CBR16 Book 42: "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis

Page count: 512 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: Award Winner (Won the Hugo and Locus awards in 1998, plus a bunch of others)

Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Scene on a boat or body of water (there's a lot of rowing on the river)

CBR16 Bingo: Tech (time travel requires pretty specific technology)

This is the second book in the Oxford Time Travel series, but you really don't need to have read the first one, Doomsday Book, to understand and enjoy this one.

In the universe these books are set in, time travel was discovered, but once it was further discovered that no items could be taken back to the future, so it couldn't be used to gain riches or plunder the past of treasures, the technology became used solely by historians, and there are strict rules that must be followed when doing it for academic pursuits.

Ned Henry is an Oxford historian in the 2050s who feels like he's going mad. Lady Schrapnell, a frightfully wealthy and extremely demanding woman is funding the recreation of Coventry Cathedral (in Oxford, for reasons not really explored in the book) and is demanding that absolutely everything is exactly like it was before the Cathedral was destroyed in an air raid during World War II. Ned has been sent on countless missions back to the past to locate something known as the bishop's bird stump (I had to google this, it turns out it's an incredibly ugly vase shaped like a tree stump with decorative birds on it), because that was one of the items apparently present in the church at the time. Because he has been unable to locate it, Ned has had to go back to the past and visit any number of church bazaars and jumble sales in the hopes of finding the blasted relic. If people are sent back too often, they start getting delerious and behave very oddly, so Ned is ordered by his boss to get some rest.

He can't get the required rest in the present, however, because if tyrannical Lady Whatsherface discovers his whereabouts, she'll just demand that he keeps looking for the bird stump. So Ned's boss sends him back to the Victorian age, to hide out for a few weeks and get the much-needed break he requires. In the Victorian age, he encounters a fellow Oxford historian, Verity Kindle, who is trying to undo an unfortunate mistake, and if they don't manage to set things right, it could have consquences for the entire future timeline. While working together to fix Verity's mistake, she and Ned also have to try to make sure that Lady Schrapnell's ancestor, a truly dimwitted girl, doesn't fall in love and marry the wrong person, a task that proves more complicated than one might first have imagined.

I read Doomsday Book back in 2016 and don't remember it very fondly. It was far too long, the plot meandered a lot and because most of the story takes place during the Black Plague, it was also pretty depressing. This book is much lighter in tone, and a lot of the plot plays out like a farce, with humorous mix-ups, misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and a fairly large cast of rather ridiculous characters. The book is also full of literary allusions and clever references to all sorts of academic things, at least 50% of which went entirely over my head. I'm not sure I'm clever enough to appreciate this book on as many levels as the author intended.

Ned and Verity are both extremely likable characters, and my main complaint about the book is that there is so much faffing about and preventing romances between other characters, so there isn't enough time for them to spend together on page, developing their own romance. Nevertheless, this was a fun read, and I'm very much looking forward to my book club's discussion of it in August (we were supposed to have the meeting in June, but too many people were sick or busy, so we just postponed everything over the summer, which also gives more people the chance to read the book). Considering some of the books we've had in the previous months have been rather disappointing, this one felt like a breath of fresh (albeit confusing) air. 

Judging a book by its cover: This book has been out for decades, and as such, there are a lot of different covers for it, most of which I dislike. The cover for my e-book copy isn't great either, but at least I like the warm colours on it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 1: "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Page count: 224 pages

Rating: 1.5 stars 

Warning! This review will contain spoilers, because after my book club discussion yesterday, I'm actually quite cranky about this book, and it's impossible for me to rant properly if I can't spoil the heck out of these stories. Don't worry, you don't actually want to read this book anyway.

In a small, dark basement café in Japan, visitors can travel briefly back in time, if they observe a series of very careful rules.

1. They can only go back to meet and interact with someone who has also been to the café. 
2. Nothing that happens in the past will change the present. No matter what they go back to do or say, the present will remain unchanged
3. They have to sit in one specific seat in the café. This seat is usually occupied by a silent lady reading a book. The lady is in fact a ghost, and if you try to forcefully move her, she will place a curse on you. She leaves her seat about once a day, to visit the toilet (and yes, you can keep giving her coffee to speed the process along), that's when a person has their chance.
4. You cannot leave the seat when you are in the past, then you will immediately be returned to the present.
5. You travel back to the past when you are poured a cup of a special coffee. You have only until the coffee gets cold before you have to return. You also have to drink the entire cup of coffee, or you become a ghost and replace the current ghost lady.
6. You only get to do the time travel thing ONCE - no do-overs.

Suffice it to say, most people can't actually be bothered, considering all the rules and how short a time they get to visit a past moment in their lives. Nevertheless, this book is split into four stories, with four different people who choose to use the magical option. 

The first story is called The Lovers. At the start of it, a couple go to the café and the man dumps the woman. Quite a lot is made of how beautiful and accomplished the woman is (she could apparently be a model on the cover of magazines). Nevertheless, she is dumped by her programmer boyfriend who is going to America for a job. A week later, she's back at the café, desperate for a chance to go back in time, because she froze when confronted by the bad news, and she never got a chance to tell her man "Don't go!". You'd think a beautiful, successful woman (who it is described always has guys trying to get her attention) would look at what a big sea there was out there for her to explore, and how many figurative fish there were in said sea for her to potentially date. But no, even knowing that going back in time will NOT CHANGE the present, so her man will still be off in America pursuing his career rather than being with her, she chooses to go. 

By the end of her time travel meeting, he tells her to wait, and he'll be back in three years. The point of a lot of the first story is obviously info-dumping for the readers how the time travel thing actually works. We also get flashbacks to the couple's early days of their relationship. It seems it took something like ten coffee dates for the guy to even realise they were dating, so he wasn't the most perceptive of dudes. Our beautiful, kind, and successful career lady, who could clearly find a more deserving man at the drop of a hat is perfectly happy to be kept on the hook for THREE years, waiting for a guy who didn't have the guts to tell her he was going to America until the SAME DAY he was leaving. 

The second story is about a husband and wife, who have both appeared as supporting characters in the first story. The husband is a landscape gardener who suffers from Alzheimer's. He frequently spends his days in the café, reading gardening magazines and taking notes. His wife, a nurse, comes in to pick him up, but a lot of the time recently, he no longer remembers who she is. Someone overhears him saying he wants to use the time travel chair to give his wife a letter. So she decides to go back in time instead, and while you can't change anything about the present by visiting the past, you can apparently take back objects without any difficulties. She meets her husband of several years ago, and he gives her a letter. The letter is significant because, in their relationship, she was always the one who wrote long intricate letters. He is apparently barely literate and would normally respond to her with just a sentence or two. But now he's written her a letter, and it's all about how he knows that he's sick and his greatest fear is that she because she is a nurse, will stop being his wife once he stops remembering her, and just act in the role of his carer and nurse. He doesn't want that, and pretty much gives her his blessing to move on with her life, if need be. Wifey is very touched and insists that everyone go back to calling her by her married name. She proceeds to basically go on dates with her husband, whether he remembers her or not

The third story is about two sisters. Another of the recurring characters in the stories is a woman who frequently sits at the counter with her hair in curlers. She runs a hostess bar nearby and is clearly an exuberant person. It's mentioned that she makes people feel comfortable and welcome, and that's one of the reasons the little hostess bar she runs is so successful. Hostess lady has a younger sister, who comes around every few months, trying to see her older sister. During her most recent visit, Hostess lady hid behind the counter for several hours, just to avoid seeing her. This is because Hostess lady is convinced her younger sister must hate her. Their parents owned a successful inn somewhere in the countryside and always expected older sister to take over and run it one day. But she wanted no such thing and left the family about a decade ago, so now her parents have pretty much disowned her, and it became the younger sister's duty to run the inn. Hostess lady is convinced her younger sister hates her because she is stuck fulfilling the wishes of their parents, while Hostess lady is off in the big city, enjoying a life of independence. 

The reason Hostess lady suddenly wants to travel back in time is that younger sister dies. She's killed in a car accident on her way back from the city, and now Hostess lady's parents hate her even more, because they blame her for their youngest daughter's death. Hostess lady feels bad that she kept trying to avoid awkward conversations, so she wants to go back to her sister's last meeting and tell her she loves her. This time, when the sister arrives, Hostess lady is sitting in the magic time travel chair and they have a heartfelt conversation. Turns out little sister doesn't hate Hostess lady, she just misses her and had always dreamed of the two of them running the inn together. Which is sweet, I guess. Now comes the bit that's less sweet. After returning to the present, Hostess lady (who has spent the last decade or so happily living an independent life in the city, desperately avoiding having to run an inn in the countryside just to please her parents) decides that she must return and beg her parents' forgiveness and take over running the inn in the countryside, because it was her sister's dying wish. Which it wasn't even! Her sister (now dead) dreamed of them running the inn TOGETHER. Little sister is dead, it's sad and tragic and a horrible waste. Hostess lady pretty much ran away from home so she wouldn't have to ever succeed her parents and become an inn manager. They already hate her - so what if they hate her a bit more and blame her wrongfully for her sister's death? Instead of staying in the city, enjoying her single lifestyle, and doing her dream job, she goes back home and becomes an inn manager. But it's ok, she sends the people at the café a picture where she looks happy - so everything ended up OK in the end? Really... that's the moral here?

The fourth story is about the wife of the café owner, who is portrayed as this friendly, cheerful woman, who has always been sickly and in and out of hospital because of a weak heart. Now she's pregnant, but it's obvious that the pregnancy is taking a massive toll on her. Her husband doesn't want to make a choice between his wife or the baby (i.e. tell her to get an abortion), and the wife wants this baby, even if she is most likely going to die giving birth to it. Wifey wants to use the very unusual option of going FORWARD in time, a much more tricky situation, as when you go back in time, you can think about a specific event, where you know the person you want to meet will be there. Going forward in time - who knows what will happen? 

The waitress who works at the café, and who is always the one to pour the special coffee for the time travelers, promises Wifey that she will make sure her daughter is in the café at the agreed-upon time and place in the future. Even so, there is a mix-up, with the date and time, and neither the waitress nor Wifey's husband is present when she pops into the future. The café even seems to be run by someone else. However, in a stroke of luck for Wifey (it's her only chance to travel in time, remember?), her daughter appears to be working in the café part-time and enters with enough time for her mother to see her and talk to her. Instead of jumping forward to when her daughter would be about ten, Wifey has jumped to when her daughter is a teenager. A teenager who has actually appeared in the café as a time traveler to the past, showing up to take a selfie with herself and Wifey (no one understood the significance at the time). Wifey is reassured that her daughter is doing well and that neither she nor her father seems to resent Wifey for the choice of having a baby, and then leaving her husband as a widower and single father, and her daughter mother-less. In fact, it seems like the woman from story nr one, The Lovers, now works in the café and has been something of a foster mother for the daughter. So maybe she doesn't get back with her dead-beat boyfriend? Who knows? 

One of the members of my book club ended up listening to the entire series of these books (there are four translated into English so far) and while he agreed that on the surface, some of these stories might seem quite nice, the core values expressed by the author throughout the stories are deeply conservative and pretty much all amount to women conforming to the traditional values of good wives and daughters. If a sacrifice has to be made, it's always the woman who makes it. I didn't think too hard about the various stories as I read the book (during the two days before our book club meeting), but during our one-hour discussion, we discussed each of the stories in more depth and agreed that most of them ended up being quite unsettling. This was supposed to be a nice, cozy winter read, and instead turned out to be a rallying call for the patriarchy, apparently. So I'm not going to apologise for spoiling all the stories. I don't plan to read any more from the author, and I don't think anyone else should either. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover image doesn't capture the fact that on the hardback copies at least, the teal green is all shimmery, and the wallpaper looks like actual brocade. This is still a cozy cover, but the hardback book is so pretty. The cat on the cover is a total lie, however. There is no cat at any point in any of the stories. They'd probably be better if there had been. Most books are better with cats.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR14 Book 38: "Just One Damned Thing After Another" by Jodi Taylor

Page count: 332 pages

Rating: 3 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Time (the whole book is about time travel to different points in Earth's history)

Dr. Madeleine "Max" Maxwell is recruited by the seemingly rather mundane St. Mary's Institute of History, only to discover that they are actually a secret organisation that time travels to various points in history, for research purposes. Obviously, you can't just throw anyone into a time machine and have at it, so there's a lot of training. Then there's the fact that time travel is rather dangerous, and she starts to see why there aren't all that many historians actually working long-term for St. Mary's. Most don't have what it takes, and either quit or get killed in action. 

Nevertheless, Max manages not only to pass training but after a series of misadventures, to be one of the few historians left on active duty. After some missions back in time where something always seems to go mysteriously wrong, Max is let in on a secret. St. Mary's is not the only group of time travelers out there, and their rival group is not just interested in observing and documenting different parts of history. Some of the higher-ups in St. Mary's are in fact from the future and have come back in time specifically to found the organisation, to fight the rogue time travelers who want to exploit history for profit and who have no qualms about killing any member of St. Mary's they come across. 

Max's adventures take her to 11th Century England, World War I France, and even all the way back to the Cretaceous Period to observe and document dinosaurs (!), but there may be traitors among the crew at St. Mary's and coming back from her missions alive and unharmed is not guaranteed. She learns almost too late that some that she had considered friends are far from it, and if she's not clever and resourceful, she may end up as dinosaur snack food.

This is the first in a long series of books and novellas, collectively known as The Chronicles of St. Mary's. Jodi Tayor started these books back in 2013, and book 13 was published earlier this year. There are also more novellas than I bothered counting on Goodreads. My friend Ida really likes them and has read the whole series, if I'm not mistaken. Based on the first book, I'm not entirely sure if I can be bothered continuing with the series. The book starts slowly and there is a lot of exposition. I get that the author felt the need to explain the hows and whys of St. Mary's and the time travel, but it got a bit dull. The first third or so of the book felt like rather a slog, then the plot got a lot more interesting, only to get a bit long-winded and meandering towards the end of the story again.

Part of the challenge here is that we keep being introduced to a fairly large gallery of characters, only for some of them to get killed off or disappear early in the story. Some characters are referred to with more than one name, making it a bit confusing who's actually in any given scene. Max is not always an easy character to root for, something I wouldn't necessarily have minded if the plot was holding my attention. There's a romance subplot that could absolutely have been better developed, and just felt a bit tacked on, with no good build-up for how or why these characters liked each other or were attracted to one another, not to mention some rather erratic behaviour from both characters that didn't exactly fill me with confidence for their continued happiness in future books. 

A quick glance through my digital book collection shows me that I own the second book in audio and the fourth book as an e-book, both acquired in sales, so I may give the series another chance at a future point in time. After all, I'm now a huge fan of several series that took two or three books to really catch my interest. 

Judging a book by its cover: It seems as if this book has had a variety of covers, some of them rather odd. One of the covers seems to be a muddle of pastel clouds, a teacup, and some generically "Britain" images in the background. Then there's one with a big swirly clock face on the bottom half, while there's a scene from some classical time period, with a topless dude wearing half a toga running past some temple-like buildings. I much prefer the edition I have, with sections in shades of red and black and dinosaur silhouettes. Dinosaurs rule. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 10: "Beyond the Hallowed Sky" by Ken MacLeod

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2 stars

Official book description:

When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.

 

This book was the March selection in my fantasy/sci-fi bookclub, and the book description makes it sound like time travel is a MUCH bigger part of the plot than it really is. In fact, it's only really mentioned in the prologue and then never again. I'm sure it's going to be expanded upon in future volumes of this series, but since this is the first and only book so far, and no sequels have yet to be given release dates, it's a bit difficult not to feel a bit cheated. 

 

There were a whole load of interesting concepts visited in this book, but none of them really came together properly, and the whole novel ended up feeling like the setup for the next story, which doesn't exist yet. Set in the near-future, when the borders of the world have changed somewhat, one of our story's plotlines is set in Scotland, where a ship's engineer sees something that shouldn't really exist and starts to ponder space travel because of it. The second of the storylines is set on a space station orbiting Venus, where an andoid reporter is investigating and possibly spying. The third of the storylines is set far away on an alien colony, where there is mysterious happenings afoot and possibly hostile alien lifeforms in sentient rock threatening the Earth colonists. It's only in the very end of the book all these storylines meet up, and by that point, I wasn't really sure I'm too bothered about reading what comes next.

 

This seemed to be the general consensus of the member in my book club too. A lot of people were disappointed that the book seemed to promise time travel, then there was only a brief mention of it. Some thought that the storyline with the Scottish engineers dragged too much (me included) although there is some interesting stuff about artificial intelligence that pretty much anticipates your needs. By the time you've remembered that you should buy your wife a present, your social media AI has already placed and paid for an order of the thing your wife would most like. Pretty neat, but again not really explored in enough detail.

 

The clearly modelled on James Bond journalist/spy andoid on the space station had a lot of promise too, but I didn't like where his arc ended up. The storyline that possibly dragged the most for me was the one on the alien colony. We never really find out which faction of humanity has discovered faster than light travel and managed to send people to the far reaches of space, they're too busy trying to figure out why possibly ancient aliens residing in the rocks are trying to attack them. By the end of the story, it seems as if more of humanity is being sent to the alien planet to colonise, including the son of the Scottish engineers we've also read about, so I'm guessing the next book will explore life in space a lot more. Whether I will be picking up book two if it ever gets written, is another story.

Giving this book two stars might seem harsh, but I really did only find it OK. I kept putting it down and forcing myself to pick it back up, and I don't see myself ever wanting to reread it, or keep on reading the series. It seems like Ken MacLeod has written a bunch a books, but based on this novel, he's not an author I'll be reading anything more from anytime soon.

Judging a book by its cover: Fairly generic sci-fi cover, really. A wormhole or black hole or some sort of space portal. A teeny tiny little space craft. The hint of what is probably an alien planet. Nothing too exciting, nothing too objectionable.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 39: "Paper Girls, vol 1" by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang

Page count: 144 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR13 Bingo: Gateway

It's just after Halloween 1988, and four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls have a very unusual night, full of surprises, peril, and unexpected occurrences.

I went into Paper Girls knowing literally nothing about it except that it was written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang, both artists whose work I've liked in the past. Did I know it was set in the late 1980s? Nope. Did I know the protagonists were pre-teens? Big old no. Had I given the title or contents much thought? No, again. I'd just heard a lot of people say it was good, and when the first volume was on offer at my local nerd emporium (where I get pretty much all of my comics, dead tree fantasy and/or sci-fi books, Funko Pops, pop culture-inspired tat and tabletop wargaming paraphernalia for the husband), I picked it up and decided to read it this summer.

I have a turbulent relationship with the creative works of Brian K. Vaughan. I read and mostly enjoyed a lot of his Y: the Last Man, until he made some choices, especially regarding the fate of one of my favourite characters in the final volume that I still have not forgiven him for. He also wrote that absolutely rubbish lions of Baghdad zoo comic, which I literally threw across the room in exasperation. However, he then earned a LOT of forgiveness for Saga, although the jury is out on how much trouble he's in at the moment since the title is STILL on hiatus and my charitable thoughts towards him could go either way, depending on how the series continues (those of you who have read Saga, vol 9 know what I'm referring to). So I was a bit wary about picking up a new title from him.

I've enjoyed Cliff Chiang's art in both Brian Azzarello's run on Wonder Woman and in Ms. Marvel. He still does good work here. 

Volume 1 collects the first six issues of Paper Girls, which I read in an afternoon in mid-July (yes, that is how far behind on reviews I am right now - go corona brain crossed with depression! No initiative at all here). I enjoyed what I read, but was also massively confused, as I honestly had no preconceptions about what I'd be reading, but I certainly hadn't expected a sort of Stranger Things crossed with The X-Files. There is a lot of set-up in these six issues, much of it very muddled, and while I'm sure it will all become more clear once I read more (because I was hooked enough that I will pick up at least the following two volumes to give it a chance), as of now, I didn't really think I could rate this any higher than I have. I thought it fit well into the Gateway square, as it was my gateway into this new comics universe. 

Judging a book by its cover: See, I don't think the girls on this cover look 12! One of them is smoking, for heaven's sake! Yes, yes, I know a whole bunch of individuals started smoking early in the olden days, but I still wasn't expecting this foursome of tough-looking young ladies to be as young as they are. So possibly Cliff Chiang's cover art could have been more clear? Possibly I just needed to do the bare minimum of research about the comic before picking it up? Anyways, I blame this cover for being surprised at how young our protagonists are. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 33: "One Last Stop" by Casey McQuiston

Page count: 432 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR13 Bingo: they/he/she (the author is non-binary and bisexual (and uses any pronouns) and the book features pretty much all iterations of the queer spectrum, I'm not sure there is a straight character of any significance in the whole book)

Official book description:

Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that.

But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane.

All hard edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on the train every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one—namely, displaced in time from the 1970s—she thinks maybe it’s time to start believing.

Casey McQuiston's debut novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, was probably my absolute favourite novel of 2019. It's still a massive comfort read for me. So obviously McQuiston's follow-up was eagerly anticipated. Nevertheless, publishing a second novel can be a massive undertaking, especially when your debut became such a huge and popular bestseller. Personally, while I liked One Last Stop, it took me much longer to get into the story and I doubt I'll be revisiting it as often as I have her first novel. 

In some ways, this book is a contemporary romance, albeit with a cast of pretty exclusively queer characters (August's mother seems to be straight, but she's a tertiary character at best). And then you add in the strange time loop phenomenon, with Jane stuck on the self-same subway train that August takes to college and work every day since the 1970s, without ever aging or changing in any way. Does this make the story science fiction? Magical realism? Fantasy? I can't really say, because apart from the rather big issue of a queer woman from the 1970s stuck on the New York subway for about fifty years, this book is all about figuring out who you are, finding your people (found family is a HUGE sub-plot in the book), discovering what you want and how to get it. Yet it also gives McQuiston the chance to show off all the meticulous research she's done on New York City and the history of the LGBTQ+ issues facing a lot of the inhabitants historically. 

Just as with Red, White & Royal Blue, the book is filled with wonderful characters, many of whom I'd love to read full books about (not you, August's Mum, you're a bit too obsessive for my tastes). August isn't as instantly likable as Alex and Henry and possibly because she's a bit more prickly as a protagonist, I wasn't as rapidly pulled into the story this time around. Reading about New York, especially since the Pandemic has made it impossible for us to go visit again, is never not going to be bittersweet, though. Once it becomes clear to August and her flatmates/adopted family that Jane is, in fact, a woman who existed in the 1970s and is still mysteriously on their local subway train, I was pretty much along for the whole ride (see what I did there, that's a clever play on words, that is).

Yet again, I'm sorry that corona fatigue, depression, and being a rather overwhelmed mother have made it impossible for me to review this in a timely fashion. McQuiston and the book deserve better. TL, DR: not as amazingly charming and easily devoured as Red, White & Royal Blue, but still very much worth your time. 

Judging a book by its cover: I'm sadly not as knowledgable about the various queer flags available nowadays, but I suspect the shades of light pink, rose and purple are a nod to both the bisexual flag and the lesbian flag since August is bi and Jane is a lesbian. I also like that she's gone with mainly pink covers for both of her novels now, this is a really cute one, and I can't wait to have both paperbacks next to one another on my shelf eventually. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

#CBR11 Book 17-20: "Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight", "Captain Marvel:Down", "Avengers Assemble: The Enemy Within" and "Avengers Assemble: Infinity" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and assorted artists

Total page count: 544 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Back in the summer of 2016, I read what I believed to be the first trade in a run about Captain Marvel, but that turned out to be incorrect and Marvel had just been stupid in how they were rebranding and renumbering their comics. As I came to discover, the reason there was so little back story given about Carol Danvers, her powers and her role in the Avengers, is because despite being entitled Vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More, it was by no means the start of Kelly Sue DeConnick's run.

Rather let down by the experience, I put Captain Marvel on the back burner and decided to read other things instead. Then she became the first female superhero to get her own standalone film in the MCU, and it felt like I should probably give her another chance. I always prefer to read the source material before seeing a movie (although honesty forces me to admit that when it comes to the MCU, Captain Marvel is more the exception than the rule. My husband has nagged me for years to read Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America (which forms the basis for much of The Winter Soldier and some of Civil War and that's still firmly on the TBR list). Anyway, I had some of the comics and sat down to read them the weekend before I was going to the cinema to see Captain Marvel. As is sadly the norm for these reviews now, that was more than two months ago now, so my recollection of the various stories is a bit fuzzy.

Hence this review is going to to be light on the various plots of the books and focus more on my reactions to the stories (as far as I can remember them now). All this vagueness makes for thrilling reading, I know. Sorry. I should also mention that if you haven't read these comics before seeing the film, there are some spoilers regarding the motivations of some characters. Nothing major, because the film does its own thing, with mostly the costume and Carol's name taken from the comics, but still - I was able to predict some things that could be considered spoilery.

In In Pursuit of Flight, Carol Danvers actually ends up travelling back in time when trying to set a new flight record, and helps a group of female fighters battle a sinister enemy during World War II. In Down, she reunites with the previous Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and they work together to fight an alien threat coming from the ocean depths. There was also a Captain Marvel/Avengers Assemble cross over focusing on Carol's past, which gave insight into how she got her powers in the first place (in flashbacks), in the actual story, she's having seizures every time she tries to fly and horrible headaches. There is an old enemy of hers staging attacks all over New York and she needs the help of the Avengers to stop the various enemies and figure out what is going on. There was also more of a big space cross over thing, which was less interesting, probably because I suspect it would have helped to read more of the surrounding issues, and they weren't included in the trade.

I read the comics, not knowing all that much about Carol Danvers, and then shortly afterwards watched the film. I've now seen the movie twice, and I really like Carol as a character, both in these comics and in the film. I think it's absolutely abysmal that it took the MCU twenty one films to make one focusing on a woman, but this review is not really the place to go into that. Because it's been two months since I read the comics, it's difficult for me to separate my view of comics Carol with movie Carol. Suffice to say, having now read a lot more of Kelly Sue DeConnick's early run on the title, I should probably go re-read Higher, Further, Faster, More, since I suspect it'll make a lot more sense.

Judging a book by its cover: As this review covers a number of Captain Marvel trade collections, let's just skip over this part. The covers are cool, some using art reminiscent of the golden and silver age of comics. Carol's new Captain Marvel costume looks awesome, so much better than her old "bathing suit" one.

#CBR10 Book 64: "Outcast" by Adrienne Kress

Page count: 322 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

#CBR10 Bingo: Backlog (on my TBR list since June 2013)

Riley Carver lives in a little town somewhere in the Southern USA. For the past six years, on a particular day, angels come from the heavens and take away some of the townspeople. One year ago, the angels took Riley's best friend, almost boyfriend, Chris. So she's refusing to to leave the house (even though the whole town is supposed to the public celebration - or face strong censure), and when she sees an angel in the backyard, she shoots it in the face. Imagine her surprise when she finds a hot naked guy in place of the angel. Riley locks the unconscious guy in her father's tool shed, determined to question him when he wakes up.

Turns out, the hot naked guy has absolutely no memory of being an angel, and can't tell Riley a thing about where they go or why they're abducting townspeople every year. In fact, Gabe McClure thinks it's still the 1950s, which is apparently when he was snatched by the angels. Obviously, Riley can't keep him locked up in the shed for ever, so she gets him some clothes and soon he's used his charm to convince her mother he's been hired as a handyman and promised room and board, and he enrols in Riley's school and becomes super popular with his good looks and general James Dean vibe.

Gabe doesn't seem to take all that long to adjust to modern times, and while he and Riley don't spend a lot of time together in school, they work together to try to figure out the mystery of the angels and the kidnappings in their spare time. Why did the angels snatch a group of people in 1956 and then no one for another fifty years or so? Why are they returning annually now? Is the creepy Pastor Warren in league with the angels somehow? How can Riley and her motley band of allies (because of course she recruits some) get the missing townspeople back?

Ah, the joys of reviewing something about a month and a half after I actually finished it. Luckily, the plot of Outcast is quite memorable, even though I can't give you the names of specific supporting characters or an exact time frame without looking stuff up (and I really can't be bothered).

The "outcast" of the title can refer to Riley just as easily as Gabe. Riley isn't exactly one of the popular people at school and really only had one friend, Chris, who gave her a kiss about a week before he was taken by the angels, and Riley doesn't even know if she could have loved him, because he's just gone and she's had to mourn and miss him for a whole year, growing steadily angrier. Initially, she's a little bit too convinced of her own superiority and seems to almost look down on her fellow high schoolers, but she warms up and makes some new friends as the story progresses.

Gabe (for those keeping count, I think this is the third book this year that I've read where the hero is a Gabe or a Gabriel) was a bit of a bad boy, who lived on the "wrong side" of town and mainly spent his time with the poor, black people who lived nearby before he was taken. He suspects one of the reasons nobody knew about the angel abduction in the 50s was because he was the only white person to disappear, nobody much cared about the people who went missing.

While I enjoyed this book and the angels turned out to be both mysterious and a bit creepy, my biggest problem is that the story doesn't feel finished. This very much has the feel of the first book in a series. There's a lot of stuff we discover about Riley that's never adequately explained, the romance in the latter third with Gabe is very rushed, and the conclusion just screams the need for at least one sequel. According to comments online, it seems this was always supposed to be a duology, and  the story certainly ends on a cliff hanger. Sadly, five years later, Ms Kress still hasn't produced a sequel, and so this book frustratingly stand alone and the story is unfinished.


Judging a book by its cover: This cover actually does a pretty good job of evoking some of the elements of the story. The silhouette of Gabe and Riley on his lovingly restored motorcycle against the romantic sky (possibly after their date) with angel wings outlined in the sky above them. It's not bad at all, in fact.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR Book 48: "Kindred" by Octavia E. Butler

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 5 stars

In what must be the most frightening birthday surprise ever, on Dana's 26th birthday, as she is moving into a new house with her husband Kevin, she suddenly feels dizzy and gets transported away from her safe and familiar surroundings in 1976. She comes to in the woods by a river, where a boy is in the process of drowning. Dana reacts instinctively and wades into the water, rescuing the boy. Faced with the boy's hysterical mother, and more terrifyingly, the boy's angry father, who points a rifle at her, Dana is suddenly back with her husband. She might have believed that she hallucinated the whole thing, except she's wet and muddy and bruised after being pummelled by the boy's hysterical mother.

It doesn't take long before it happens again. Now Dana is transported into an old house, and has to put out a fire in some curtains. While it's barely been a few hours for Dana in 1976, the boy she rescued in the river has clearly aged a few years. Not only that, he lives in the early 19th Century, in Maryland, long before slavery was abolished. While the boy, Rufus, gets increasingly older with each new encounter, barely any time passes in Dana's present between each new and terrifying time jump. She's unable to relax and enjoy her life, never sure when she may be suddenly dragged back through time. She begins keeping supplies with her in a bag, tied to her body, and her visits in the past seem to last longer with each new encounter.

At first Dana, who is a young black woman, cannot understand what connects her to this white man, but as she learns more about him and where he's from, she figures out that he must be one of her ancestors and something inexplicable is drawing her to him every time he is in danger. She needs to make sure he stays alive long enough to father the girl who will pass on Dana's family line. With each consecutive stay in the past, Dana's own life is further endangered, and there is the very real and scary possibility that she might die, trying to ensure that she ever gets born in the first place.

Kindred was the June 2018 CBR book club selection, one of the most highly rated books in the history of the site (I suspect its average rating has gone up even more now, with more people reading or re-reading it). My copy was given to me during the CBR gift exchange last year, and I was very excited when it was picked for the book club. I've long wanted to read something by Octavia E. Butler, and this, while nominally science fiction, seemed a lot more like historical fiction with a twist to me. Readers of my reviews know that while I do occasionally find the odd sci-fi book that I really enjoy, it's still one of the genres I keep having to challenge myself to keep trying and more often than not, it doesn't entirely work. But historical fiction with some time travel - that's pretty much Outlander. In addition, I am always aware that I should read more diversely. I'm a middle class white woman, I need to read books by individuals from different cultural, racial and religious background than my own.

While I didn't classify it as such in my tags, this book could clearly have been tagged as suspense. Dana's initial jump into the past is quick and doesn't get too scary, but with each subsequent encounter between her and Rufus, the stakes get higher. By the second visit, Dana figures out that it's danger to Rufus that makes him call her to him in the past, but it takes her a bit longer to understand that it's danger to herself that sends her back forward to her own time. Interestingly, as she spends more time in the past and gets accustomed to the brutality then, it takes more and more to send her home, as she comes to learn just how resilient her body actually is.

It's never explained how Dana comes to be jumped through time, but she learns quickly that whatever she touches at the time is sent back with her and in one particularly dramatic incident, her husband Kevin is sent back with her. Because Kevin is white, everyone in the past (many of whom are not entirely sure what to think of Dana, who is certainly not like the other downtrodden black people - most of whom are slaves - and her strange comings and goings, appearing to barely age) believes him to be Dana's owner. While the idea upsets and disgusts both of them, they figure that it's just easier to go with that story than try to explain their real relationship. Shockingly, Dana is transported back to 1976 without Kevin and while their separation is "only" eight days for her, more than five years have passed for him when she returns. Because the whole story is told from Dana's point of view, we don't learn too much of what Kevin experienced in that long and no doubt harrowing separation.

Dana is an educated and enlightened woman in 1976. Both she and her husband are writers and think they are fairly well informed about history and slavery. Yet Dana quickly discovers that reading about her enslaved ancestors and observing, and in parts, living as a slave is something completely different. Then there's the horrible fact that she needs to ensure that Rufus lives long enough to father the child who will continue the line down to Dana herself. The woman who is to birth the child starts out as a free woman, Alice, who loves someone else, yet Dana needs to pretty much support the enslavement and subjugation of this woman, to ensure that she herself will be born in the future. It's an unthinkable dilemma and naturally does a number on her.

I couldn't quite read this book in one sitting, but every time I picked it up, I found myself reading for longer than I should because I just had to find out what scary and unthinkable thing was going to happen next. Dana is a very engaging protagonist and each of her involuntary visits to the past are contained in separate chapters. Neither she nor the reader knows how long it will be until she's called back and that provides extra impetus to keep reading. Dana's experiences in the past, observing slavery firsthand and coming to both understand and feel personally the effects it had on people, the sad corruption of Rufus (from a little boy who is friends with black children, both enslaved and free to a selfish, petty man who will willingly enslave one of the companions of his childhood) - it all affected me on a deep level. I understand now why this is such an acclaimed book, both among critics and readers in general. I will absolutely be trying more of Ms Butler's books in the future.

Judging a book by its cover: This is the cover of my paperback and as always, books done in black, white and red are very striking and eye catching. There's the hands reaching across the cover, one man's and one woman's. Do they belong to Dana and Kevin? Or Dana and Rufus? Or Rufus and Alice? Alice and her husband's? There are several possibilities. There's the white links, evoking chains. I like the cover a lot.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 57: "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis

Page count: 608 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Kivrin Engle is a young history student at Oxford University, whose dream it is to time travel back in time to the Middle Ages. You see, in the 2050s, historians have the option to travel back in time as a research tool, to truly discover what the past was like. Most historians travel back to the early to mid 20th Century, and there are certain periods that are deemed far too dangerous. The Middle Ages has generally been deemed one of them, due to the devastating effects of the Black Plague.

But Kivrin is to be sent back to the Oxford region around 1320, deemed to be safe enough, as the plague didn't arrive there until 1348. She's learned spinning and weaving, Latin, and Middle English. She's had a translator gadget installed and a slew of inoculations to protect herself. The history department have constructed an elaborate back story for her, to explain why a young woman would be travelling alone in a period when women were never left unattended. Despite the constant worry of her tutor, Mr. Dunworthy, she is determined to go on this brief two week adventure, to observe Christmas celebrations in the past.

Despite Mr. Dunworthy's fussing and protestations, Kivrin is sent back in time as planned, only to discover that book learning and reality are very different things. Instead of arriving close by a road, she is transported into a wood, and although the time travelling "net" that transported her, isn't supposed to let diseases through, she's clearly caught something nasty that's making her dizzy and disorientated. She is rescued by a kindly priest and taken into the household of the local gentry, and once she recovers from her illness, is desperate to figure how to get back to her pick-up point, so she isn't stuck in the past forever. As she's travelled back to the right time of year, it takes her a while to realise that she's not in 1320 after all, but that something has gone badly wrong, and she is in fact, going to witness first-hand the ravages of the Black Plague in England in 1348.

Mr. Dunworthy worries terribly for Kivrin, and once the technician who set her coordinates in the past collapses with a high fever after gasping that "Something is wrong!", he is even more frantic. Dunworthy and his doctor friend Mary Ahrens (who gave Kivrin all her inoculations) are all too soon stuck in a medical quarantine, after the mysterious virus which knocked out the lab technician seems to be spreading with worrying speed and more and more people succumb. Having to work out the logistics of how to house, feed and accommodate people stuck in Oxford during the quarantine and figuring out where the virus originated from becomes more of a priority, but Dunworthy still doesn't stop trying to figure out what has happened to Kivrin. He's determined to get her fetched home safely, no matter what time period she ended up.

I don't read a whole lot of science fiction, but when it's the topic of choice for the Cannonball Read book club, I couldn't very well refuse to join in. As a historian myself, with a particular interest in the Middle Ages, a book in which historians actually have time travel at their disposal seemed like it really was designed to appeal to me, so I purchased the book and set to reading. It's a big book, which starts off slow with a lot of minute details about the preparations to get Kivrin sent off, and then pretty much alternating chapters following Kivrin in the past and Dunworthy in the future. I can see how the book is meant to show us that even with so many centuries of distance, people in general haven't changed all that much and a crisis situation involving a disease epidemic brings out the worst of the crazy and fear in some, while others knuckle down and deal with the realities with patience and compassion.

Even though it was slow in places, and nothing much of anything happened (for a while at least, before all the dying started), I really liked the meticulous descriptions of the Middle Ages and Kivrin's observations there. It was, as they say, relevant to my interests. The bits where Dunworthy is stressing around Oxford, trying to locate the director of the history department or other people by phone or having to deal with the logistics of housing and feeding a bunch of people stranded in the city during the quarantine was less exciting.

Quite purposefully, Willis has a lot of parallels in the narrative, intending to show us, that despite the great differences, there are also similarities between the past and the future. In both time periods, there is a plot moppet who varies between being quite engaging and dreadfully annoying. In 2058, that child is Mary Dunworthy's great-nephew Colin and in 1348, it's Agnes, the youngest daughter of the family Kivrin is staying with. There are people reacting with fear, suspicion and panic in the face of disease and there are people who will work themselves ragged to care for people, without any sort of praise or personal reward. Even in the face of terrible tragedy, like a disease epidemic, most people will be concerned with their own petty goings-on, oblivious to the bigger picture.

I do not think this book needed to be 600 pages long. Far too much of this book involved people not locating others by phone (when predicting the future, Ms. Willis did not anticipate mobile phones or the internet), waiting around for phone calls, being deeply concerned about the availability of toilet paper and eggs, Kivrin frantically trying to get back to the drop point and just too many minute descriptions of mundane events that didn't really further the plot.

I had originally rated this book 4 stars, but in the weeks since I finished it (yes, I'm once again WAY too far behind on my reviews), what I remember most are the boring bits that frustrated me, rather than the good bits that entertained me, and as a result, the book is being downgraded a bit. I'm sure it was a huge literary achievement in 1992 and it's won pretty much all the literary science fiction awards out there, but in 2016, it has dated quite a bit. If I haven't already gotten this across, it is rather dark and depressing book, and towards the latter half, the death toll is unrelenting and dispiriting, both in the Middle Ages and in the future Kivrin came from. The book has a happy ending, of sorts, but I have to wonder about the years of therapy Kivrin is likely to need after her ordeal.

Judging a book by its cover: Since this book came out in 1992, it's had a large array of covers. My edition is the 2012 edition from SF Masterworks, where they tend to have fairly simple and elegant covers. The simple sandy-beige background seems to imply a portal of sorts, with clock faces towards the upper right corner. The hooded person wearing a plague mask is clearly meant to invoke the time period Kivrin travels to, even though no one in the book ever wears such an outfit. The only thing that puzzles me is the stylistic inky cloud behind the person, which seems to be smoky versions of various tools and surgical instruments, really not relevant to the story at all.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR7 Book 59: "The River of No Return" by Bee Ridgway

Page count: 464 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

When Lord Nicholas Falcott, the Marquess of Something-or-other (I finished this book more than a month ago and can't be bothered to go looking up piddling details like that) is about to be killed on the battlefield in Spain in 1812, he suddenly finds himself transported forward in time about 200 years. After being nearly run over by a car, he wakes up in a modern hospital, in the company of a stranger who tells him that jumping through time is less unusual than one might think. There is a secret organisation called the Guild, with very strict rules, the two most important being "There is no return", either in time or place. Once time travellers are trained for a year by the Guild, to get used to their new century and life, they will be relocated to a country other than their homeland, and they may never return. To aid them in their new lives in a strange and wonderful future, keeping the secrets of the past, the Guild pays their members a staggering amount of money each year, allowing them to live in all the luxury they could want. Nicholas is told that as he is believed to have died on the battlefield in Spain, his title died with him. He must now get used to a new name and identity - Nick Davenant.

Some of the time travellers in the Guild training facility are a bit more reluctant to swallow all the corporate cool-aid they are served, and start asking questions. Soon they have gone missing, and Nick is unsure if they left of their own free will, to search out truths elsewhere or whether the Guild had them assassinated. He decides to play it safe, and settles in to a life of comfortable indolence in New York and Vermont. After about ten years as Nick Davenant, he receives a summons from the Guild Alderwoman (head honcho) to meet her in London. So the rules of the Guild are clearly more like guidelines, if the right people want them to be. He discovers that quite a few of the Guild members can travel backwards and forwards in time, and that their rival organisation, the Ofan, can do the same. They just don't want the untrained to try it willy-nilly. Now they need Nick to become Lord Nicholas again, and go back to 1815, resuming his old life as the Marquess, because something is seriously messing up the fabric of time, and the people responsible for it, are possibly connected to the social circles that Nick used to frequent.

By going back to Regency England, Nick has to try to re-learn his role as a nobleman, seemingly unaware of the huge social and political changes taking place in the two centuries since he was born. The Industrial Revolution, the Labour Movement, Women's Suffrage, all of it must be unknown to Lord Nicholas Falcott. He also has to convince his grieving family where he's been for the past three years, since his supposed death in Spain. And in 1815, Nick may finally reunite with the beguiling Miss Julia Percy, whose lovely eyes have haunted and comforted Nick in the decade since he jumped forward in time. What Nick (and his companions) don't know is that Julia is much more closely connected to the mystery they are going back in time to solve, and that she has abilities neither the Guild nor the Ofan have ever experienced before.

I am not of the opinion that just because there is time travel in a story, it's automatically science fiction. There is no time machine anywhere in this novel. This is more of a paranormal fantasy, with a number of individuals with unusual powers, able to travel backwards and forwards in time (or manipulate time in other ways) because of inborn abilities. They're not transporting themselves through time with the aid of technology, which I feel is the requirement for it to be sci-fi (which means that yes, I disagree that Outlander be classified the same way). If forced to classify this book in only one strict genre, I would say that it's a historical romance, Regency, to be specific. The majority of the plot takes place in 1815, with a chunk of the introduction being in our present time. Taking a 19th Century Marquess out of his own, extremely privileged time and plonking him into the 21st Century means he has to go through quite a lot of attitude adjustments. Nick Davenant is an enlightened guy who certainly likes the more sexually liberated women of the future.

When back in Regency England, he has to remember that being alone with an unmarried woman is deeply scandalous. While he is initially quite happy with the progressive ideas his spinster sister had for the distribution of his family lands (believing her brother several years dead), but then is forced to reconsider his reactions, as Lord Nicholas knows nothing of socialism, workers' collectives or women's liberation. Naturally, the quest to find the magical MacGuffin that can save all of time and space is a lot more complicated and time consuming than Nick and his cohorts expected, fraught with unexpected challenges and dangers.

I knew very little about this book when I picked it up, and assumed it was a completely stand-alone story. Had I known what I know now, that the book ends in an extremely open-ended way, with most of the important story threads dangling in the air, and the potential sequel for the book to be released at a currently unknown point in the future, I know that I would have approached it differently, and probably not been as disappointed with the last third of the book. I therefore warn you, dear reader - this is NOT a complete story. There is a prequel (which I haven't read), but as of this moment in time, no sequel, because the author is still working on it. Because I thought it was a self-contained story, I was most upset when the plot was hurtling towards its end, with no clear indication of anything at all being resolved.

As well as the complex time travel rules, with two opposite and rival organisations wanting to control who and how people travel through time, there are all manner of soap-operaesque plot twists. There's romance, evil relatives, grieving parents, an age-old feud spanning through time. It's a very entertaining book, as long as you're fully aware that you're not going to get much of anything resolved, and what is sorted by the end of the book mainly opens up new questions that will presumably be answered in the at some point to be published sequel. I really liked Julia as a character, and Nick grew on me, even though I still think he has a lot of potential for improvement in the sequel. If I'd known this was part one of a story, I suspect I would have rated it higher. I also wouldn't have read it until the sequel (or sequels) were out, if I could help it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 134: "An Echo in the Bone" by Diana Gabaldon

Page count: 1126 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! If you haven't read the previous six books in the series, there will be minor spoiler in this review. Proceed at your own risk. 

Having finally completed my epic re-read of the previous books in the series at a page count total that is frankly obscene, I finally got to read a new to me Diana Gabaldon. When this book first came out in 2009, I just didn't have the energy to expend on re-reading the whole series to catch up and I decided to just put it off. With book eight in the series being published earlier this year, the very entertaining TV series making me remember what I love so much about Gabaldon's writing and the excellent online company/support group I am part of over on Facebook to discuss the books with, I was a lot more motivated to get through the series now. Yet it still took me more than a month to get through this. 

There is so much I love about Gabaldon's writing. Jamie and Claire have been part of my life for a very long time, and I generally find most of the stuff involving them very interesting. But since pretty much book 3, these books aren't really just the continuing adventures of Jamie and Claire Fraser in the 18th Century. There's Brianna and Roger and their kids, now back in Scotland in the early 1980s (which I'm freaking out about a bit, because that's within MY lifetime). There is Jamie's best friend, Lord John Grey, who, when he's not trying to figure out why his niece is pretending to be madly in love with his stepson and hell bent on going to America to be reunited with him, goes about doing not much of anything obviously important or interesting for two thirds of this book. There's said stepson, Jamie's illegitimate offspring, William, the Eight Earl of Ellesmere, who is now a soldier in the British Army. He gets recruited for spy missions, but doesn't seem very good at it. He travels to Canada and back. There are letters between him and his stepfather which may be super interesting for people who are a lot more into the American War of Independence than I am, but to me, it was the literary equivalent of watching paint dry. So much boring.

Jamie and Claire have decided to go to Scotland to fetch Jamie's printing press. Jamie absolutely does not want to get involved in the war, because doing so might mean that he will face his son on the battlefield. The Frasers bring along their nephew, young Ian MacKenzie, because Jamie swore to his sister that he would bring the lad home, and while it's taken quite a long time, and Ian has both been adopted by a Native American tribe, married, divorced and experienced the loss of a child in that time, it would still be good for him to be reunited with his parents. Many many complications arise on their way. It again takes them the best end of the book to actually arrive in Scotland, but because much of their story was action packed and dramatic, I have no real complaint about their sections.

In the future, Roger and Bree have bought Lallybroch and are trying to make a home there. Bree gets a job working for the Scottish hydro-electric board, and Roger debates whether he wants to become a minister after all. They have a stash of letters written to them by Bree's parents, so they can follow along in the continuing adventures of Jamie and Claire, while worrying because they keep ending up in historically significant places and close to or in the midst of important events. Roger is trying to put down everything they know about time travel in writing and their family are settling in nicely when they have a very unexpected visitor about the same time as it is obvious that someone in the village not only knows about the gold Jamie and Claire hid way back in the 18th Century, but are willing to go to rather extreme steps to get to it.

As I said, far more of the book than I cared about is devoted to young William Ransom and Lord John Grey. I love Lord John, he's a great supporting character. I laugh every time I think about how Bree tried to coerce him into marriage. Reading about him in London, talking to his brother about irrelevant family matters, or travelling to France to speak to uninteresting individuals or generally just worrying about the safety of his immediate or extended family was super dull. Reading about William was even more boring, and as this was the first time I read the book, I had no idea which bits I could skim or even skip (now I know). There are seriously multiple chapters devoted to William lost in a swamp, deliriously wandering. Not cool, Diana Gabaldon, not cool. He does eventually have his life saved by young Ian in said swamp, but really, there are better ways those two characters could cross paths.

Not content with a supporting character gallery into double figures already, Gabaldon also introduces some new individuals in this book. William's cousin Dottie seems pretty spunky, for all that she's the sheltered daughter of a Duke. It's very obvious to the reader early on that her and William's story about being madly in love is a clever fiction, but it takes much of the book for the reader to discover why Dottie would go to such lengths to get herself to America. Young Ian, who loved and lost his Native American wife, falls in love again with a Quaker, Rachel Hunter. She and her brother Denzell, who is a doctor, join the Continental army as healers and I very much enjoyed everything with them.

I would have rated this book 3 stars based on the first two thirds, but then things really start coming together and becoming super exciting in the last third. It's quite telling that it took me more than a month to read the first two thirds, and about two days to get through the last third. Jamie and Claire finally make it to Scotland. We get to see Jenny and Ian again, and young Ian is reunited with his family. William and young Ian are both clearly a bit in love with Rachel Hunter. There is quite a lot of interaction between William, Ian, Claire and even Jamie. The bits having to do with the Battle of Saratoga were actually quite exciting. While they're in Scotland, Claire discovers that one of Fergus and Marsali's children desperatey needs surgery, so she returns alone to America. There are heart-breaking confirmed deaths, dramatic presumed deaths, dangerous surgeries being performed successfully, lovers reunited, terrible vengeance nearly wreaked, surprise time travellers from the past, abductions, marriages of convenience, long kept family secrets revealed - so much awesome and drama in only a few hundred pages. Why did I have to spend so much time reading about William in a swamp, Diana, when you are capable of such great things? Why not edit your books more!?!

With so many characters and storylines, Gabaldon also gets to have multiple cliffhangers towards the end of her book, making me really very excited for book 8. I'm now glad that I waited as long as I did to catch up, because (once I am done reading the books I need to complete my various reading challenges) I can go straight into Written in My Own Heart's Blood, which has been rated very highly by those Cannonballers who have already read it, and also appears to be only about 850 pages long, so the shortest book in the series for ages. Due to the excellent ending of this book, I'm now all anticipation.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR4 Book 94: "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

Page count: 247 page
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: October 13th, 2012
Date finished: October 13th, 2012

Blurb from the back of the book, because it's been over a month since I read this (and I read it in only a few hours in the middle of the night during Read-a-thon):

Everyone in town thinks Meg is volatile and dull-witted and that her younger brother Charles Wallace is dumb. People are also saying that their father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother. Spurred by these rumours, Meg and Charles Wallace, along with their new friend Calvin, embark on a perilous quest, through space to find their father. In doing so they must travel behind the shadow of an evil power that is darkening the cosmos, one planet at a time.

I can totally see why this is a beloved children's classic, and it was a delight to read. Engaging child protagonists, missing parents, mysteries, adventure, space travel, exotic foreign worlds, a dark and sinister force as an antagonist - it's pretty much got the lot. Meg is loyal and clever and headstrong and oh so brave and misses her father terribly. She's a wonderful heroine, and it's no wonder that Calvin is so taken with her, even though she's an outcast and he's one of the popular kids in school.

Charles Wallace is a child genius, and as such, could've been incredibly annoying to read about, after all such characters in science fiction are not always beloved (Adric and Wesley Crusher spring to mind). But in the deft hands of Madeline L'Engle, he's neither a plot moppet, nor unbearable, and while he's clearly brilliant, he's also very convincingly a little boy.

You might not think that quantum physics and children's literature were a good combination, but this is a very cleverly written science fiction adventure, and I will absolutely be tracking down the other books in the series to see how the story of Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin develops.

CBR4 Book 68: "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon

Page count: 850 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: June 16th, 2012
Date finished: June 20th, 2012

I'm breaking one of my own rules here, by reviewing a book that I haven't just read once before. This is actually the fourth time I read Outlander, but as it stands up so well, and is still one of my favourite novels of all time, I pretty much had to review it on my blog. Besides, I've completed the main Cannonball Challenge for this year months ago, so I can do what I like!

Claire Randall, a nurse, is on a second honeymoon with her historian husband Frank Randall in the Scottish Highlands in 1946, shortly after the end of World War II. Claire spent the years of the war patching up wounded soldiers, and the couple have barely seen each other for the last five years. They're trying to rekindle the spark of their marriage, when Claire is unexpectedly thrown back in time to 1743, not the safest of places for an unaccompanied Englishwoman of mysterious origins.

Can Claire ever return to her own time? Can a lonely Englishwoman stay alive in the tumultuous time period that is Scotland shortly before the final Jacobite Rising? Claire's fate becomes intertwined with that of a young Scot by the name of Jamie Fraser, and the longer Claire stays in the past, the harder it gets for her to convince herself that what she really wants is to return to her own time, and Frank Randall.

Mrs. Julien, one of the wonderful contributors and regulars on Pajiba, discovered Diana Gabaldon's epic series a few months back, and proceeded to read the epic (so far seven book) series (none of the books are under 750 pages long) in little over a month and a half. Because she and many other book blogging Pajibans discussed the book at length on the Cannonball Blog and Facebook, I was inspired to re-read the book for the first time in what must be at least seven, maybe eight, years.

I adore this book. I discovered the books in 1998, shortly before I was about to graduate high school, and I still thank my lucky stars that there was a teachers' strike that year, so I didn't have to do my final exams, because I'm honestly not sure how well I would've done on them - I was so obsessed with the series (the fourth book had just come out in paperback). I can honestly say that they contributed to my studying Scottish history in my first year of Uni in St. Andrews, and thus saving my degree, as it turned out I was much better at writing History essays than English literary analysis ones.

I love the research that Gabaldon has put into the books. I love that an episode of classic Doctor Who gave Jamie his name and gave Gabaldon the idea for the time period she wanted to set her novels in (and when I first read these books I'd never heard of the show, or seen a single episode). I love the characters - even though Jamie Fraser's awesomeness throughout the series ruins you for all other men, fictional or real. Even the villains are wonderful - and Claire is an amazing heroine.

The book has been classified as many things. Science fiction (although apart from the fact that Claire is sent back in time, there is nothing much sci-fi about them). I frequently find them in the fantasy shelves in bookshops and libraries (I guess it's pretty fantastic that Claire travels back in time). Romance, obviously, it's impossible to deny that at the heart of the story is the absolutely amazing love story between Jamie and Claire. But I would still classify them as historical fiction first and foremost, as they give wonderful insight into a time in the past, and over the course of the series, Gabaldon really does get to show off her research skills. I've learned about a huge number of things from 18th Century Scotland and later other parts of the world (don't want to spoil it for anyone).

Do yourself a favour. Join the many readers of Cannonball who have either newly discovered or in the past enjoyed this book. It's an amazing piece of fiction.

CBR4 Book 10: "The Rose Garden" by Susanna Kearsley

Page count: 478 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: January 25th, 2012
Date finished: January 30th, 2012

When Eva's film star sister Katrina dies, she leaves her PR job in California and goes to Cornwall, where they used to spend their happy childhood summers, to scatter the ashes. Emotionally vulnerable and grieving, she stays with old family friends in the house she remembers so well, and tries to make up for the room and board she's receiving by helping her friends, siblings Mark and Susan, to keep from losing their property. The house has beautiful rose gardens adjoining it, and while they used to have lots of visitors, interest has waned. Susan wants to open a tea room to bring in more tourists, and Eva agrees to help use her PR skills to assist her.

While staying in Cornwall, Eva at first thinks she's hallucinating from grief, as she hears strange voices in the house that no one else can hear. She sees an unfamiliar man, even talks to him a few times, and it's only when she finds herself in her bedroom, wearing his silk robe, that she is forced to admit that she's not going crazy, she just seems to be able to slip back in time to the 18th Century on occasion, and interact with the inhabitants of the house then. While sometimes days can pass on her visits to the past, no time seems to pass in the present while she's gone. Soon Eva is falling in love with Daniel Butler, a Cornish smuggler loosely involved in the Jacobite rebellion, who died centuries before she was born. How can she help her friends in the present, when she's pining for the past, and how can she possibly sustain a viable relationship with a man when she keeps popping back to her own present?

Susanna Kearsley's last book, The Winter Sea, was also a combination of contemporary and historical fiction, woven together. In that book, both the narratives were gripping and kept me turning the pages. The Rose Garden, unfortunately, was much better when Eva was in the past. Her interactions with Daniel, his brother Jack and their friend and fellow smuggler Fergal (who pretends Eva is his sister to explain her sudden presence) were so much more interesting and compelling than her present day endeavours to get to grips with the loss of her sister, and helping the Hallett siblings get their business in order. I kept wanting her to spend less time focusing on the present and go back to the past. To be fair, Eva keeps wanting to return to the past too, so perhaps this is just a clever ploy of Kearsley's, to emphasise how much more awesome Eva's life is there, but I doubt it. Still, a perfectly enjoyable read, and the historical bits are excellent.

CBR3 Book 98: "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher: Vintage
Page count: 528 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: November 21st, 2011
Date finished: November 24th, 2011

Clare is 6 when she meets Henry for the first time, he is 36. Henry is 28 when he meets Clare for the first time, she is 20. Henry is a time traveller. Not in a cool Doctor Who sort of way, where he can travel where ever he wants in time and space. He keeps finding himself thrown either forward or backwards in his own lifetime, always ending up naked, and can stay in the other time for a few seconds, or several days, depending on circumstance.

Hence Clare is delighted when she finally runs into Henry at the library where he works. He's younger than she has ever seen him, she's known him and met with him countless times over the years, growing up. He gives her a list of all the dates when he will appear in the meadow behind her parents' house, so she can have clothes waiting for him in the woods. He helps her with her homework, listens to her troubles, even helps her get back at a douchy boy who hurt her, trying not to reveal to her too early (worried that he will warp her childhood irreparably) that in his present, she is his beloved wife.

The Time Traveler's Wife is obviously not a narrative with a linear plot, it jumps around a LOT. Sometimes there is more than one Henry in the story at the same time. Henry learns all the useful tricks and survival tactics he needs to get by from an older version of himself. I adore this book. I loved it the first time I read it, years and years ago, and decided to reread it to blog it for Cannonball Read. It's still great.

I don't care if the time travel plot device doesn't appeal to some readers, or that it may not consistently make sense within the narrative (a criticism I've read several places). I don't really care WHY or HOW Henry time travels, the important part is the beautiful portrayal of Henry and Clare and their heart breaking and wonderful love story. The first time I read the book, I cried buckets. This time, I managed to get by with just a sniffle, but the ending still gets me. Read the book, avoid the film adaptation like the plague. It sucks, and is just awful.

CBR3 Book 94: "No Proper Lady" by Isabel Cooper

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: November 8th, 2011
Date finished: November 12th, 2011

I picked up this romance because it was voted one of the best of 2011 by Publishers' Weekly, and because claimed it was "Terminator meets My Fair Lady." It's a surprisingly fitting description.

Joan is sent back several hundred years into the past, in a last ditch effort by humanity to save the world from an apocalyptic reality where otherworldly demons are destroying them. She is a warrior, and has to find and kill the man who doomed the world, before he has the chance to open the portals that let the demons into our reality and lost control. Shortly after completing the magic ritual that sends her to 1888, she rescues nobleman Simon Grenville from two hellhounds, and thereby gains his trust. The hellhounds were sent by Alex Reynell, Simon's childhood friend, and just the man Joan has been sent to assassinate.

Simon cut all ties with his former friend once he discovered just how dark the magic Reynell was using was, and because he had Simon's sister Eleanor possessed by a demon. Simon has taken Eleanor to the country to recuperate, and to stem the tide of gossip. He's surprised to find a bleeding, leather-clad warrior woman in a stone circle, but has surprisingly little trouble believing her stories about a where humans are prey to demons and monstrous creatures. He agrees to help Joan stop his former friend, but in order to get her close to Reynell, they will need to turn her from a savage warrior woman with knives and guns and leather trousers to a genteel Victorian lady with a corset, long gowns and impeccable manners.

While there is absolutely a romantic aspect to the novel, I think the fantasy/sci-fi elements are stronger, and would absolutely classify this as fantasy/sci-fi first, romance second. The world building is very good indeed, both the descriptions of the horrific future that Joan comes from, and the Victorian world where some people dabble in actual magic. Reynell is a very convincing and creepy villain, unsuspected by most people, and you never doubt that Joan has good cause to want him dead.

Joan is a good heroine, and while a tough warrior chick, very vulnerable in her new environment, where she quickly realizes that what little research she and her allies were able to do, is pretty much useless, and she is like a fish out of water in many ways. Simon, while he's also the hero of the piece, feels more like a supporting character for a lot of the book. He's very nice, but is never really given the depth that Joan is, and as a result, their romance becomes a less interesting aspect of the book. While I enjoyed it, and the Terminator meets My Fair Lady thing is a spot-on description, I have to disagree with Publishers' Weekly about it being one of the best romances (or fantasy/sci-fi novels) of the year. I would rank several others I've read this year, including Heart of Steel and The Black Hawk, which I read in the last few weeks, as much better.