Three books in December

December has been a very busy month, with not a huge amount of reading time in it so far (we were away for the first week and have been both work and social busy since then). Nevertheless, some reading got done! (In addition to these three, I've also read a short story Christmas mystery collection, but it was so slight that I didn't think it worth a review - utterly disposable, albeit pleasurable, reading trash).

These three books were varying levels of good, but  I'd recommend them all if the genre is one you enjoy. (I personally think everyone would benefit from reading the Le Guin, but as she is in my top five authors of all time list and I do not believe she ever wrote a bad word, I would say that, wouldn't I :-)

I think I might have to revise my statement that I don't read a lot of horror, as this is the third book I've read in the last three months that could fairly be described as horror, and I actually really enjoyed it.

This one's a ye olde slasher / serial killer thriller, set in a retirement home (because apparently that's where 80% of all stories have to be set by law now - looking at you, Thursday Murder Club and all copycats). 

The protagonist, Rose Dubois, is interesting enough to hold the focus as the chief amateur sleuth and eventual Final Girl, and the secondary characters were all fine, if a bit caricatured. The writing is clear and concise, albeit rarely descriptively accomplished. But you don't read a horror thriller for the fine-tuned character work or beautiful prose; you read it for a compellingly creepy story, twists and turns, a chillingly villainous Big Bad, and a bit of a flourish of some kind that differentiates it from the rest of its kind, and on those metrics, this one delivers amply.

I thought the story was a little slow to start, but once it got its feet under it, it rollicked along at a consistently racy clip, delivering the usual quota of red herrings, frights and near misses, and gory murders that these stories are famed for. I also enjoyed the frequent humour in it, which I think was its "flourish" - the savage comedic moments actually contributed to the horror rather than leavening it, but made the overall tone something a bit unusual and very well suited to the book overall.

Of course, you need to be prepared to overlook the massive implausibilities of the plot, but again - horror fiction is not and has never been cinema verite. If you can suspend your disbelief, and you are a thriller or horror fan, I think this one would be a strong hit. 8/10 for me.

Another two-timelines mystery in the series that began with How to Solve Your Own Murder, which I read and reviewed earlier this year (link here). Much like the first book, this one is entertaining without being outstanding.

This picks up the story of Annie Adams, heiress to her great-aunt whose murder she solved in book 1, and further digs into the intensely tangled past events in the deceptively sleepy-seeming small town of Castle Knoll. 

The inciting incident in the contemporary part of the story is the murder of Peony Lane, the fortune teller whose prediction of the murder of Annie's great-aunt Frances was the story engine in book 1. However, the real inciting incident (or more properly, inciting saga) takes place in the pasto times portion of the book set in the 60s, told through the words of Frances (from diaries) and her peers.

Some of the backstory is unnecessarily complex, and the cast of past-times characters is needlessly large and at times confusing. Moreover, there are even larger logic fails in this one that require gargantuan suspensions of disbelief, in excess of what I'd usually consider reasonable.

That said, Annie Adams is an enjoyable protagonist, the action rollicks along at a good pace, and the solution to the mystery is at least internally consistent, albeit neither particularly surprising nor emotionally satisfying. I read it quickly and have no regrets, but I am not convinced I'll read the third (which is undoubtedly on its way, given the ending!) 6/10 from me.

Ursula Le Guin was, in my opinion (and not only mine), one of the greatest SFF writers of all time - actually, make that one of the greatest WRITERS of all time, full stop - and this story cycle underlines exactly why that is. It compels, it soars, it speaks to the human condition, it speaks to what is true and the complexity and painfulness of it, and oh my God does it sing.

Five Ways to Forgiveness is set in the Hainish / Ekumen universe (known to many readers as the frame for Le Guin's arguably most famous non-fantasy novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, as well as my personal favourite Le Guin book, The Dispossessed, and the later novel, The Telling). The stories in this volume are set on the planet Werel and its colony world, Yeowe - a society built on slavery, with active, brutal slave-owning still very much the modus operandi when the Ekumen first reach out to Werel.

For clarity, if your only familiarity with Le Guin is the wonderful Earthsea novels, buckle up - we're not in Kansas anymore. These stories are beautiful, but they are also brutal, especially the final one. There will be moments that the urge to flinch away is almost irresistible, but even through the most terrible, torturous atrocities, Le Guin somehow continues to compel you along the journey, to make you understand that darkness is deep but that light persists, that humans are complicated and awful and sometimes also incredible. And that, despite the terror, love will survive, a stubborn little flower breaking through the concrete, despite war, despite slavery, despite oppression and violence and misery. As it is written:

what is one man’s and one woman’s love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? a little thing. but a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.

The first story takes place on Yeowe and is relatively gentle, albeit melancholy - it focuses on a retired teacher, Yoss, living in a rural area after the war of liberation that freed Yeowan "assets" (slaves) from their slavery and established it as an independent planet. Her meeting of, befriending, and eventual relationship with a retired military leader tortured by what he did and saw in the war is a quiet story, pensive, reflective, but packing an immense punch. I loved Yoss, her mind and her heart shines through so clearly.

Forgiveness Day, the second story, is where the second string of Le Guin's central thesis about the horror of oppression, and the essentiality of equality for any true freedom, starts to emerge. Solly, a young female embassy official of the Ekumen, is sent off to the Divine Kingdom of Gatay, a remote part of Werel. She immediately gets embroiled in local politics, to dangerous effect. Part of the danger comes from how overwhelmingly sexist and misogynistic Werelian society is, as well as being heavily stratified between "owners" and "assets". Bad things happen to Solly, although not the worst things (being kidnapped and semi-starved through neglect is pretty bad, but no one actively harms her), but nonetheless, this story also has a relatively positive ending, and another unexpected romance to leaven it and carry the story back to lightness.

A Man of the People describes the coming of age of Havzhiva, an Ekumen ambassador to Yeowe. This is the only Le Guin story that really gets to grips with the character of the mother-of-all planet, Hain (from where all humanoid life was seeded), and interrogates what motivates and shapes the Ekumenical project, so it's deeply fascinating on that level alone. However, this is also the story where some of the ugliest of the misogyny that underpins Werelian / Yeowan society is laid brutally bare for the first time. It is not easy reading, but it feels significant, and has a depth that's hard to fully convey.

The fourth story is that of Rakam, born a slave on Werel, but eventually escaping to Yeowe and (some) freedom. If anyone was under the impression that Le Guin was going to shy away from the sexual exploitation that characterised all real-world slave-owning societies, this story will disabuse you of that notion. It is never graphic, but it is deadly potent emotionally. Nowhere is is more apparent that, as Le Guin fervently believed (it's a theme in all her fiction), believing yourself as a group to be better than / more human than other people is a sickness that will curse a society to violence, distrust, and eventual ruin. And yet, even here, there is no despair, and Rakam eventually arrives at a place of happiness, despite all that has been done to her and through her. The bringing together of Rakam with Havzhiva (from the last story) is yet another grace note, carrying the story to a more joyful ending than would have seemed possible given the circumstances.

Old Music and the Slave Women, the last story, is the only one that I have read before (in another collection), and it emotionally destroyed me (again) on re-reading. It features Old Music (Esdan), a Hainish embassy worker who was a minor character in earlier stories, who tries to go see his friends in the Liberationist movement (ex-slaves, now in revolt) on Werel, but is captured, tortured, and horrifically used by the Legitimatists ("Jits") at a once-great plantation called Yaramera, where he befriends a house-slave, Kamsa, who has a small infant son (Rekam). I don't want to say much more about this one, because it is too deeply lodged in my heart, but it is one for the ages.

10/10 for me. Couldn't be bettered. Will stay with me forever.