Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch

Amongst Our Weapons is the ninth (ninth!) full novel in the PC Peter Grant series, in which a hapless young police constable has an unexpected encounter  with a ghost, and then finds his life very rapidly going out of control. He's since dealt with eh dead, with malevolent mages, with incipient AI's, goblin markets, the London Underground system, and, most worryingly of all, the byzantine bureaucracy of the London Metropolitan Police. Along the way he's made and lost both enemies and friends, and the Peter Grant at the start of this book is starting to look a little frayed around the edges. No wonder, given how busy he's been.

That said, if the Peter Grant of this story is quieter, more contemplative perhaps, he's still going to be familiar to long-term, fans. There's the low-grade snark that anyone working a professional role exhibits, albeit given a police-centric spin. There's the digressions into London history and architecture, which are always good fun (and usually plot relevant). And there's the raw, self-aware honesty that makes Peter work as a protagonist. He approaches his own emotions and thoughts with an enthusiastic energy which makes it possible to take him seriously, while adding in enough banter and touches of humanity that he seems like a person. In this case, a person soon to be on the receiving end of fatherhood, mulling how that will affect him. But still recognisably PC Grant - older, nominally wiser, but still ticking along, alongside the longer-running supporting cast. I'm not sure I'd want a new reader to start here, but if they did, I think that Peter's internal dialogue, his way of seeing the world, would remain as powerful a unique voice as it ever was (and it's always nice to see BAME representation, too.) As noted, the gang is largely back together here, from the taciturn, old-school Nightingale, who drives a jag, wears a suit, gives off a genial uncle vibe, and once drilled a fireball through a Tiger tank, to the various rivers of London - from haughty Tyburn on down - and back to the blustery, take-no prisoners Seawoll, whose nice tidy murder investigations keep getting interrupted by "weird bollocks. There's a sprawling group by this time, and we'll all have our favourites. I think most of them are here somewhere, though it does sometimes feel like they're spread a bit thin by sheer weight of numbers. Still, an entertaining crowd, all the same.

Incidentally, some parts of this story dare to trespass outside the borders of London. They even involve going into the unknown hinterlands of The North. There, wyrd smiths ply an ancient occult trade, ghosts haunt the moors, and occasionally, someone attempts to do a rather supernaturally tinged murder. It's lovely to diverge our location a little; Aaronovitch's love of London folklore is obvious, but it's a joy to see that beam of inquiry digging around in the rest of the UK, which certainly deserves it.  But worry not, because there's also plenty of lore of London to be had, and in any event, the geography itself carries a sense of weight, of place, in both cases. That is to say, they have enough flavour and texture, personal and descriptive, to make them feel real. I will note that nine novels and a great many novellae and comic collections into the series, it sometimes feels like I'm missing contest; some relationships on the page work well enough, but feel like they'd have more resonance if I'd read a comic or two, for example. Still, the relationships work as they are, for me - though  I might not start here as a first time reader, as an old hand, they're charming and comfortable.

The story I shan't spoil, though those of you with a working knowledge of Monty Python may venture to a guess or two of the focus. It does however trot along well enough. Clues and motives are laced through the story, available to the alert reader (and occasionally, to the regular reader, like me).The story pulls at the roots of its genre here, building a murder investigation from the ground up, walking us through procedure, revelation by revelation on the search for truth. And, to be fair, it's not above the occasional swift pivot either, to keep you on your toes.

After nine books, that there are any surprises at all are a joy; and also after nine books, you know broadly what you're getting. This is a smart, funny murder book, with a splash of British history, and a soupcon of magic. If you're a series regular, this is worth reading - and if you're not, you can always give it a try.

Back next week!

 Sorry gang, we're all sick here - back next week!

Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty has been on my list of writers to watch since her Six Wakes, a tale of clones, murder and people at their best (and worst) blew me away a year or two ago. She's done other work, including top-tier podcasting, a Star Wars novelisation, and has a couple of complete series under her belt, in different brackets. Which is to say, it seems like Lafferty can write anything, and write it well.

Which brings us to Station Eternity. On the surface this is an intriguing sci-fi murder mystery, which takes human fish out of water Mallory and Xan, and asks them to find a killer in an entirely alien space, in a milieu filled with walking rock people, sentient wasps, and all sorts of other people who are still coming to terms with the idea that humans are sentient, and not just walking bags of squishy noise. They have a smattering of clues, they can think fast on their feet, and they'd better, because it's entirely possible their lives are on the line. And their secrets, which might be worse. I say on the surface it's this. It's also this  in the detail as well. The central mystery and mayhem and murder ticks along with the precision of a swiss watch, if the watch were filled with misdirection, outright lies, dark pasts, and more than a splash of blood. It's beautifully designed to keep the reader guessing, while giving them just enough information that it doesn't feel like they're guessing blindly. This is a story aware of history, deftly weaving strands of Poirot and Midsomer Murders into a broader tapestry of science fiction. 

It is, however, also a book about connection. About the way humans, or people in general, reach out to those around them and try to make something of it. Reach past loneliness and selfishness and grief to put a little light in the universe. Mallory and Xan are most of the humans on the sentient Eternity, but that doesn't seem to slow them down, as they both live in separately splendid isolation, but also build up connections in the weft of things, looking to aliens to have a common understanding that some humans might struggle with. This is a story about the way people can connect to each other, for good or ill. And that is, of course, rather convenient in a murder mystery. Everyone is a suspect. Everyone is connected. There's always a story. 

I must confess to having a soft spot for Mallory, a woman who has spent her life running away from connections. Mostly because everywhere she goes, someone seems to get murdered. Not, in a lovely nod to Cabot Cove, by Mallory. But she's always on the scene when someone turns up dead, and she's always solving the murder well before the police arrive. Now she's on Eternity, where people seem less prone to dropping dead wherever she goes. Mallory is tough and fragile at once, resting on assumptions of how things are, bathed in her own tragedy, while still kicking the traces. And well she might, because it's possible the situation on Eternity, where she feels she can live safely, is about to be upended. In any case, Mallory is a fun protagonist. Thoughtful, sometimes brittle or abrupt, she's always working to do the right thing, if she can work out what it is, while shouldering and walking past her own trauma. She's vulnerable and tough and open and a mask all at once, and so a joy to read.

The same is true of the story itself, which I very much shan't spoil. But it starts big, and only gets bigger as the Catherine Wheel of Consequences begins to spin/. As Mallory investigates, and uncovers secrets in unlikely places, even her own heart. It's a mystery that had me turning to over in my mind trying to figure it out, and grinning with every revelation as the mystery, slowly unlocked. This is a good sci-fi book, a good mystery book, and a great blend of the two, and perfect for fans of both. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes - Anna Smith Spark

Anna Smith Spark is, in certain circles, a legend. The "Queen of Grimdark" brought us the dark, metal, unspeakably violent and yet beautifully written Empires of Dust series. It was raw and human and bloody and wonderful, and I think I spoke about each book in the series in increasingly glowing terms. 

And now, a new novel, A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. Something different, a folk horror fairytale. Still with the same poetry, the same multi-layered prose coursing the wine-dark sea of liquid prose. Still with the same sense of humanity, both at our best and, oh my, at our worst. But also with a focus somewhere different. This is a book about family, about one woman and her journey into the future to deal with the consequences of the past, and her daughters, and how they have to grapple with a legacy which could define them if they let it. And it's wrapped up in a story, a journey that reads like a dream spiked with flashes of nightmare, our cast moving between spaces, between the grounded world around them, the soaring towers of years past, and the bare copper knives of the not-quite yet, all at once. The prose is liquid, tumbling rocky thoughts over in your mind, the story prying them loose, to see what lies beneath. And that's without getting into what it does to the cast.

Kanda is, for want of a better word, our protagonist. A woman who, three children later, quietly whiles away her time on a farm, looking after animals, baling hay, and generally living a quiet life. What Kanda did before she looked after animals and children is another matter. Unfortunately for her, or at least for her quiet life, her past is about to catch up to her in a big way. Because the world Kanda inhabits is as much myth and story as it is known to us. While she pulls in corn and feeds livestock, she speaks with the dead who line the doorways of buildings, keeping them safe from harm. And wards against things roaming in the night, skipping between realities like we would use a revolving door. 

Because the darkest dreams of humanity are out here, and very real, in this world where myth and story are another context entwined within reality. Kanda's world is a saga, a song,  because it can't be anything else. Kanda is brutally prosaic, a woman who is sometimes drunk, also sometimes hungover, often tired, with an intimate understanding of violence. But in the past, she has been a dream of something more, something which soared, even while the dream in which it lived began to collapse under its own weight. As to what and who else Kanda is, that you'll have to see for yourself. But she is solid in her roles, all of them. A fierce and weighty presence whose sheer determination makes the page and the story and the words wrap around her. The dream she was and the person she is may not be the same, but Kanda is utterly real, to us, as well as to everyone on the page. It's fantastic incidentally, to see her portrayal in the now of the book, a tired woman with three children and a husband, forced back into metaphorical harness by her desire to protect them and keep them safe; and they're there with her and she with them, and the family dynamic has all the bickering and affection and poison and joy of, well, a family. It's something we often sacrifice for tales of battle-maidens in shiny armour, and seeing this, a family story, makes my heart sing a little.

Because this is a family story. Kanda's daughters are varying degrees of young; and it's wonderful that they're all so different. In the way they talk, in the way they react, in what they believe. But in their strengths, in the mistakes they make and the ways they try to fix them, in the passions they feel and the responsibilities they feel they can bear, they're able to find a way to bind themselves together.

And the story. Well, you know I don't spoil those. But it's a very concrete as well as a metaphorical journey. Diving into the past to see how Kanda got where she is now, to build a context for why things are happening. And walking with her through the now, inch by inch as she pulls her family toward, if not safety, a conclusion, a sense of catharsis. It's a story that comes with tension so thick you can less cut it with a knife than actively chew on it - as well as your nails - waiting ot see how thing splay out. And it has the sumptuous, glittering romance of a chivalric folktale, and the mud and blood and disaster of one too. This is a story that pulls no punches, and in fact probably has a stiletto secreted in one hand and a broadsword nonchalantly twirling from the other. It's a story you'll be up at 4AM trying to finish.

So is it good? Hell yes. Should you read it? Hell yes. This is another winner for Anna Smith Spark, and a story you owe it to yourself to read as soon as possible.

Back next week!

 We're on holiday this week, so no review today. Review next week, when we're back!

Gods of the Wyrdwood

Gods of the Wyrdwood is the start of a new series from R.J. Barker, whose previous series I've enjoyed immensely. Fortunately, I can safely say that this is a strong start to a series: a new world, with new  characters, but the same strong writing, the same emotional depth, the same strange and wonderful on every page. If you're looking for something new, something that will make you think, and make you feel, something which isn't quite like anything else out there...then this is the book for you.

Part of the reason for that is the worldbuilding. Barker has always excelled at creating worlds that feel real, feel lived in. They also tend to be strange, beautiful, and brutal, and this one is no exception. Because this is a world that lives or dies depending on power. A world whose very orientation on its axis is driven by magic. A world where the ability to command the elements is a function of a symbiosis between a person and, well, something else entirely. And also a world of wood. Much of the story revolves around The Forester, someone who can walk through the various levels of forest, perhaps even the titular Wyrdwood. Where a tree might be large enough to walk around, and where cuts from its branches might be able to be animated with a thought.  The forest sits close by our protagonist, and the small world he allows himself, and stretches seemingly endless into the night. Stepping within is an act of courage, going too deep is an act of madness. Because what the forest is most of all is uncaring - but like the sea, uncaring doesn't mean not deadly, Each step is a risk. And within the forest, what seems like it's uncaring may suddenly come alive with malice or, perhaps worse, some kind of unknowable, but probably unpleasant (for you) agenda. But Barker really shines in shaping that forest, in making it feel like a place where things live, where everything has its niche, even if we don't understand it. And the trees and the various horrors they contain have a deeply grounded sense of place, a feeling of the concrete. And they're not alone in that. Outside the trees are the human world rolls on regardless. In the deeper distance, a continent-wide war is a conflagration devouring lives by the bucketload. The cities are ruled by an aristocracy filled with long-lived magic users, most of whom are some version of vicious, cruel or uncaring. They're made of soaring spires which seem to have been built by an unknown builder for unknown reasons, with an unknown lifespan and a propensity for...imaginative...geometry. The world beyond the forest is no less real, but may be more actively cruel. And it's a world driven by religion, by prophets, by big and small gods, as people in power try to grab on to just a little more. 

And into that space steps the Forester, someone who was once a Chosen One. Someone meant to break the world. Someone trained to kill, to shatter, to make great changes. A once in a century event. And then...there was another one. Suddenly a special child ran into the night, no longer special. And a long timer later, we find them at the edge of the forest, living a solitary life, shearing for wool, farming, and keeping their head down. Trying not to feel too much, to stay out of trouble, to be a mouse in the walls and just be left alone. The Forester is someone who has hurt and been hurt, fought and been beaten down. They have a façade of self-interest, a need to remain cut off from connection. Or perhaps just a desire. How true their image of themselves as an isolated island is, well that's something you'll have to delve into the story for., I will say that the characterisation here is top notch, not just for our protagonist, but for the rest of the ensemble. The villagers who regard him with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. The mages who look for nothing other than a means to keep themselves alive, to survive and benefit from the deaths of others. The monks haranguing their parishioners, and the quieter rumblings of different gods in a world struggling with a clash between ancient theism and armed monotheists. There's a diversity of viewpoint, and an honesty in it that makes the story work, makes the characters feel like they're really there, people and not words on a page. You can laugh and cry and feel with them, empathise, sympathise, scream and cry along with them. They feel real.

As for the story. Well, as ever, no spoilers on this one. But it's got the bones of a redemption arc. It's got a found family at its heart. And it has a positivity, a hope in what people are, despite everything, in it soul. It's got a whole bunch of politics. Some genuinely horrifying and epic magic. It has the kind of battles that make you hold your breath, and the kind of brutal immediacy that will make you feel like you're bleeding. It has a truth to it, this story, a story of someone who just wants to be left alone, and the story of people who are willing to hold true to who they are in the face of a society with different expectations, a strength to say yes to truth and friendship and humanity, and no to murder, blood and fire, even in the face of a world that wants to hammer them into the ground. It's a story I couldn't put down. And that's the highest recommendation I can give - go and read this book right now.

The Devil's Gun - Cat Rambo

The Devil's Gun is the sequel to Cat Rambo's You Sexy Thing, which I would characterise as a space opera in which an ex-admiral turned restauranteur has to save themselves and their found family from an ominous nemesis and their own feelings. Occasionally, they blow stuff up!

The Devil's Gun serves up a lot of the same dishes as its predecessor, but with some interesting new flavours. The crew, fresh from their defeat of Tubal Last - space pirate and general do-babder - are trying to settle into themselves after a fairly hectic period. They've had losses that they need to deal with. They've brought new members into their little family, including a sentient, star-hopping bio-ship with a bit of an attitude. They've lost people. too, and need to grieve. And even as they're doing that, new stormclouds are gathering, threatening to tear away at all they've built. 

The team on the Thing are on a mission, a mission to find an old love, an old friend. And while they're doing that, they're still trying to rebuild themselves, physically and mentally. Most of the book feels like a character piece, in a good way. An ensemble cast, whose views we get to see, whose weaknesses and fears are laid bare on the page, even while their actions set up their strengths. Some of them, like Atlanta, one time Imperial heir, now occasional mushroom-chopper are feeling insecure and looking for purpose. Some of them, like the Thing itself, are reaching out, trying to define their boundaries. Understand their feelings, and what provokes them, what makes them happy, and why, sometimes, you might need to do the harder thing. And some of them are deep in their grief. You can feel that roiling off them, a miasma that infects everything they do, and tries to define what they are. In some ways, large parts of the story are meditations on that grief; the way that loss shapes people, the way it makes them do things they wouldn't normally do, for better or worse. The way that living it can be horrible and hurtful and healthy, and clutching it too tight can be poison. 

Which all sounds very dramatic, and in some ways it is. But the crew of the Thing spend a large amount of the story working alongside each other, a story in a bottle over a flame, slowly simmering away. There are, for those of you who were wondering, more twists, more betrayals, and more revelations in the world of Niko and her gang. Some of them are potentially galaxy-spanning in their impacts. Others are quieter - the click of a kitchen knife chopping vegetables, the fierce strength of someone digging in raw soil for their purpose.

I won't spoil here beyond saying that the Thing will run into enemies and friends old and new. Some of them are charming and rougish and e a delight to read; others are petty tyrants, with a sense of turgid malice about them that makes you grit your teeth, and feel catharsis when comeuppance occurs. This is The Devil's Gun, another story about the family that is the crew of the Thing. It's their stories, the complex notes of tragedy and joy over the base of action, adventure, and really wild things, those stories that make the meal. It's a slow burn, building context and emotional investment layer by layer, page by page, but the final product deserves, well, whatever a Michelin star is for stories. If you're new to the series, it's probably worth going back before you go forward, the story works better that way, has more weight, more depth to it. But if you're fresh off the first book and looking for more, don't worry.

The Devil's Gun does not disappoint.