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- Novel written by Nicole Galland
- Published on 23 February 2021
- Sequel to The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Listened to the full-cast audiobook – well read but not quite as satisfying as it could be due to the narrative structure.
I really liked the crazy premise and surprisingly lucid execution of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Nicole Galland and Neal Stephenson, so I figured I’d give the sequel a listen as well.
I did see that Stephenson was no longer on the cover so I knew the focus of the story was going to shift from Stephenson’s sci-fi to Gallant’s historical fiction. On the other hand, Stephenson gave Galland enough of a step-up to continue the story without too much sci-fi input.
It turns out that indeed, Galland focussed on the historical aspects of the story over the present day sci-fi storyline. While I appreciate this makes sense from her perspective, I honestly felt a little let down that what I perceived as the ‘main’ story line after the end of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (spoiler alert)- the rivalry between our protagonists and Gráinne-controlled D.O.D.O. – is hardly explored.
Rather, Galland uses that rivalry as a backdrop to set up effectively two historical fiction novellas, one set in Roman Sicily, another in the London of William Shakespeare. In both novellas, two opposing time travellers each try to achieve their own ends in a particular place and time without triggering ‘diachronic shear’ (i.e., a change in history to big for the universe to accommodate).
The present-day rivalry between the two organisations, including the role of the mysterious Fugger banking family, is demoted to inciting incident. Unfortunately, I felt that that was exactly where the biggest potential in a sequel was.
Galland’s historical storytelling is still very good. The prose flows well and the pacing is high. I was slightly disappointed by the resolution of certain plot lines, but I felt like that was not where Galland’s focus was.
Instead, I almost feel like this book was written specifically for Shakespeare-nerds, who want to imagine themselves rubbing shoulders with the Bard and his players.
That could have been a cool premise, too, but it felt a bit out of place to me. Most fans of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., myself included, would probably expect an exploration of the effects of rival time travellers attempting to affect the present – and that is just not what Master of the Revels delivers.
Overall, Master of the Revels is a fine book, but it just didn’t offer what I expected or would have wanted. I had no issues finishing it, but I would only recommend it to readers with a real love for historical fiction or Shakespeare, and not so much to readers looking for a follow-up to the interesting sci-fi in The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
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Listened to the audiobook with Kristin Atherton – good narrator.
I’m going picked Castle in the Air to read, I was going through a very busy period at work, which meant that I had relatively little time and energy for reading/listening to books, even on my daily commute. As a result, I wanted to listen to something simple and upbeat. Castle in the Air perfectly fits that description.
Castle in the Air is – for the most part – not particularly original or ambitious, even for a children’s book. The story follows well-worn paths, leaning into classic orientalist ‘1001 nights’-tropes for the start of the story before morphing into the even more familiar quest to rescue the princess. That’s a tale we’ve all heard before, though without giving anything away, the story will offer a few surprises towards the end.
You might be raising an eyebrow now, wondering how an ‘1001 nights’-style story could be a sequel to the decidedly not Arabian Howl’s Moving Castle and you’d be right: the story will go through some twists and turns – and the reader will need some patience – before the connection with the first instalment becomes clear.
(On a side note, you will also need some patience with the characters as they continue wasting a genie’s one-wish-a-day on things that do not help move the plot along one bit… I know of at least one person who couldn’t get over their frustration and failed to finish the book.)
When the connection was finally revealed though, that brought a big smile to my face. And while the story up until that point is not particularly original, it is well executed and entertaining. I was already imagining reading it to my (hypothetical, future) kids and their smiles and giggles at Abdullah’s naïve antics. Am I that old now?
Overall, I think I liked Howl’s Moving Castle a bit better because it surprised me more and because it had more Calcifer in it, but I would happily recommend Castle in the Sky to anyone looking for something simple to get their mind of things or to read to their kids.
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- Novel written by Madeline Miller
- Published on 3 September 2011
- Standalone, though arguably followed by Circe
Listened to the audiobook with Frazer Douglas – very well read.
I don’t know about any of you, but I grew up with Greek myths. Some of my children’s books were retellings of those stories. I remember reading a Greek myth encyclopaedia somebody gifted my mum cover to cover. And when I was in high school, I actually learned to translate Homer myself.
As a result, the Iliad is a core story for me. I feel like I know the characters. I know what will happen. I know how it ends.
But that doesn’t mean reading the familiar story again is any less impactful. I feel a story like the Iliad is meant to be told and retold time and again. Miller’s The Song of Achilles fits in the cycle of retelling the ancient story that started in antiquity and is still ongoing today. I feel she respects and follows the origin of the story she retells, while at the same time adding new twists and elements that may be more suited to a modern reader without feeling completely out of place.
Because The Song of Achilles is effectively just another version of one of the world’s most well-know stories, Miller needs to draw us in with her prose, her characterisations, and her variations on well-know themes.
I feel like The Song of Achilles scores best on the style and prose. The novel just feels right, appropriately serious and epic without falling into the formulaic or overly dramatic.
Similarly, I think The Song of Achilles does a good job of fleshing out a couple of characters who hardly get a voice in the original Iliad, with Patroclos and Briseis in particular getting more attention than Homer gave them.
Unfortunately, I don’t really like Miller’s Patroclos. Despite being the stream-of-consciousness narrator of the story, he is surprisingly one-dimensional. Beyond his love for Achilles, there is really very little to him. While I get Miller’s choice to not make Patroclos a warrior, I feel this choice places him effectively on the side lines throughout the story. Patroclos is neither consulted nor respected for most of the story by anyone but Achilles, and I never felt like Patroclos did anything to make him worthy of respect or Achilles’ love. Put a little respectlessly, Miller’s Patroclos doesn’t struggle to be a warrior and fail; he tries ones and gives up. He doesn’t struggle to find a calling in a world that only respects warriors; he simple accepts his place as a second-tier man clinging to a half-god.
When Patroclos’ great act of foolish bravery and sacrifice finally comes round, I felt the only reason I accept it as a reader is because I already knew it was going to happen before I even read the first page. The episode where Patroclos – in this version of the story, accidentally – kills Sarpedon, really drives home how tough it is to marry this verion of the character with the text of the epic.
Fortunately, Patroclos is still mostly likeable – he just feels a little like Achilles’ trophy wife and I would have liked him to achieve something more than being nice and being the subject of Achilles’ love.
Then again, The Song of Achilles, like the Iliad, is the story of Achilles’ wrath first and foremost. And there, she does very well. I think that Miller manages to capture Achilles’ arrogance and entitlement expertly, filteredthrough the biased eyes of Patroclos, who loves Achilles too much to see.
I could go on for a while on how Miller interprets particular characters and events, like her cold-hearted version of Achilles’ mother Thetis. Some of them I like better than others, but I think the fact that I am engaging with Miller’s characters in that way at all shows how well she tapped into the source material.
Overall, I think I would have liked The Song of Achilles a little more if I would have felt stronger about Patroclos, who is, at the end of the day, the lens through which the story is told. But whether you like Patroclos or not, The Song of Achilles is a well-written retelling of the famous story that deserves its place in the long line of retellings and the fans of Greek myth should definitely read for the nostalgia alone.
- Novel co-written by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
- Published on 13 June 2017
- Followed by Master of the Revels
Listened to the full cast audiobook – well read by all actors, but due to the narrative structure the full-cast effect wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it is for some other audiobooks.
I’ve often said that I love stories with interesting story structures, and The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is certainly one of them. The novel switches back and forth between contemporary or near future science fiction and a whole series of different historical settings, which, as the novel progresses, start bleeding into each other more and more.
The premise of the story which makes all of this possible – the contemporary characters finding a way to revive magic and use it for time travel – is one which might have only been dreamt up by a team like Galland and Stephenson: the first a specialist in historical fiction, the second a big name in the sci-fi scene.
The resulting novel, once it gets going, is incredibly dynamic and fast-paced, though it might take the reader some work to keep up with all the plotlines that are moving at the same time.
I haven’t read anything else by Galland, but my sense is that The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O takes a lot more from her style than it does from Stephenson’s. Gone (or at least: shortened) are the long tangents on feral hogs in Texas or orbital mechanics that I know Stephenson for. In exchange, we get a lot more interpersonal dynamics and interesting variation in narrative style. What we certainly retain from a Neal Stephenson novel, however, is that the narrative takes on more and more fragments of insanity as it nears the end.
I think the historical settings in the book are well-researched, just like Stephenson’s signature tangents usually are. But even though I’m an incredible history nerd, I really missed the original thought that goes into the sci-fi tangents (who’d have thought I would say that after my review of Termination Shock?). Perhaps I don’t read enough historical fiction to be able to assess how exceptional the historical accuracy actually is.
On the topic of historical accuracy, I would be remiss to not mention that the authors recognise the Historical European Martial Arts (H.E.M.A.) scene when describing the historical training time travellers need to undergo – implicitly touching on every H.E.M.A..ist’s secret dream of testing out their skills against the practitioners of the times long gone.
Overall, I think The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is a pleasure to read, with interesting and surprising twists and a nice focus on the characters. It is, however, perhaps less thought-provoking than the top-shelf science fiction is and a little less dramatic than some of the best fantasy. Still, I think that readers of both genres will really appreciate the original blend of stories. I know I am looking forward to putting on the sequel (by Galland allone) sometime soon.
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- TV show developed by Rick Riordan and Jonathan E. Steinberg for Disney+
- Based on Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan
- Starring Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, Aryan Simhadri, Daniel Diemer, Dior Goodjohn, Charlie Bushnell and others
- Released 19 December 2023
- 1 Season of 8 Episodes, renewed for a second season
Percy Jackson – named after the hero Perseus in ancient Greek mythology – is an ordinary twelve-year-old boy trying to survive in a world that thinks him weird. After a fateful trip to a museum, however, he quickly finds his world uprooted. Apparently, Greek gods and monsters are not a thing of the distant past, but still very much around. In addition to that, they are all hunting for Percy because he is a demigod.
This review relates to the first season only
There wasn’t much thought behind Jasmijn and me watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I was aware that Rick Riordan’s books are very popular, and – despite the bad movie adaptations some ten years back – I hadn’t seen any fuss about this latest adaptation. So when we were looking for something new to watch, this seemed like a good enough reason to discover what this franchise was about. Also, ancient Greek mythology is neat.
By the Muses, this show did not disappoint me. In fact, I liked it even more than I dared to hope in the best of circumstances. Though I thought the first episode was just okay, the episodes thereafter had me hooked every time. Everything just clicks: the pacing, the humour, the incredible acting (both from young and experienced actors), the insane production value.
Let’s elaborate on that last point. Clearly, there’s a lot of money in this show. In fantasy/science fiction productions this often means that everything is enhanced with CGI that’s barely convincible. However, Percy Jackson and the Olympians used this money to create incredible set pieces and props, with the CGI mostly in a supporting role. The highlights for me were probably the few mythological creatures that show up throughout the series.
The cast and crew were clearly driven while filming this series. I think it helped that Rick Riordan was also very involved with the production. There is – what I would like to call – ‘soul’. Rick Riordan once started writing his books to help his son feel better about his ADHD and dyslexia. It’s at its core a story about accepting each other’s differences and recognizing the strength in this diversity. Growing into your own and daring to question why people do things as they have always been done. Strong themes, that all those involved seem to clearly understand. Another relatable subject for some: the challenges that can come with family. And as we all know, the Greek gods are an excellent example of great family dynamics.
The main argument I can think of to dislike Percy Jackson and the Olympians, is when one doesn’t like watching younger actors and a story that’s also aimed at a younger audience (and thus all the effects this has on the storytelling choices). The acting skills of the three main actors are excellent though, and their dynamics are fun to watch.
For those who tend to get attached to the same actors as I; I was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of Toby Stephens, Lin-Manuel Miranda , Lance Reddick (who recently passed away, tragically), and Timothy Omundson. I also really liked Adam Copeland and his portrayal of Ares. Gods are cool.
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- Novel written by Heather Fawcett
- Published in January 16, 2024
- Part two of the Emily Wilde series
As you can probably tell from my 4,5 star review of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries, I really enjoyed the first book in this series. It’s just the right amount of cosy with some stakes to keep it interesting. I actually rushed out to buy the sequel once I finished it because I didn’t want to leave the world of Emily Wilde quite yet.
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands did not disappoint. It has all the same cosy vibes as Encyclopedia of Fairies, though perhaps they don’t charm me as much as they do in the first book. However, the plot is slightly stronger in this one. We also finally get some indication of when the story takes place, something that is left out of Encyclopedia of Faeries. It seems to be set in the 1910’s.
I liked the characters a little less in this book. Everyone seemed a little flatter than they were in the first book, and the side characters of this book weren’t as charming as their predecessors.
Overall, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands is a worthy successor to Encyclopedia of Faeries. Maybe it’s not quite as good, but if you loved the first book, it’s definitely worth picking up the sequel!
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- Novella written by Nghi Vo
- Published 7 May 2024
- Part 5 in the Singing Hills Cycle
Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay – her style really fit The Brides of High Hill well.
Because of the mystery at the core of The Brides of High Hill, I’m going to have to be a bit more cautious in my review.
I’ve said in the past that I like it when a series reinvents itself over time and shifts genre somewhat. The Brides of High Hill does just that. Without going into detail, the novella takes an unexpected dark turn, setting it apart from the rest of the Singing Hills Cycle. And I love it! It helps keep the series fresh and interesting.
After Mammoths at the Gates, which focussed on Chih’s character and background, Vo takes us back on an adventure that is more about atmosphere, though in keeping with the series’ transition away from frame-narrative style stories, Chih is very much the main character of the story.
Vo does a great job with dark atmospheric horror. The Brides of High Hill is dripping with spine-tingling moments and constantly keeps you guessing at the next page. The novella format is very well suited to this kind of story where the writer is constantly wrong-footing the reader. After all, in such a short format, the reader never feels strung along for too long and the tension never snaps.
There is little else I can say about The Brides of High Hill other than that I think that Vo is once again underlining how good she is with novellas.
Unfortunately for me, The Brides of High Hill is the last instalment in the Singing Hills Cycle that has been released at the time of writing… I can only hope Nghi Vo will continue to give us stories about Chih in the near future!
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- Novel written by Peter S. Beagle
- Published in 1968
I love unicorns. I hope I won’t have to defend that position in the year of our lord 2024. It’s an extra sparkly horse with a horn. What’s not to like? It should surprise no one, then, that I expected to really enjoy The Last Unicorn.
I had heard of this book, but I hadn’t really heard anything about it. I just knew that there was a classic novel about a unicorn. In a way it makes sense, because I find this book very hard to describe.
The start of this book was very confusing. It’s very much a fairy tale, and the first couple of chapters feature some very florid language that, for me, was very hard to comprehend. I had to reread sentences a couple of times to even understand what was going on, and even then that didn’t always help. It gets better eventually, but I unfortunately was never truly dazzled in the way Patrick Rothfuss said I would be in the introduction. This book just didn’t feel groundbreaking.
What I do really like is how the unicorn is, essentially, a complicated woman. Like, I’ve read much longer fantasy novels that really want to be feminist, whose women have less depth of character than this one sad unicorn.
I think this definitely a fun book to read to children, and I don’t resent having read it at all. However, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s one of those children’s books I would recommend to adults.
- Novella written by Nghi Vo
- Published 12 September 2023
- Part 4 in the Singing Hills Cycle
Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay – good narrator as with the previous instalments.
Finally, Chih returns home!
I’ve been reading the Singing Hills Cycle with a certain level of awe at how Vo is constructing her series of novellas – how she balances the main plot and frame narrative, worldbuilding versus character development and plot.
Mammoths at the Gates is perhaps the best instalment in the Cycle so far. It completes the transition from a series focussed on the stories Chih encounters to a series focussed on Chih’s own story. And of course it does so in a novella focussed on Singing Hills monastery, Chih’s home.
I think this timing is perfect: three novellas into the series, the reader is starting to get really curious about Chih’s background and character. Mammoths at the Gates gives us that exactly that worldbuilding hit that we crave. I especially loved the attention lavished on the until now mysterious neixin, the talking spirit-birds with infallible memory that accompany the clerics of Singing Hills.
What is even better is that Vo uses the opportunity not just to solidify the readers’ understanding of her world, but also of her main character. Chih returning home is the perfect plot device to tell us a little about their upbringing at the monastery. Mammoths at the Gates is also full of little character moments for Chih, like the way they interact with the novices of Singing Hills, that help flesh them out as a character.
The cherry on top is that Vo manages to stick with the formula of the series by perfectly integrating a round of storytelling in the story, even if the emphasis this time around is squarely on Chih’s own tale.
Perhaps Vo’s greatest achievement is how much storytelling she does in so little space. I can’t quite wrap my head around how Vo manages to include so much narrative in a novella format. But Vo is showing us what is possible, and I sure hope this format catches on.
Overall, I think Mammoths at the Gate is both great individually and also does a lot of work for the series as a whole – I am looking forward to the Singing Hills Cycle become a long-running fixture of the speculative genre. If there is any series that should have 15 instalments, it should be this one!
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- Novella written by Nghi Vo
- Published 25 October 2022
- Part 3 in the Singing Hills Cycle
Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay – good narrator as with the previous instalments.
In my reviews of both The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain I praised the format of the Singing Hills Cycle and I will continue to do so here: I really like the novella format for the speculative genre and I think it could be explored more.
Clearly, the challenge in short-form speculative fiction is that there is less space for worldbuilding alongside everything else, and that forces the writer to make choices (and it forces the reader to fill in more of the gaps themselves). That difficulty is what I think kept the Murderbot Diaries from winning me over entirely.
Vo has not made it easy for herself with the structure of the Singing Hills Cycle, combining both frame narrative and main story in the space of the novella. Over the series, I feel the balance between the frame narrative and the story inside the frame is shifting. And Into the Riverlands occupies an interesting place in that.
While the characters in the novella tell each other stories in an almost The Canterbury Tales-esque fashion, the novella is very much about what occurs to Chih and her travelling companions in the ‘frame narrative’. The stories the characters tell each other are there to support that main story.
I understand the move towards a narrative that focusses on the recurring main character and I look forward to getting to know Chih and Almost Brilliant better.
So Into the Riverlands sits in an awkward transitional spot where the back-and-forth between the stories can be messy. At the same time, I think Vo uses that the transitional tale very well. Vo really leans into the unreliable narrator-trope by having her characters ask questions about the origin and the different versions of the stories they tell.
And I should not give the impression with all that analysis that the story of Into the Riverlands is not worth reading; it certainly is! I really like that Into the Riverlands, even better than The Empress of Salt and Fortune, ties the different stories in the novella together. Into the Riverlands has a number of evocative atmospheric scenes and Vo delivers another satisfying twist at the end of the story.
With Into the Riverlands, Vo proves that she is a master of the novella. She shows that she keeps reinventing the Singing Hills Cycle – and to give a sneak peak of Mammoths at the Gates, which, yes, I’ve already started: that exploration will continue. I certainly hope that Nghi Vo will continue to bring us novellas like these, because I will keep eating them up!
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- Novella written by Nghi Vo
- Published 8 December 2020
- Part 2 in the Singing Hills Cycle
Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay – again, a great narrator. I particularly liked her husky tiger-voice.
I rolled straight from The Empress of Salt and Fortune into When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain – novella-length stories are perfect to whet my appetite and get me craving for more.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is similar in structure to The Empress of Salt and Fortune: it features a frame narrative of Chih on a journey and a main narrative told by one of the characters.
An important difference between the two novellas is that the focus in When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain shifts somewhat from the main tale to the frame narrative. In fact, I found I was far more invested in the frame narrative than I was in the main story.
I suppose this is to be expected if the story of cleric Chih is to be the through-line in the Singing Hills Cycle, but it shifts the balance of the tale.
Vo manages this shift by having two of the characters bicker over the ‘correct’ version of the tale being told, taking turns to tell their version of the story. As a result, there are a lot of breaks in the main tale in which the frame narrative comes back in view.
I like this emphasis on the unreliability of the different narrators as a narrative device, but I think this repetition, alongside the fact that Vo spends more words on the frame narrative, means that there is a lot less space for depth in the main tale.
I still liked the story told by the characters of When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, but it has more of a fable or fairy tale-esque quality to it, and less plot and emotional depth than the main tale of The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
Then again, in this case, I was happy to lose some depth in the main tale in order for the frame narrative to get some more room – especially because the frame narrative features those mammoths Vo hinted at in The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
I’m only two novellas in so perhaps I’m too quick to judge, but the piecemeal, very limited worldbuilding of the Singing Hills Cycle might solve the worldbuilding problem I ran into with the Murderbot Diaries.
I’m already looking forward to the next instalments in the Cycle. I’m curious what direction Vo will take the series in – wills he focus more on Chih or will she continue the style of a frame narrative and a main story? With some luck, you’ll be able to read my review of Into the Riverlands very soon!
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- Novella written by Nghi Vo
- Published 24 March 2020
- Part 1 in the Singing Hills Cycle
Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay, who has a nice, almost whispering quality to her reading, which adds an extra layer of mysteriousness to the story. Well read!
Empress of Salt and Fortune is a story with a frame narrative, and for some reason I find the frame narrative to be one of the most exciting narratives devices out there – it’s probably the thing I like most (the one thing I like?) about the Kingkiller Chronicles for example.
In Empress of Salt and Fortune, the frame narrative and the main story are satisfyingly intertwined, and even though the main character in both sides of the tale are different, I felt I got a good sense of both subjects.
Considering that Empress of Salt and Fortune is only a short novella, I think that is an impressive feat.
I think Vo in general does a great job of respecting the limits of the medium. A fantasy novella is very different from a fantasy novel, especially because fantasy is a genre that produces stories with a learning curve: it takes the reader some time to adjust to the ‘rules’ of the new world they’re delving into.
I think Vo made all the right choices: her worldbuilding is focused on neat little details and implications and borrows liberally from well-understood tropes about a historical reality.
Yes, this is medieval China, but what’s this about mammoths?! Vo resisted the need to explain (at least in this Novella), and leaves the specifics up to the reader’s imagination.
Similarly, Vo generally focusses on scenes over the narrative. I’ve criticised this in movies, because movies sometimes have trouble getting the plot across and building up their characters. But in books I think focusing on scenes is something that writers should feel more at liberty to do: strong character moments are more important to some stories than narrating the exact sequence of events that leads from A to B.
In Empress of Salt and Fortune this leads to numerous gaps and time jumps in the main story and that is great: the novella feels lean and light and quick, and yet the story is told without core elements missing. The story even has some nice little twists towards the end.
In conclusion, Empress of Salt and Fortune is a deceptively simple but very well constructed novella with a story that might not be ground breaking but is satisfying nevertheless. The strong female and non-binary characters are the cherry on top. I’m hooked – I loaded When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain into my audiobook player straight away!
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