Another Space in Time

This is a good dog lover’s read, which may require the grabbing of a box of tissues before one reads to the inevitable end. One of the strongest features of this book is that it is undoubtedly one hundred percent true. One knows that every incident happened just like that, without Stoffel being drawn into even plumping up the truth. We get a feel for exactly what it is like, not just living with a headstrong dog but one that has been severely damaged by past treatment. We can’t help but appreciate what a commitment any dog, let alone a Lance was. The sad thing is that, it is those that don’t appreciate animals that would most benefit from reading this book. In reality, most readers are going to be committed dog lovers who understand the sentient nature of the creatures. This is the sort of book that should be required reading for those planning on having a dog as a pet. Many of the manifest problems in Lance are extreme, but they are common to all dogs by degree. Collies, especial...

       This is an action-packed thriller centred around themes of white slavery, 1970s middle-eastern politics, military undercover operations, crime, psychological damage and revenge. It is very fast paced, fast enough to be an action-packed blockbuster film without the book-gutting re-write. The writing is immediate, easy, generally well composed and professionally edited. And boy, is it both far-fetched and time-evaporating exciting. Yes, this is very much a ‘boys with guns’ action book, ably supported by a couple of powerful female characters that almost make it to being main-characters. John Drake fights two major protagonists, the first being a cruel and dominating father and the other the classic man of evil, as close to the devil Homo sapiens can conjure.       The plot is clever enough, though the quickly obtained Rambo skills of the ‘good guys’ team are certainly implausible. Some of the violence is very graphic, so be warned, but no wor...

     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 ...