The Memory of Animals – Claire Fuller – 25.08.24

I was totally engrossed by this book, and had a couple of very late nights reading it on my kindle in bed!

The opening is similar to 28 days later (or indeed, The Day of The Triffids) in that the main character, Neffy, is one of the few survivors of a terrible pandemic. She had been a subject in a trial for a vaccine against the new virus and had been given the vaccine and the virus in an isolated room in the facility. After a week of being very unwell, she comes through and the whole world has changed. Along with the four other remaining/surviving members of the study she is trapped with dwindling food and water, afraid to go outside and with no internet or phone signals.

Much of the book is exploring Neffy’s backstory through the dual devices of letters she writes to an octopus she used to care for in her role as a marine biologist, and a machine created by one of the other survivors which (in the few people for whom it works) allows you to relive memories is a very vivid virtual reality type way.

There are themes of captivity and freedom and moral dilemmas from the ethics of studying octopuses in captivity, to donating an organ to save a family member, to sacrificing one person to save many etc.

I found the book deeply moving and thought provoking. The ending was a little abrupt, and I needed to unpack it, and look online at what other people thought before I could let the book go and move on, but I think ultimately the ending was optimistic, if vague enough to need your imagination to fill in the details.

The Coast Road (Audiobook) BOOKGROUP – Alan Murrin (Author), Jessica Regan (Narrator) – 24.8.24

This was my book group read for September 2024 and I have to say, wow, what a great book. We had a book group outing to No Alibis bookshop in Belfast and the staff were very helpful in suggesting several books for our next read, and this was one of them. A incredibly well-written debut novel – the prose is beautiful without being overwritten, and the three female lead characters are totally believable even thought the author is male.

Set in Donegal in 1994 leading up to the referendum on divorce (prior to which, divorce was illegal in Ireland and although couples could separate, the woman was left with few if any rights) the three female characters are all trapped by their relationships with very bad husbands as well as living under the judgemental scrutiny of small town gossips. I listened on an audiobook and loved the Irish narrator although it took me a while to work out who was who. The only nice male character was the priest (an ex-guard/police) which was refreshing since so many priests in literature are bad(!)

From the buzz on the book group WhatsApp, everyone seems to have enjoyed the book, and I’m looking forward to discussing it with the girls.

The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency (Spencer & Bart Book 1) – Peter Oxley – 23.4.24

This book has hundreds of five star reviews on Amazon, and I find myself wondering if they were all written by Peter Oxley’s mates, because I did not find the book to be great at all.

Set in the squalid streets of 18 hundred’s London, two low level criminals decide to go straight by setting up a demon hunting agency (in this version of London Demons are real, as well as golems, magicians, ghosts etc). For me the first half of the book really dragged – I didn’t warm to the characters, I found the action a bit chaotic and while others describe the book as very funny, I wasn’t really picking up on any humour. Many of my favourite books are urban/steampunk fantasy so it was not the genre that upset me. I did quite like the character of the young upper class woman trapped in a marriage with a very bad man, and my interest grew as she took more of a roll.

It wasn’t awful, and it did grow on me to the point where I considered buying the second book in the series, but then I caught myself on.

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!)