Another Space in Time

     A light-hearted, entertaining post-feminist twist from a committed feminist writer?      I’m not sure that McDonough-Wachtman would accept that as an even partly accurate statement, but that was the sense of her writer that reading Eliza’s Revenge gave me. It is nice to read books from her generation of feminist writers that manage to be affirmative for women, while accepting that female governance doesn’t naturally take the thorns off pink-tinted roses, or indeed those blooms of any other hue. Men in this story are still agonists but, refreshingly, at least not protagonists.     We are some way in the future, with a story that is set on a female controlled planet. This world’s environment is well governed by its women, though from the human perspective in a rather worryingly narrow ‘religiously’ organised way. The whole planet has the feel of being moulded by a tree-hugging, socialist, governance of pagan feminist priestesses. This is...

   Using stars, if books can ever be fairly classified in such a blunt way, this book requires five.    The first thing to note is that there isn’t much paradise here, even in the relatively mild climatic conditions of the south. Secondly, there are kings, legions of princes and princesses, and every kind of human ogre, and all have very tough lives, many characters hardly rising above the shitpits of crude existence. Generally, this is a story about the brutish nature of humanity, seen in the evil waves of real history and not just in these dystopian pages. The knife cuts every bit as deeply, with just as much pain, as in any human conflict. Little of it is truly fantastical, though we get a glimpse of fantasy spells in the final chapters, though nothing as far-fetched as fire breathing dragons in the first long tome of this eventual trilogy. The overall tone of the book is a plausible if dark read, and not at all one I recognise as fantasy genre. In fact, ...

      The main character, Ripley, believes himself to be in a dream. The reader needs to buy-in as the focus shifts towards the dream being a new reality; a very strange one, but reality nevertheless. This either works for one, or it doesn’t. I am reasonably good at suspending belief, however, this story lost a good deal of its ‘believability’ for me. The book has some excellent reviews, so probably I am unusual. From the point at which I felt obliged to see the story as more than the telling of a dream I could no longer make any sense of the animal effigias attached to every semi-human. For me, fantasy needs to at least hold a thin string to scientific and/or philosophical plausibility. The buy-in isn’t helped by some serious structural problem with the book. The constant and insufficiently marked point of view changes, head-hopping, is very distracting. Often all we get is a line-break between the thinking and actions of varied changing characters, which often flicks...

     We read in the minds of characters, which are all by degree, hedonistic, narcissistic, masochistic, and deeply psychologically introverted. That doesn’t mean that they are necessarily uncaring and detached from others, far from it. But deep exploration of subject character is so much the essence of these individualistic snakes and dragons. All the characters are flawed, troubled by the direction of their lives, and struggling between living for the moment and their worldly, practical, daily responsibilities, by concern for their own well-being and that of others. None of the main characters are uncaring of others, but they are all certainly self-absorbed. Perhaps most of us are, perhaps that is the message?      Couture quite probably exposes more of the conflicts in himself than those of others through these stories, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t also extremely observant of how others see their worlds. He writes in a highly descriptive, word-ric...

Master of the Name was for me an intriguing read, despite, or even perhaps because, it seriously challenged my knowledge base. However, I have to say that being so stretched is a mixed blessing when reading a fiction novel. I’m certain that I would have had an easier time with a stronger sense of where facts and cultural beliefs end and storytelling starts. I did wonder, particularly in the opening chapters, whether the story really benefitted from such complexity. However, the package is certainly worth a little effort, and since my reading has inspired me to investigate some very ancient, mostly Jewish, religious ‘stories’. I’m sure that even the most erudite should read on without worrying over much about the historically based elements that escape immediate understanding. This is after all an entertainment, which though strengthened by factual content doesn’t require any truths. As to the power of words, especially names, I have no trouble getting that. Words certainly have ...

   This is a social drama, a psychological dystopian descent, about the self-destruction of a classic mum, dad, two children and cat family. The story slips genre into black comedy and momentarily into horror of the plausible variety, always so much more disconcerting than ghouls and zombies. This is a novella, which a fast reader may well consume in one sitting. The book could easily have been longer, though possibly that would have diluted the constantly disturbing buzz in its pages.    This story is very well written, with clear flowing prose and only a few typos. The story is narrated through the first-person mother with a very realistic feeling voice. I felt that I was sitting listening to the mother’s distressed, sometimes questionable, and less that sober first-hand narrative, rather than, as we are directed to believe, a story cobbled together by the author from episodic conversations. My only complaint about the story was the abrupt ending. I would ha...

    An intense read, high on adrenaline to the end. Not all the loops in the story quite join at the end, though some of this is almost certainly intentional as Schutz sets his readers of for a second edging. There are a few copy errors, but none that came close to spoiling my read.     In my view, the book has a little too much pace to it to really built the horror, increasingly lacking a juxtaposition between normality and evil abnormality which really put’s teeth on edge. So not quite Mary Shelly or Steven King, but a great read by any standards. This is very much the sort of book that I would be happy picking up as a pot-luck read from the airport lounge.     As to the plot, I am inclined to make the noun plural. There are many elements that might have been better divided into two separate stories. The first, about the drug culture and it’s dangers to society was by far the most powerful. The second plot, the devil working through the minds of hi...