Northern Lights: His Dark Materials Trilogy, Book 1 – Philip Pullman (Audiobook). Narrated by: Philip Pullman, full cast – 13.08.24

The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials Trilogy, Book 2 – Philip Pullman (Audiobook). Narrated by: Philip Pullman, cast – 15.08.24

The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials Trilogy, Book 3 – Philip Pullman (Audiobook). Narrated by: Philip Pullman, cast – 18.08.24

I have read/watched/listened to Philip Pullman’s magnificent trilogy several times and it never ceases to delight me. An advantage to my terrible memory (always bad, even worse now as I creep nearer to old age) is that I get to be gripped each time – while I remembered the big things that happened, there were many subtle things (subtle knife things, lol!) that I had forgotten and so enjoyed all over again. Now I’m even more desperate for the release of the final instalment in The Book of Dust trilogy (the first of which is a prequel to His Dark Materials, and a good romp, but for me, the middle book, which follows a grown up Lyra and her troubled soul/troubled relationship with her daemon Panteleimon is by far the more engrossing read which ended on such a cliffhanger!) I do hope the final book becomes available soon.

This BBC recording with full cast is very good, except for my one tiny bugbear (as a side note – I googled bugbear, to make sure I was spelling it correctly, and was surprised when the first couple of definitions came up with it meaning a kind of terrifying bogey monster type thing – I had only previously heard this expression to mean, as I intended in this case, something that is a enduring irritant, like: people smoking in public is a bugbear of mine. It seems that the current American English meaning, and possibly the original medieval English is the monster and not the much more usual to me, irritant. Hmmm.)

Anyway, the slightly irritating bugbear to me was how every member of the cast was so freaking posh! It was like something from the BBC archives where everyone spoke like they were having tea with the Queen. I think there was one minor character who sounded a bit northern, and they sounded like a posh person trying to put on a weird kind of northern accent. Ah well, that aside it was brilliant!

Pullman’s writing manages to delve into depths of philosophical thought while still having full and relatable characters, emotional heft and a cracking exciting storyline. Amazing.

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee – 16.08.24

This was a very thought provoking and beautifully written novel about a very unpleasant person. David Lurie is a 52 year old divorced English professor in Cape Town. When his weekly triste with a prostitute ends he stalks her for a while, but he is turned off by seeing her in ‘real life’ with her own children.

He turns his attention then to a student thirty years his junior and coerces her into a sexual relationship with him. He claims to have real feelings for her, but when she turns to him for help he is not interested. The girl’s family complain to the university and they try to hush it all up by getting him to apologise, but he refuses to admit that he has done anything wrong and chooses instead to retire.

To escape the city for a while, David goes to stay with his daughter in her smallholding farm/dog boarding kennels in the countryside.

We some better sides to his nature, for instance he bonds with some dogs and helps out at the local animal hospital but when his daughter is raped and her home burgled he is outraged and yet is not nudged towards any remorse at his similar act of using power to get sex from his young student.

Apparently there is a film with John Malkovich based on the novel which I might seek out.

Dogs of War (Audiobook) – Adrian Tchaikovsky – 09.08.24

Bear Head (Audiobook) – Adrian Tchaikovsky –11.08.24

Because I loved Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I went to see what else he had on Amazon, and Dogs of War audiobook was included free in my audible membership, so I gave it a go.

The themes are similar to Service model, although this duology is not comedic. In service model, the AI robot was programmed to be a Valet, and struggled to find a place in the world without a master to serve, and in the same way, the main character in dogs of war, Rex, is a dog that has been augmented with AI and bionic stuff – like a cyborg dog and the bionic man’s love child, and it is very ingrained in him to serve his master and has feedback built into him to respond very positively to being told by his master that he is a ‘good boy’ and very negatively to being told ‘bad dog’.

Rex works with a troupe including Honey, a cyber bear, bees, a swarm of cyber bees with a single hive mind intelligence and Dragon who is a cyber-dragon! Honey is very intelligent, and when she gains access to the internet she realises that their master is not a good man and by following him they are killing innocent people which throws Rex into turmoil because he is a very good dog who doesn’t want to hurt innocent people, but also everything in him wants to obey his master.

The second part of the series explores the reaction of the world to these creatures who are sentient and feeling ‘people’ but also dangerous created weapons as well as the way humans begin to be augmented in various ways including being linked by technology which is almost moving towards telepathy or even a new hive mind species. I found the books very interesting and fun to read.

The Rabbit Factor – Antti Tuomainen – 30.07.24

The Moose Paradox – Antti Tuomainen – 06.08.24

The Beaver Theory – Antti Tuomainen – 12.08.24

I’m not sure what I made of this comedy thriller trilogy set in Finland (and translated from the original work written in Finnish).

The main character, Henri is an ex-actuary and probably autistic spectrum maths whizz with limited people skills and a logical and maths based take on the world around him.

At the start of the trilogy Henri loses his job and shortly after discovers his brother has died and left him his adventure park (like a big kids soft play indoor slides etc type place) as well as big debts and some very bad guys trying to recoup what they lent him.

What follows is like a Mr Bean farce – murderous people try to scare/kill Henri and end up accidentally killing themselves in weird ways. This pretty much happens in all three books – Henri feels a duty to help keep the adventure park open and save the jobs of the people who work there, but is also constantly in danger and the police are sniffing around him because bad guys keep either going missing or turning up dead in his vicinity.

I liked Henri’s character, and there was a certain tension in wondering how he was going to get out of each new dilemma, but I did start to roll my eyes a bit that yet another murderous thug has been accidentally impaled/decapitated/crushed etc. I liked it enough to read all three books, and I enjoyed following Henri’s story (there was a kind of funny cast of characters who worked in the adventure park, but I got very irritated by the descriptions of one character that went on and on about how much he farted). I liked how Henri went on an emotional and character development journey and I quite like how it all resolved for him.

Service Model (Audiobook) – Adrian Tchaikovsky – 06.08.24

I really enjoyed this book. It’s the first book by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I’ve read and it is a stand alone novel about an AI robot valet, Charles who works in a full on stately home with a whole staff of servants who are all AI robots specifically made for their individual jobs. One day Charles inexplicably slits his master’s throat with a straight edge razor and doesn’t know what to do next, trying to convince his master to eat something to make him feel better, or take him for a nice drive in the car. It’s a deep and insightful but humorous dystopian sci-fi, with hints of Marvin the paranoid android. Charles (or ‘Un-Charles’ as he loses the right to the name when he is sent to diagnostics) goes on a quest to find out why he did this thing and on the way begins to realise that he can think and make his own choices beyond what has been programmed into him. I loved it!

Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood– 02.08.24

In Cat’s Eye a mature artist returns to her hometown to attend a retrospective exhibition of her works and she reminisces over her childhood and the stories behind some of her pieces of art.

There is a lot about how cruel children can be to each other, especially girls and the power dynamics between groups of friends. I found much of it to be relatable, and the writing is of course (because it’s Margaret Atwood) beautiful.

It’s a slower paced book to many I listen to (or read) and more of a memoir (although fictional) then a plot led book, and although I enjoyed it, I wanted to get back to something a bit more exciting for my next read.

Infinity Gate: Pandominion, Book 1 – M. R. Carey (RE-READ) – 26.07.24 Echo of Worlds: Pandominion, Book 2 (Audiobook) – M. R. Carey – 29.07.24

I was super excited for the release of the second part of M.R. Carey’s Pandominion series, so I re-read book one before listening to book two, to refresh my flagging memory and get the full enjoyment.

The main themes of this wonderful sci-fi series are exploring the multi-verse, and embracing difference – from versions of our Earth where the dominant sentient species evolved from cats, or reptiles, or even rabbits, to worlds where all life is machine based over biological and how these vastly different cultures can misunderstand each other to the detriment of everyone. It also explores the benefits and drawbacks of hive mind thinking over individualism and the tragic consequences of always fighting rather than taking the risk of trusting to peace – like the prisoner dilemma played out on a massive scale.

I loved these books, and didn’t find them depressing or bleak, but as I write this review in the context of wars around the world, and fighting in my own country as anti-immigration groups are rioting in the streets I’m feeling a bit down with humanity. I understand why some people fight, especially in times of scarcity – to try to protect what little they have and to feel like they are being heard in a world where they feel ignored but I just wish it was different, that everyone would share and look out for each other with empathy and love.

Anyway – back to the book (lol): I loved the characters (especially the rabbit girl and her AI friend) and I found the pacing just right – I never got bored or overwhelmed and I found the ending satisfying (although I was a little sad that it felt like things were nicely wrapped up so there will probably not be more books in the series!)

The Moonlight Market – Joanne Harris (AUDIOBOOK) – 21.07.24

This is a lovely fairy tale of a book that is reminiscent of Joanne Harris’s book Honeycomb. While honeycomb had magical anthropomorphic bees this story is about magical anthropomorphic butterflies and moths.

Snippets of the story are told like a straight magical fairy tale story, but the bulk of it happens in the ‘real world’ when a shy young man who works in a camera shop in London helps a homeless man and falls in love with a beautiful girl whose face he can never quite remember, and is drawn in (like the lovely novel by the maybe not so lovely (yikes) Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere) to a magical quest across time and reality to find true love and end a war.

Dr Greta Helsing Series (Strange Practice, Dreadful Company, Grave Importance) – Vivian Shaw – RE-READ – 19.07.24

Bitter Water (Dr Greta Helsing Novella) – Vivian Shaw – 21.07.24

The Helios Syndrome – Vivian Shaw – 23.07.24

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So, I bought Bitter Waters, which is a novella companion to the Doctor Greta Helsing series by Vivian Shaw, and when I started reading it, I remember how much I loved reading the other books in this series, and also how much of the intricacies of the plot that my aging Swiss cheese memory has removed from my mind, so, I re-read the first three books before reading this novella, and then bought and read The Helios Syndrome because I was having such a fun Vivian Shaw ride!

Greta Helsing is a modern day descendent of the Van Helsing family, famous from the world of gothic literature as vampire hunters. Times have changed, however, and the majority of vampires and other non-human individuals just want to live peaceful and undisturbed lives and the Van Helsings have dropped the ‘Van’ and the hunting and instead studied medicine as well as anatomy and physiology of vampires, ghouls, mummies, and other ‘mythical’ beings in order to help to keep them healthy.

This is a lovely series with some excitement and peril but lots of nice relationships (some romance) some humour and great characters. I can’t wait for the next instalment.

In the mean time, I read The Helios syndrome, which is either a stand -alone or the beginning of a new series (I would read it if it was!). Again there is magical realism, in this case the main character can use divination with a Chrystal ball as well as talking to dead people. He is hired by people investigating air crashes and has a very exciting adventure guided by a dead pilot and at times by an aeroplane that talks to him in his dreams!

It’s less gentile than The Greta Helsing books, and set in America rather than England, but still very enjoyable.

The Shining – Stephen King (Audiobook) – 10.07.24 Dr Sleep – Stephen King (Audiobook) – 18.07.24

Some people are fans of Stephen King’s earlier works over his more recent books, but I am in the opposite camp. I like how the master story teller that is Stephen King has become more gentle and contemplative in his stories, without losing any complexity, character building and tension (in my humble opinion!).

I really wanted to read Doctor Sleep, but since I had never read The Shining (I don’t remember watching the movie, although my hubby insists that we watched it together years ago) so I (with some trepidation) listened to The Shining first, then Doctor Sleep.

So, yes, I think it is important to read both books because so much of the character of Danny, the main protagonist of Doctor Sleep, is based on the journey he went on in The Shining, where he was a small boy in a terrifying situation, but I did much prefer the sequel to the original!

The ladies in my book group are horrified and mystified at my being a fan of Stephen King because they just see ‘horror’ and think gore and violence and evil, and yes, those things are in these books to an extent, but there is so much more – so much goodness and strong moral character overcoming the terrible challenges that the evil puts in their path, and ultimately so much optimism and life affirming joy.

I kind of (hmm, not so much) enjoyed The Shining, but I loved Doctor Sleep!