for classical composers, and will someday soon gain the same kind of legitimacy now given to film scores.

One immediate problem with this book, though, is that it???s a book that discusses music, but there???s no music to listen to. Fortunately, Goodall is caught up enough with the times that he offers a fairly comprehensive playlist of musical pieces towards the end of the book, along with a link to his website, which has even more comprehensive Spotify playlists (http://www.howardgoodall.co.uk/works/tv-presenting/howard-goodalls-story-of-music/playlists-for-the-story-of-music). My only complaint is that I wish the list had been put at the beginning of the book, instead of at the end, so that I knew it was there and could make use of it throughout the course of my reading. It rather defeats the point of having that list in the first place if the reader must go through the entire book first before finding out that they could have had musical accompaniment at any time.

Overall, The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles is pretty much what it says on the tin: an overview of Western musical history from the BCEs to the current CEs, done in a manner that focuses on the most important bits while trimming off the unnecessary minutiae. Goodall goes through a lot of history in a very short amount of time, managing to do so without sacrificing accuracy or historical detail. His voice is entertaining and easy to read, though he can be a bit dry in places, and there are moments when he gets bogged down in technicalities while trying to explain a particular musical theory. Fortunately, these moments don???t last very long, and do not detract from overall understanding of the book???s contents.

Goodall reserves his strongest and most important assertions regarding Western music, and the direction he thinks it???s headed, for the last three chapters of the book. Those assertions may be slightly problematic (not least his discussion???such as it is???of white mainstream musical artists appropriating the art of their non-white marginalised fellows), but it does provide some insight into what???s going on under the hood and behind the scenes music today, and where it might be going in the future.

THEY'RE BAAAACK~!

So when I picked up and blasted through River of Teeth earlier this year I fell absolutely in LOVE with the setting and characters that Gailey created, so when I found out that there was going to be a sequel I immediately preordered it on my Kindle because I just couldn't WAIT to see what happened to them after the events of the last novella - but more importantly, I wanted to see what they'd DO about it.

As expected, they did quite well rectifying their circumstances (though I won't say HOW - spoilers, y'know ;D), though I do wish the plot had been a bit longer, a bit more involved, like it was in the first novella. Despite that one little issue though, this is still a damn awesome read. I really wouldn't mind a full-length novel in this same setting, with these same characters. Or maybe just Acadia. I'd deffo read a full-length novel about Acadia :D.

Variety is something I heartily approve of (which explains why I teach and am not working a nine-to-five job), and this is especially true with my reading. While it's true I stick to a handful of very specific genres, I like to think that the genres I go for are extremely rich in variety despite working within certain bounds (or questioning them, as is often the case), and I am in the happy position of knowing I'll never run out of new, shiny things to read.

This is why, although I've given up maintaining any kind of reading list (because lists have endings, and really, there is never going to be an end to the books I'll read throughout my lifetime), I do try to mix things up a little so I don't get genre fatigue. Say I just finished reading a non-fiction book; that means I will reach for a fantasy or at the very least an urban fantasy novel as opposed to another non-fiction book. This helps keep things fresh for me, and I rather like to think that the sudden shift in perspective (from sci-fi to fantasy to historical fiction, for instance) helps to produce perspectives I wouldn't have had if I'd just read books from one genre one after the other.

This was why I'd decided to pick up Shadows Fall by Simon R. Green. The cover, featuring what I thought was a mechanical android of some sort, looked so sci-fi I thought it would be the perfect thing to read after coming off Kevin Hearne's Hounded, which is urban fantasy. I had never heard of Simon R. Green, so I didn't know what genre he operated in, but as usual I merely shrugged and dove right in.

Now I think I should have checked, because despite the distinctly sci-fi feel of the cover, Shadows Fall is actually another example of the urban fantasy genre. Despite finding this out right at the beginning of the book, though, I decided to just shrug it off and continue reading. After all, that android on the cover had me sufficiently intrigued to want to keep on reading, if only to find out what sort of connection it had to the story.

Shadows Fall, as it turns out, is not only the title of novel, but also of the town where the events of the story take place. Shadows Fall is the place where “legends go to die,” where characters from mythology, fiction, and even actual people, to a degree, go when they've faded and been forgotten by the world's collective consciousness. The town itself has a life of its own, likely because of all the strange entities that inhabit it, and the ever-shifting nature of it is something the residents must cope with as a part of everyday life. Strange as Shadows Fall is, though, its residents are generally happy, for the most part - until a rash of murders breaks out in the town. And even more frightening, in a town where the dead come back to life, the victims pretty much stay dead.

Adding to this confusion is James Hart, a man whose family left Shadows Fall when he was ten years old, but who is now coming back after the death of his parents. His return, however, heralds a great shift in Shadows Fall, and these changes, tied in with the murders, leads up to an earth-shattering (or town-shattering, really) event, where both Heaven and Hell themselves get involved.

Initially, I was rather disappointed with the opening of the novel. I thought it was starting off too slow for my tastes, especially when I was hoping for something far more exciting than what I'd gotten at the beginning. The characters were very bland, and though I expected blandness from James Hart, I wasn't expecting it from the town's inhabitants themselves. Since Shadows Fall is supposed to be the place where legends go to die, I was hoping that I'd get a glimpse of the more colorful characters in all their glory. Still, I kept on reading because I'd had experience with this kind of book before: the kind of book that started out very slowly, but then built up to really, really interesting and fun events. I hoped that, if I kept going, I'd get some kind of payoff.

And to be fair, I did. By the midway point of the novel things started really picking up steam, specifically at the point when the Faerie and their spokesperson, Sean Morrison, are introduced. From that point the story picks up speed, until by the latter third it's become a wild and frightening war being fought in the middle of the town itself - a war between Christian fanatics and all the denizens of Shadows Fall.

The inclusion of a militarized group of fanatic Christians was something I found intriguing. Given how this book first came out in 2005, when the events of 9/11 were still very fresh in the collective consciousness and the West was embroiled in a war in the Middle East, I rather liked the use of Christian terrorists, out to “purify” the town of Shadows Fall. It was a great reminder that, no matter how you slice it, fanaticism is still fanaticism, and there's no getting around that. Even better, it is revealed that William Royce, the leader of these fanatic Christians, is actually taking orders from none other than Lucifer, head honcho of hell itself. Royce's misplaced confidence in his ability to control Lucifer was a nicely-pointed barb in the direction of religious leaders - no matter their denomination - who claim to do "the work of God," even though their actions are more like the work of the Devil. This idea - that Royce's work is the work of an evil entity, as opposed to the work of God as he so often likes to claim - is emphasized by various characters constantly describing the sacked town as "hellish," or simply calling it "hell."

At this point, however, things started getting a little heavy-handed - so heavy-handed, in fact, that it was kind of hard to miss exactly what Green was trying to emphasize in this portion of the novel. His description of how the fanatics sacked the town, of how they acted towards the townsfolk, was gruesome - no surprise there - but there was something gratuitous about the whole thing. Now, the author attempting to express some “lesson” in their novel is nothing new; it's just that I don't particularly like it when the lesson is so obvious as it was in Shadows Fall. It's like Green is trying to say “Fanaticism is bad!” and is doing so in as loud a voice as possible. The only problem, though, is that there really was no need to shout it from the rooftops; any reader would have figured that out from the get-go, no slaughtering of innocents necessary - or, all right, maybe with minimal slaughtering of innocents, just to emphasize how truly dreadful the whole thing is. But the rest of it was, I think, unnecessary.

I could, however, overlook that part, to a degree. There was a lot going on in this part of the book that I found absolutely heart-wrenching - for instance, a scene where one of the fanatics turns to the side of the townsfolk when he meets Bruin Bear, one of his childhood heroes - but there was one scene in particular that got me all choked up and made the entire slog up until this point of the book absolutely worth it.

One of the characters the reader meets early in the novel is Sean Morrison, described as some kind of musician and bard to the Faerie. In fact, he's the Faerie's contact with the rest of Shadow's Fall, and it is Sean who reminds the Faerie of their ancient duty to protect the town in its time of need. As it turns out, though, Sean Morrison isn't quite as ordinary as he seems. After all, it's legends that go to Shadows Fall, and Sean is a legend himself. In one scene, the character Madeleine Ketch has just finished speaking with Sean, and she says that "Sean" isn't his real name. The truth is that it isn't. "Sean" Morrison is actually "Jim" Morrison, the legendary rock-and-roll figure from the sixties who died too young and too soon. And Sean - or Jim - plays a crucial role in what is, hands-down, the most wonderful, climactic scene in the entire book.The fanatics and the Faerie - the latter now the major aggressive force on the side of Shadows Fall - have reached a stalemate, but hostilities are getting ready to gear up once more, and this time, only one side will be left standing. But out of nowhere, Sean appears......singing like an angel. Behind him walked a once-famous guitarist, adding his music to the song. And behind him, every singer and musician and rock-and-roller who'd ever died too young or been forgotten and ended up in Shadows Fall.The text proceeds to describe these musical legends, and the reader can attempt to guess who they are. John Lennon is counted amongst them. Kurt Cobain is too. And so are Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, and so many more - all of them forgotten, dead too soon, their potential cut short before they had the time to really allow the greatness of their talent to expand into the world. And it's not just the rock-and-rollers - there's quite a few who are referenced in the text who were part of other genres, but similarly died too soon or were forgotten too soon.The text then proceeds to describe what can only be the most epic concert of all time:... They all came to Shadows Fall when the fans finally stopped believing in them, and found peace at last in a town where legends were two a penny. Now they all came together for one last concert, one last song, one last spit in the eye of fate.[The music] filled the night, pushing back the dark, an army of song. And at their head, his voice soaring effortlessly above them all, Sean Morrison, whose name wasn't Sean, who died too soon, while he still had songs left to sing.

That scene, that one scene was worth the whole slog from the beginning to get to that point. It choked me up, made the hairs on my arms stand on end, because it's the perfect illustration of the power of art and creativity and music, of how immediately it speaks to the heart, and if one is unaffected by it, then one is no longer human at all.

Unfortunately, after that wonderful high point, things started to slide back down. The war was over, and I would have been content with it, to see how the town rebuilt itself, but there were still those murders that needed resolving. Unfortunately, the direction they take struck me as rather absurd, and the novel, which could have ended on a fantastic, resounding thunderclap (or maybe a rip-roaring guitar chord?) ended with something similar to a whimper - or someone clearing their throat, which is what literally happens at the end of the novel. And while I'm all for happy endings, the happy ending of this particular story just didn't ring true for me at all. It screamed of wish fulfillment, as if the author was trying to apologize for all the losses earlier on in the story - especially those folks who died during the course of the battle - and in attempting to make everyone happy wound up creating an ending that rings entirely false.

Shadows Fall is confusing, to say the least. The buildup is really, really slow, but then suddenly it hits its stride and gets really, ridiculously epic, before winding down into something that the author probably thought would be epic, but just falls flat on its face - especially after that concert scene. It also doesn't help that it gets kind of didacting in the middle of a battle, when subtlety would have gotten the point across better. I would read this just to get to that epic concert scene, but that's the novel's only redeeming factor. Otherwise, it's a thoroughly mediocre read.

THE BIRSHA ARC IS DONE! And what a way to end it! 
I think I liked this a lot better than the first two books to be honest. Evanthia???s story is definitely heavier than Esther???s or Hazel???s, but I very much enjoyed the weightier themes this go-round. I liked how it focused on healing from trauma - there???s a scene in this book with Laszlo that I REALLY liked, and which I think contributes to why he is basically one of my top two favorite males in this book. Reading her character development across the span of the novel was a thoroughly enjoyable and heartening journey, and I???m glad the author managed to characterize her in a way that made her a delight to read about and ensured that her story didn???t ring any false or sour notes. 
I also liked the monster selection more this go-round too. Asterion, for instance, has been a presence in the last two books, but this time he gets his flowers (so to speak), and BOY DOES HE DESERVE THEM. I also adored Conall, but I???m REALLY fond of Laszlo and Hywel. While I do think Auguste from the first book is a sweetheart, and I adore Jude from the second, this is really the first time in this series that I???ve liked ALL the men. I attribute this to their characterization (the author seems to have gotten much better at it in the space between the second book and this one), and how they fit in with Evanthia and her journey towards healing from her deeply traumatic past. 
And speaking of the Company, it was really nice seeing Esther and Hazel have a presence in this book! I know Esther made a cameo in the second book, but I liked how she and Hazel had a much larger role to play in this book. 
Overall this is a great conclusion to the series, and personally one I think is superior to the two books that came before it (and those were pretty damn good reads in their own right). Really enjoyed Evanthia???s growth and development as a character, as well as the way her men helped her get there, each in their own way. 

I picked this up as a kind of prep for the Japan trip I'm doing with my friends in October, and also because I wanted to see how it'd stack up against Rice, Noodle, Fish by Matt Goulding, which I'd read and loved even before this Japan trip was even a glimmer in my friends' imagination. Tfb to Goulding, his book is weightier and has a LOT more info than Booth's, but it's also a lot more serious. Booth's book, on the other hand, is light and fun and offers some really hilarious anecdotes about what it's like traveling with kids. Wish there were more of those particular stories tbh, but it seems like Booth spent a lot of time away from his kids while writing this book. Maybe his wife ought to do a partner memoir of sorts? That'd be interesting. Still, this is a nice light read, and works well with Goulding's book as I prep myself to EAT ALL THE THINGS when I get to Japan :D.

Three years ago, I made the decision to adopt a pet of my own???specifically, a cat. In my mind, a cat was the ideal companion for someone like me: independent enough that I could leave it alone while I was at work, but companionable enough to pet and play with when I was at home. I had actually managed to talk my mother around to the idea, and had begun to lay down some fairly concrete plans (including which rescue organisation I was going to adopt the cat from, as well as a budget for food, toys, vaccinations, and so on) but the plan was sunk when my father refused to have a cat in the house???not because of any health concerns, but simply because of dislike (or, as I like to think, unwarranted prejudice).

But I still wanted a pet of my own, and since I couldn???t get a cat, I decided to go for a dog. In this regard, I had to be a bit more thorough: it would have been all right to bring a kitten of unknown heritage into the household, but dogs were another thing entirely due to size and temperament concerns (more so, since we already had two other dogs in the house). In the end, I wound up adopting the offspring of my aunt???s Shih Tzu: a sensible move, since I didn???t have to pay a breeder for the privilege of adopting the puppy, plus we already had two other Shih Tzu in the house; one more would fit in perfectly.

The experience I???ve outlined above???particularly the questions about size and temperament???are questions responsible pet owners ask themselves before they adopt an animal to bring into their home. Whether a person winds up bringing home a cat or a dog (or something else entirely), long-haired or short-haired (or feathered or scaled), purebred or mixed-breed, really depends on the owner???s preferences and requirements (and in my case, the preferences and requirements of the other household residents). However, the only reason such choices can be made, and made with relative confidence, is because of the long history of domestication that both the cat and the dog have undergone. It is this process of domestication that Richard C. Francis tackles in his book Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-made World.

Domesticated is divided into fifteen chapters, plus a preface and an epilogue. Chapters 2 to 12 focus on familiar domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, and various familiar farm animals like cows and pigs. There is also a chapter devoted to reindeer, another dedicated to the camel, and one dedicated to rodents (which include not just pet rats and lab mice, but also rabbits and guinea pigs). One chapter, titled ???Other Predators???, focuses on raccoons, ferrets, and minks. The last three chapters are dedicated to us: humans. In these chapters, Francis suggests that humans might be ???self-domesticated???, a process that allowed our species to rise to its current level of dominance.

Throughout the book, Francis emphasises the role of ???tameness???. While most people understand it as a particular behavioural trait that makes animals more pliant to human presence and influence, Francis offers an alternative definition for tameness, one that is rooted in genetics. In the first chapter, he explains this by discussing Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev???s long-term experiment on farm foxes:

[N]oteworthy is the way the fox ???> fox-dog transition parallels the wolf ???> wolf-dog transition, especially in the correlated by-products of selection for tameness, from floppy ears to shorter snouts. At bottom, this parallel response reflects shared developmental processes in the fox and the wolf, which you might expect, given their genealogical proximity on the tree of life. But many of these correlated responses occur in other domesticated mammals as well, some quite distantly related to canines. Some are even found in domesticated birds and fishes. So consistent is this suite of changes, in fact, that it has a name: the ???domesticated phenotype???.

From here, Francis launches into an exploration of the evolutionary history of common domesticated mammals, following the concept that the domesticated phenotype existed in the wild ancestors of domesticated species, but through a combination of natural and artificial selection, those animals with the highest propensity for tameness were given preference over those with a lower propensity, and therefore became the domesticated species we know today. For instance, in ???Chapter 2: Dogs,??? Francis explains how self-taming might have been the very first step towards domesticating the wolf, an otherwise deadly predator of humans:

Wolf domestication was initiated by wolves, and it required that an evolved psychological barrier be surmounted, or at least eased, such that they tolerated closer human proximity than did their forebears.This process of self-taming was accomplished by standard natural selection. Among the wolves that hung around human encampments, those that better tolerated human proximity got more scraps and hence left more offspring than did their ???wilder??? cohorts. This naturally selected tameness was the first step towards dogness, and it may have taken thousands of years.

Self-taming also explains why there are still wild wolves: not all wolves had the necessary genetic makeup to become tame, and so remained as they were, while the tamer wolves were taken in by humans and, through artificial selection, transformed into the many breeds that exist today.

Francis clarifies, however, that the self-taming process didn???t occur in the same way for all domesticated animals, and therefore didn???t always produce animals with the same behavioural traits as dogs. Cats, for example, were domesticated through a somewhat-different route from dogs, which explains why, despite their domesticated status, they remain far more independent than canines:

The genetic evidence???indicates that Near Eastern wildcats were first domesticated in the cradle of agriculture, called the Fertile Crescent, around 10,000 BP [Before Present]. It was here that humans first began to store grains. These stored grains proved vulnerable to a recent invader from northern India, called the house mouse (Mus musculus). For the wildcats in the area, these house mice were a new reliable food source, so some wildcats began hanging around human settlements. ???In essence, human agrarian settlements provided the wildcats in the area a new niche, which required different behavioural dispositions than the old relatively human-free niche had required. Through natural selection for tameness, a subset of the wildcats was able to increasingly thrive in this new niche. But in contrast to dogs, which also exploited this niche, even the more tame wildcats retained their previously evolved hunting skills and equipment.

While self-taming is largely governed by natural selection and therefore takes a very long time, domestication and artificial selection occur in a much shorter time frame. This is due to the fact that the domesticated phenotype includes a tendency towards individuals reaching breeding age earlier in their lifespan, as well as gaining the ability to breed year-round; as a result, it is easy for humans to breed for specific traits and see results quickly (evolutionarily speaking).

Unfortunately, domestication has not necessarily been good for the animals that have undergone the process. Given the time span at which natural selection occurs, artificial selection must be sped up as much as possible in order to get results within a human???s life span. However, this can only be achieved by inbreeding, which has created some very negative effects. Dogs best exemplify those negative effects, as Francis points out when talking about the history of dog breeds and why there are so many of them:

[A]rtificial selection will rapidly get you large phenotypic changes, but at a cost. First there is the cost of inbreeding and the inevitable accumulation of deleterious mutations. Virtually all purebred dogs have a host of genetic ailments, from narcolepsy to skeletal defects. ?????? Under the auspices of the kennel club, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel recently evolved a brain that is too large for its skull???a condition known as syringomyelia. The effects are variable but often involve excruciating pain and ultimately paralysis and death. You would think dogs with this condition would not be bred, but you would be wrong. The problem is that the symptoms often do not become manifest until three or four years of age, and breeders don???t wait that long. Several recent dog show champions that died of this disease sired numerous offspring, sometimes through mating with their daughters. This is truly perverse, both evolutionarily and morally.

He later goes on to explain that the same is happening to cats, though the intensive breeding for felines has been fairly recent compared to dogs. However, despite the fact that most breeders are now currently trying to breed out pre-existing genetic disorders, as well as avoid introducing more, there are still some people who still insist that it???s all right to breed animals with debilitating physical features in the name of ???cuteness???:

There is another mutation, called radial hypoplasia (RH), or ???hamburger feet,??? which results in a different form of polydactyly, of a spiralling nature. A creative breeder in Texas sought to build on this deformity by constructing a ???Twisty cat??? breed, in which the spiralling extends to the bones of the forelimb. Twisty cats also have extremely short forelimbs and relatively long hind libs, which cause them to sit up like a squirrel???hence an alternative name, ???squitten.??? Twisty cats are banned in Europe on humanitarian grounds, but not in the United States; the same is true of the Munchkin. ??? The deliberate breeding of skeletally deformed breeds is unconscionable.

Again, in the subsequent chapters, Francis makes clear that, though the intensity of artificial selection under the auspices of domestication varies from species to species, it hasn???t always been good for the animals subjected to it. The same might be said of their wild ancestors: after all, the auroch (the ancestor of all domesticated cow breeds) is extinct, and so is the wild dromedary camel. While domestication has proven useful for the survival of those few fortunate species that have been selected for it, it has also proven detrimental, both to the animals themselves, and their wild ancestors.

Now, while I don???t expect any non-fiction book to be easy (after all, I read these books partly to learn new things, and learning new things isn???t going to be easy), I do expect the language to be approachable by the average reader. Francis??? language is not that: he tries, but there is a lot of jargon in his text that only a biologist would understand, and even when he tries to explain the jargon, his language can still be confusing???an inability to use ???small words???, as it were. While it won???t stop the determined reader from finishing the book (as I did), it does make for very, very slow reading. I found myself having to reread passages from time to time, sometimes entire sections. I would also have to go online every so often to look up what certain terms meant. While doing those things is no great hardship, it did slow me down significantly.

However, despite that issue, Domesticated is well-organised and thought out. Francis takes time to provide all the information at his disposal (the Notes and References section is substantial, to say the least), and organises it in a logical manner. This neatness of organisation and logic makes the book tolerable to read despite the difficulties the reader may have with the language. Francis also includes some personal anecdotes (the most charming include one about his cats, and another about the first time he rode on a camel), but he doesn???t focus on them overmuch; instead, he uses them as lead-ins to other, more important ideas and histories???which is precisely how any non-fiction writer worth their salt ought to use personal anecdotes in the first place, if they are not writing a memoir.

Overall, Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-made World is a fascinating and insightful read. Francis takes the time to lay out his premise, and build upon it in a logical fashion, so that by the time he makes the main point of his argument, the reader understands how he arrived at that conclusion. He is also very careful to present both sides of an argument (particularly in the last three chapters, which focus on human evolution), and although he makes it clear which side of an argument he prefers, he takes the time to outline why he thinks the way he does, and to present the other side???s points fairly and clearly.

However, despite Francis??? clear (and deeply appreciated) academic integrity and scientific insight, he doesn???t quite have the ability to write in an accessible way. His writing is riddled with jargon, and though he does try to explain that jargon in the simplest possible words, his idea of ???simple??? probably only applies to people with Biology degrees. While it is possible for the layperson to make it through the book with a lot of help from the Internet or a friend with the necessary knowledge, it???s still a very slow read. This may or may not put potential readers off, but I think that if one is interested???and stubborn???enough, this is a book might prove to be remarkably enjoyable.

This was so. Much. FUN XD! Like, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked it up; all I knew was that there was quite a bit of hype about it and that it was alternate history and involved hippos. I am so, SO glad I got a diverse cast (in both race and gender and sexuality!), kickass ladies (Adelia is #goals), a rip-roaring plot - and ADORABLE HIPPOS WITH AS MUCH PERSONALITY AS THE PEOPLE IN THE STORY OMG! Are there plushies? Because I want plushies. Especially of Ruby.

Anyway! Definitely pick this up everyone. It's a quick read (novella whoo~!) but there's a lot of fun packed in that short span of time. Also, the sequel's coming out in just a few more months, and I'm very much looking forward to that XD.