Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[astrangerhere]

This morning, I finally finished Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest Then I spared an hour in Starbucks to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century . Would make a nice addition to a high school school history classroom.

[ATDrake]

Finished Len Deighton's SS-GB, an excellent alternate history murder mystery set in a world where Germany conquered Britain during WWII*. I've been meaning to read a Deighton since the afterword in Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which also introduced me to Tim Powers by way of Declare (now one of my favourite hidden history sfnal novels), and after failing to find SS-GB in the library again after my one elusive sighting of it years ago, it finally went on sale a couple of months ago (still $2.99 in Canada), apparently due to having some sort of upcoming adaptation.

Anyway, this was superbly done, mingling a solid murder investigation case with an equally twisty underlying political plot, and depicting the tensions in occupied 1940s Britain, with varying degrees of collaboration and resistance and ever-shifting loyalties and opportunism throughout. And it makes use of the actual history parts of the alternate history for a nicely speculative what-if wrap up to the overall situation. I see I'm going to have to read more Deighton. Beyond his excellent and also recommended Cookstrip DIY cuisine cartoons, that is, which have been brought back into and then gone out of print, but thanks to the magic of e-books can still be gotten.

* For some reason, all of the not overtly sfnal alt-history murder mysteries (Fatherland, Farthing, etc.) I can think of take place in exactly the same setting. And that's before getting into all the other alt-history thrillers that also happen to have solvable murders in them. It's like a mirror universe Foyle's War, in a way.

[bfisher]

Great review of SS-GB

Deighton's "Bomber" is very good.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/171625.Bomber

His espionage novels are also quite good.

[ATDrake]

^

Thank you for the Deighton rec! I'd gotten the impression he was almost exclusively known for the spy stuff, so an “off-genre” work will be a welcome touch of variety (especially standalone). And it turns out I have a copy of the Harry Palmer quartet from a long-ago discount sale, so I've also something else to try while waiting for more pricedrops.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Just before starting this, I read The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom by Max Gladstone, a bit of free original fiction at Tor.com.

Which was a short story. Recovery from high tech interstellar/multi-universe disaster. Interesting. Clearly potential form longer stories in this setup.

I also started and finished Sympathy for the Devil by Holly Lisle, which I got from the Baen Free Library back in 2008.

A fantasy/romance in which Heaven & Hell are real and (some) prayers are answered. It was OK, and kept me reading.

Now back to Satan in St Mary's

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Finished Len Deighton's SS-GB, an excellent alternate history murder mystery set in a world where Germany conquered Britain during WWII*. I've been meaning to read a Deighton since the afterword in Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which also introduced me to Tim Powers by way of Declare (now one of my favourite hidden history sfnal novels), and after failing to find SS-GB in the library again after my one elusive sighting of it years ago, it finally went on sale a couple of months ago (still $2.99 in Canada), apparently due to having some sort of upcoming adaptation.

Sorry, but it's already come. BBC did a 5 episode series. I don't know if it's complete as I've not read the book (yet) and I've not finished watching the series (last episode is recorded).

[Dngrsone]

FInished I Did NOT Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence! by Richard Roberts. Very entertaining.

Now I am starting Deceiver by C. J. Cherryh.

I am flying cross-country tomorrow and back the next day (airline gods permitting), so I have my tablet stocked with lots of interesting material.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but it's already come. BBC did a 5 episode series. I don't know if it's complete as I've not read the book (yet) and I've not finished watching the series (last episode is recorded).

Cool, it's out already? I hope it gets a nice Blu-Ray release with extras.

Just finished Lumen by pseudonymous Italian author Ben Pastor, 1st in her Martin Bora series starring a WWII-era German army Intelligence officer solving crimes in assorted Nazi-occupied countries, which really is kind of like a reverse Foyle's War. Interestingly enough, these are originally written in English by the long-term US-resident expat professor author, but then translated into Italian by professionals for formal publication, and have only in recent years have some become available in the actual English. (If I want to read them all and the current Anglophone import publisher does not provide with further volumes, I'd have to learn Italian and save up some £63 for the rest.)

Len Deighton's SS-GB had a retrospective foreword where he mentioned how carefully he had to choose the “hero” of his tale, and the limitations in creating a character with a background and behaviour sufficiently sympathetic to the audience to be a “good” protagonist working in an official position within a Nazi-dominated world, who himself couldn't be too closely tied to said Nazis but at the same time, not unbelievably out of place at first.

So when this popped up as a discount sale item when I was looking at something else from the same publisher just last week, I decided to give it a try to see how the author would handle the issue in a non-alternate history world and what, if any, sorts of moral dilemmas and ensuing character development (for better or worse), her chosen protagonist would be subjected to. As it turns out, Bora is deliberately based upon a real life historical figure who did eventually wind up making the right choices, so I guess my questions about his eventual moral trajectory are pre-emptively answered and I don't have to read the other books out of sheer morbid curiosity about that.

I likely will read them anyway, since this first case was reasonably interesting and made use of complicating historical and cultural elements that could have probably only existed in conjunction in occupied Poland circa 1939, between the retreating Red Army and the then-neutrality of the Americans and the Germans trying to play nice with both even as their own various internal factions jockey for position; as well as the more immediate problem of the suspicious death of a beloved Polish Catholic nun reputed to be a potential saint with miracles and prophecies and possible ties to the local resistance.

The investigation, while solid enough, was kind of slow-moving and spaced out, as the style is more a slice-of-life tale interspersing vignettes of the assorted characters' situations and personal dilemmas associated with their increasingly difficult positions. The effect is reasonably atmospheric, but tends to read more like an historical novel with murder-solving in it, than a more typical historical crime detection thriller.

Anyway, I ended up liking this rather more than I thought I would going in and now want to try the rest (though I admit the unusual premise is still probably the major draw, more than the casework or the storytelling). I'm pleased to see that the library has acquired all the other ones available in English and has pre-ordered the next.

[Rev. Bob]

I've paused about a third of the way through John Scalzi's The Human Division to prep four superhero novels for transfer as my next reads: the first two "Two Percent Power" books (dairy-controlling superhero!) and the first two "Hesitant Hero" books (So Not a Hero and its sequel, about a villain turned hero). They're about 300-350 pages each, but I can definitely tell that they're indie-published by the formatting. A good chunk of my effort has been recoiling at bizarre styles and making them more standard. Here's hoping the stories are worth it!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now back to Satan in St Mary's

Which once I got going with it was an interesting start to a series set around 1284 in London, a period I know little about, so I can't comment properly on historical accuracy, but I didn't notice any glaring errors. There are a few obvious minor errors in the text that should have been caught by a copy editor.

Our hero doesn't seem to be too bright about spotting what's going on, but not too dull either. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with the next one.

Next up: Dance of the Goblins by Jaq D Hawkins. The first book of "The Goblin Trilogy" omnibus that was a recent freebie. It's looking good so far.

[ATDrake]

Finished A Murder in Thebes by Paul Doherty, 2nd in his Mysteries of Alexander the Great series (the 1st round of it anyway, it looks like there were two such series; one written pseudonymously, the other not) set in ancient Greece post-Macedonian conquest, which I got as part of Headline's 99 cent sale on selected titles of his (currently still ongoing, last I checked). Most of the rest in this particular setting were at the somewhat higher $2.99-$3.99 CAD price point, so I held off on splurging, but I think I'll have to get the rest of these.

Somewhat to my surprise, this had actual Alexander the Great in it, in a major supporting role and actually participating in investigative and deduction scenes, although the bulk of the amateur sleuthing was done by Miriam, one of a pair of Jewish Israelite companions who are apparently spies for him at the behest of his mother Queen Olympias.

Anyway, this was fairly well done in a rather light casual style, with a nice mix of history and mythology, as someone uses superstition surrounding one of its famous legends to try to undermine Alexander's conquest of the city of Thebes, and also for murder. And there was a bonus mystery in the form of a tricky puzzler about how to extract a certain artifact from a booby-trapped locale using only the materials already present, whose solution is nicely foreshadowed a couple of times in a way that you gloss over while reading, but makes perfect sense once you see it.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Dance of the Goblins by Jaq D Hawkins. The first book of "The Goblin Trilogy" omnibus that was a recent freebie. It's looking good so far.

And it was a fun read. The place names are obvious,

Spoiler:

and given that the Earth's spin axis has changed, they shouldn't still be
north and south of the river!

But I still enjoyed the characters and the story and the setting. I'm looking forward to the other two.

Although by splitting the trilogy into individual books, I've read one book but increased by TBR by one instead of reducing it.

Next up: Not sure.

[ATDrake]

Finished Liar Moon by Ben Pastor, 2nd in her Martin Bora, Conscientious WWII Wehrmacht Officer With An Increasingly Troubled Conscience series of sleuth stories set in assorted Nazi-occupied countries. This one has a time skip to 1943 in Northern Italy, where the case involves investigating the suspicious murder of a wealthy fascist supporter civilian who has no lack of local suspects with much motivation beyond the political, in between his regular duties hunting resistance partisans (and deniably helping prisoners escape, maybe).

Apparently these are written out of chronological order, up and down Bora's timeline, and make references to personal events that got written years down the line in later books (mostly the ones not available in English, unfortunately). Which does give it a greater sense of fleshed-outness, and the sense that the author has his entire life story planned out and isn't just making it all up as she goes along (though that would also be perfectly okay if it were convincingly done). Though I do wonder if the real life German officer Bora is based upon suffered exactly that same serious war injury (but not enough to go look up his Wikipedia entry just yet, in case of spoilers if their lives mirror that closely).

Anyway, this had more of a feel of a conventional police procedural story than the 1st book, pairing Bora with a local Italian police investigator of non-fascist sympathies, which provides for a nice contrast, showing how he's viewed by the outside world even as he struggles with his internal dilemmas. I liked this one, and have started the next, which is another Italian episode, moving south to Rome.

[astrangerhere]

Started East of West: The Apocolypse Year Two last night. But since that is a big, gorgeous hardcover comics collection, I needed something else for daytime reading breaks.

As such, I have been cherry-picking Long Reads for some essays and other nonfiction. This morning it was Akemi Johnson's "Ladies' Night: Circling the Bases on Okinawa."

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Now I'll go for the last book in the Brian Sadler series, The Bones in the Pit, supposedly another conspiracy mystery from the Knights Templar period.

Finished reading the fourth book of Brian Sadler series, The Bones in the Pit, by Bill Thompson, and this time I am giving it a four star rating. The author has very intricately dealt with the complex story where Brian Sadler and a devious Cardinal of the church are pitted against each other in a race to learn secrets protected by the Knights Templars for a thousand years. Recommended read for the lovers of contemporary thrillers.

Next up, I'll take Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for a change of taste.