Harry August, born in northern England in 1919 dies an old man only to be born again, in the precisely same time and place and circumstances, the fullHarry August, born in northern England in 1919 dies an old man only to be born again, in the precisely same time and place and circumstances, the full memories of his former life returning as his infant brain develops. And this happens again, and again, and again. But the events of his life are not set; he can use the knowledge and education and skills he has accumulated to advance himself and move on more quickly from the same humble beginnings, and he discovers that he is not alone. While rare, there are other individuals who in the same circular way - “ouroborans” - who often store knowledge and look to help those recently returned to youth. As his lives progress Harry becomes aware that something in the future is amiss, something that will lead to the end of the world and is getting closer with each incarnation.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been gripped so much by a book. It took hold of me from the start, a fine mix of a wit, humour, tense plotting, great characterisation, excellent writing and a superb central idea explored fully.
As do all very good books, this works on several levels. As the literary thriller with a twist it is on its face, as a philosophical discussion of the enduring momentum of events compared to mayfly flicker of individual lives, perhaps as an exploration of the stages each of us goes through in our normal span of life.
Of course, I have to address this book’s similar concept to Kate AtkinsonKate Atkinson’s Life After LifeLife After Life - both published very close together in early 2014. Yes, Claire North’s prose is not as good as Atkinson’s (hardly a criticism as the multi-award winning Atkinson has been in the game for a lot longer and is one hell of a writer). What is truly worth pointing out is how, from such a similar central idea (even happening to be set across a fairly similar historical stage) each writer has woven such an utterly distinct tapestry. Both books are literary, by turns funny and sobering, gripping and thoughtful and deep, but quite, quite different.
Sure, Harry August is not without flaws - there is the occasional clumsiness to the writing (massively overwhelmed by some very good writing and truly breathtaking plotting) and a the odd time where I had to actively suspend disbelief to do with the accelerating pace of technological advancement - but the sheer joy and wit and humanity and unashamed cleverness of this novel means anything less than five stars would be churlish....more
Words have power. We all know this, especially as readers we are aware of the magic of words. And if we have seen any applied neurolinguistic4.5 stars
Words have power. We all know this, especially as readers we are aware of the magic of words. And if we have seen any applied neurolinguistics - the magician Derren Brown, for instance, using his training and the force of his personality to either guide people’s choices or, more disturbingly, seemingly bend them to his will, both with the careful hidden placement of trigger words - we see the shared route of the two meanings of the word ‘spell’.
Max Barry posits that something even more powerful and immediate can be achieved than that which we see in the edited Derren Brown TV shows, that there are words and phrases that can control us all, different ones depending on our ‘personality segment’, and that an organisation exists of people who train in and wield this power.
Emily Ruff, a vagrant getting by on small con-jobs and sleight-of-hand tricks is recruited for training and becomes embroiled in a something even darker, their idea that there are ‘barewords’, ur-words in some primal proto-language that bypass the cortex and can control anybody, instantly and completely.
Barry presents what is both a superb, engaging, white-knuckle thriller and also an exploration of language and control. Through fragments from media stories and message board discussions between chapters he draws parallels between the blunt-force over-riding control of these ‘magic’ words and the more subtle and pervasive and more real - and hence more frightening - power of media manipulation. The book also touches on the philosophical idea of how much language creates reality by affecting our perception of it, as well as motifs of trust and loyalty and power.
This is a dark book - I haven’t given it the horror tag for nothing - but, as always with Max Barry, it is also deeply humanistic and is threaded through with real humour. Read it and, if you haven’t already, read Jennifer Government too, for good measure. ...more
The first of Connelly's Harry Bosch books has a lot going for it, most notably an excellent plot involving murder, banks heists, deception and the VieThe first of Connelly's Harry Bosch books has a lot going for it, most notably an excellent plot involving murder, banks heists, deception and the Vietnam war. Heironymous 'Harry' Bosch is a middle aged LA homicide detective whose career has gone from glittering to dismal - after being lauded by the press for his work solving high profile cases and having a TV character based on him he has been hounded from the prestigious Robbery Homicide Division to a lower ranking post in Hollywood Homicide by Internal Affairs, who are still looking to complete the job and chase him from the force. This is because he's the classic detective, brilliant but not seen as part of "the Family", something of a loose cannon (he even considers himself to be a bit of a cliché - he listens to jazz, drinks too much and is a loner who can't hold down a long term relationship).
Bosch is, however, an good character with a nice backstory and a decent amount of complexity. The same goes for some of the supporting cast, while others are cardboard cyphers (the two IAD officers, Lewis and Clark, for instance). The writing itself is ok - I do love the way the story unfolds, and the way that Connelly mixes Bosch's internal musings and memories into the narrative on occasion - but often the prose is downright clunky. In particular Connelly writes dialogue like a journalist (which he was); it is more about providing information than character. Indeed, there is hardly any character voice in the dialogues at all (with the possible exception, oddly, of Bosch's partner Jerry Edgar who is only a minor character, the voices are largely interchangeable; Bosch's narrative voice is strong but even that doesn't really carry over into his speech).
But a very strong, engaging thriller with some real substance, which I far prefer to the sort of page-turner thrillers that I finish and find I couldn't give a damn about any of events or characters I'd been reading about for the previous 400 pages (James Patterson and his ilk).
An odd side note. The cover photo on my edition seems to be of a rainy British motorway, which is a bit weird...
Second installment of top-notch zombie thriller from Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire). Shaun Mason, mourning the loss of his sister George in the betrayal Second installment of top-notch zombie thriller from Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire). Shaun Mason, mourning the loss of his sister George in the betrayal that capped the previous book, Feed, leads his band of news bloggers and continues to uncover layers of conspiracy.
The actual zombie action is quite sparse; there was plenty of that in the previous volume and there is so much of that to be found elsewhere. Grant focuses on the characters and the machinations amongst the living threats, leaving run-ins with the infected as occasional spice to prevent them becoming too samey. A startling ending makes me glad that I have volume three, blackout, on hand....more
Here we have a definite argument for giving an author a second chance. My previous experience of Dean Koontz had been The Taking, which I loathed utteHere we have a definite argument for giving an author a second chance. My previous experience of Dean Koontz had been The Taking, which I loathed utterly. I found it annoyingly written, badly conceived and preachy. However, I had heard it wasn't typical of his work (my girlfriend is a fan, although she hasn't read The Taking), and when I was given the audio of Odd Thomas I thought I'd give it a go.
Odd (who has heard various reasons for this given name, none of which are quite convincing), is a short order cook in the quiet mid-Califoria town of Pico Mundo. He is very good at this, is polite, respectful, simple though far from stupid, and liked by just about everybody. And he sees the unquiet dead. They do not talk to him, but he often understands that he can help them and he states that he has often helped the local police force apprehend killers – although only the police chief and a few other select friends know of his gift. Odd has also been having a recurring dream of bloodshed on a large scale, and this book unfolds the psychotic plot behind that vision.
I have often been perturbed to see reviews where the reviewer's sole reason for disliking a book seems to be a dislike of the main character; many great and good stories revolve around characters that are unsympathetic, flawed or even downright unpleasant. This, however, is one of those books that relies on the attractiveness of the protagonist. You can't help feel that you would get on well with Odd Thomas, and value him as a friend or acquaintance. Perhaps a little too nice, although Koontz manages to avoid even this failing from detracting. (When we learn about Odd's background it's possible to wonder just how he turned out so well, but that's another issues).
Koontz gives us what is basically a thriller with a supernatural slant. Odd's premonitions and his Psychic Magnetism Sense (PMS as his girlfriend has christened it, in one of the many nice touches of humour) leads him to uncover a murderous event in the near future (I was put in mind slightly of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, although the TV show more than the book, but I loved that TV show!) and setting about to prevent it. As Odd says early on, “I see dead people and, by god, I do something about it.” Because of the premonition lead story, and the feeling that the hand of fate is ever present, there is quite a heavy deus ex machina element to the plot – there were a couple of points when I thought “why doesn't he do that?”, where his action or inaction proves crucial later on – but in the reality of the book that seems to fit. Odd says that he doesn't believe in coincidences, a statement that is guaranteed to set my teeth on edge in the mouth of a cop or private eye, but Odd sees the unexplainable on a daily basis and not only believes in god but believes that he will go to a better place after death – although not with quite enough conviction to make him sound smug about it. This is fair enough in the context of the book; after all, ghosts and the supernatural are an integral part of the plot.
As well as the deus ex machina there are other problems. Sometimes Koontz's authorial voice jarred me a bit as it seemed at odds (sorry) with Odd's voice. One of the things I hated about The Taking were the right-wing rants, and occasionally in Odd Thomas these creep in – sometimes in a fairly minor way that many people might think (on using his laminated drivers licence to jimmy a lock Odd states that at last he's got something back for his state taxes), to a random rant about the arrogance of scientists, to a truly bizarre statement that the golden era of Elvis was the last time popular music was pure because since then all pop music consists of nothing but pro-Fascist anthems! These do, to me, seem to jar, but I guess I didn't create the character so the author should know him better than I do, although it does sometimes feel as though the author is rather more judgemental and less likable than his protagonist. On the other hand, Odd has a thorough dislike of guns which is, I understand, rather unusual for a Koontz book – The Taking, certainly, was bit of a Evangelical survivalist wet dream – but the attitude to firearms here is much more ambivalent.
There is a certain amount of moralising, but I didn't find it overdone – as I had, frankly, expected to. Good and evil are clearly defined, and there is no real reason given for the evildoers actions [even their supposed satanism seemed more like a self justification than a driving force]. It is interesting to compare Dean Koontz to Stephen King. In King's small towns the presence from outside reveals evil already present, or builds on petty human failings to create evil, but Koontz makes Pico Mundo something of a bastion of tranquility that is invaded by an evil from without – although not entirely so, as the characters' back stories reveal, which stops it being too perfect.
Along with some nice characterisation, good pacing and occasionally lovely, often understated, writing I was happy to share Odd Thomas' little world with him for 400 or so pages....more
Following on from The Traveler, which was a promising thriller combining some interesting philosophy with a decently written adventure, this sOh dear.
Following on from The Traveler, which was a promising thriller combining some interesting philosophy with a decently written adventure, this second volume takes that groundwork and flushes it down the toilet. The plot becomes ludicrous, the attempts at philosophy become badly thought out individualistic rants and the writing has somehow become painfully bad. Seriously to the point that it doesn't read like the same author. I'm not saying that The Traveler was Dostoevsky, but this is awful. The writer even seems to have lost some knowledge; in the first book he appeared to know his technology, and made excellent use of it both for his comments on the surveillance society and in terms of plot, but here it becomes the kind of badly constructed techno-thriller pseudo-scientific guff you tend to find in bad Tom Clancy knock-offs....more
An interesting, well paced thriller featuring the usual secret societies that control government and the loner who finds out that he is the scion of aAn interesting, well paced thriller featuring the usual secret societies that control government and the loner who finds out that he is the scion of a rebel faction that can bring them down, but with some interesting philosophical points that pull it above the average....more
I'd been in the mood to read a fast, fun thriller for awhile, and as I had several unread Brookmyre novels on my shelfA carefully spoiler-free review.
I'd been in the mood to read a fast, fun thriller for awhile, and as I had several unread Brookmyre novels on my shelf I was definitely gravitating in that direction. When I found the audiobook of Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks I was sold – even though it's the fifth of the Jack Parlabane adventures and I haven't read all the previous ones yet, I didn't expect it to be a big obstacle as they are, like most crime series', not direct follow ons in anything other than events in the main characters' lives.
I must confess that as the story opened I felt slightly disappointed. The extract from a book by fictional Mail journalist Jillian Noble about an encounter with the supernatural seemed to be somewhat heavy-handed in signposting the direction the novel might take. Noble is smug, snotty, overly credulous and sneeringly dismissive of sceptical rationalism – so strongly antithetical to both Brookmyre and Parlabane that the set up for a fall seemed sadly obvious. Ironically, I should have had more faith in the author, because while it is indeed a set up, it is the reader who is being set up for a sudden, unexpected curve ball coming out of left field that whips any assumptions out from under you like a deftly pulled tablecloth. This is a trick Brookmyre pulls again and again throughout this superbly constructed, extremely well written book. He leads your expectations from one point of view before bringing in another angle to make you realise that you are balancing precariously on a crumbling ledge of unfounded assumption rather than the firm, flat bedrock of facts. There are also dawning moments of realisation that made me laugh out loud, to add to the many trademark chuckles you'd expect from a writer who has been called 'the Scottish Carl Hiaasen'. The twists and changes of perspective kept me guessing right up to the joyous payoff (although I had worked out a couple of the facts I wasn't certain of them, and doubt it was my own Holmsian deductive abilities that allowed me to work them out so much as cunning winks from the author to make me feel better about being duped!)
I realise I've said nothing about the plot – deliberately, as this would be an easy book to give spoilers on. Suffice to say it is a book about belief, deception and assumptions. If you like your thrillers clever, thoughtful and laugh-out-loud funny (not to mention quite sweary and not infrequently violent, although in this case less violent than usual), I highly recommend you acquaint yourself with Christopher Brookmyre ...more
