Brother Mauro, an older monk, and Nicolo, a young, striving merchant are called by the Pope to traverse the treacherous political, religious, and mercantile terrain of medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire to seek out the powerful Presbyter John, a mysterious king in the Far East who has promised to put his wealth and vast armies to the service of the pope's crusade. I don't understand why…
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This is a marvellous and depressing book. Marvellous because it finely details the history, atrocities, and geopolitical strife of unfettered capitalism. Depressing for much the same reason. Dalrymple takes the thousand different strands of the story and weaves them into a (mostly) comprehensible narrative. With this many moving parts, it is easy to get confused between the various people,…
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This is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists. I can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real. It's full of the hungriest, nastiest people who will…
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This should be a fascinating look at how streaming services evolved and the outsized impact they've had on our culture. Instead it is mostly a series of re-written press-releases and recycled analysis from other people. Sadly, the book never dives in to the pre-history of streaming. There's a brief mention of RealPlayer - but nothing about the early experiments of livestreaming gigs and TV…
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My pal Hayley has written a book - a graphic memoir about dealing with breast cancer. Graphic as in graphic-novel - although there are a large variety of sketched boobs dotted throughout the pages and some frank discussions of sex. I'm not very good with "medical stuff" - so I was quite proud of myself for only twice needing to take a break from reading it because I felt faint. It is the most…
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This book is ridiculously zeitgeisty. It's all brain-rotting AI, social-media meltdowns, mixed with some cracking technobabble. She thinks about erasing more: all the practice session recordings; her own encrypted cephaloscripts; the dream-guide neuromesh of her personal AI; the interviews, fan messages, reviews—food for her vanity, training data for her egolets. Fab! But, for all that, it's p…
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I can confidently declare that Lower Decks is the second best Star Trek series after The Orville. Lower Decks has always been bags of fun with a good emotional core. Now your favourite sci-fi capers are available in handy comic book form! Second Contact is a compilation of Lower Decks issues #1–6. You get a bunch of stories spread out over 145 pages. The great thing about a comic of a cartoon i…
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It started with a hummingbird dive-bombing Amelia Thomas over her morning coffee, and a pair of piglets who just wouldn’t stay put. Soon Amelia, journalist and new farmer, begins to question the communications of the creatures all around her: her pigs, her dogs, the pheasant family inhabiting her wood, her ‘difficult’ big red horse: even the earwigs in the farm’s dark, damp corners. Are they all…
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I'm reasonably sure I've read all the "Old Man's War" books. As the last one was published a decade ago, you'll forgive me if I don't remember all the intricacies of galactic politics and interpersonal intrigue. Thankfully, Scalzi has carved off a side character from a previous book and given them a brand-new adventure. There's enough exposition to tickle the parts of your brain that go "Ah,…
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Janice Hallett is back with another epistolary mystery. Told through a series of transcribed conversations, WhatsApp messages, and torn-out pages from diaries - we the reader have to piece together the facts and crack the case! Much like her previous novels - The Appeal and The Twyford Code - you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief a fair bit. Do people really talk like that when they…
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This is a brilliant idea for a short story collection. Gather a group of non-writers, all of whom have experienced the dystopia of working for Amazon, and support them to write speculative science fiction. Given how futuristic Amazon is, perhaps they have a unique insight into what its future holds. Or, as the rather academic intro puts it: The Worker as Futurist project asks another question: …
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This is the best book on practical feminism that I've read. Because it is long out of print, I had to get the British Library to pull this book out of the archives for me. I'm fascinated by the evolution of feminist discourse in 20th Century UK. I read Myself When Young (1938) which is a series of mini-autobiographies of prominent women. One of them was Dame Caroline Haslett - an electrical…
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