My life in books

And finally, the last few books from 2013.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Magnificat

What would happen if, following the death of the Pope, the Conclave met and somehow unanimously elected someone whose name they had never heard or seen before? Who was everything a Pope should never be - a middle-aged magistrate from communist China, an atheist, a woman? Yarbro imagines it, and it is quite wonderful to read.


Simon Clark, The Night of the Triffids

A quite enjoyable sequel/homage to Wyndham's classic The Day of the Triffids, which begins 30-odd years later among the human survivors on the Isle of Wight. The narrator and protagonist, David Mason (son of the narrator of the original novel) is a pilot who hopes to find evidence of other surviving colonies to unite in the face of increasing indications that the triffids are intelligent and have plans to destroy the remaining humans. In the course of his quest, Mason, like his father before him, is harshly reminded that triffids are not the only threats to the survival of humanity.


Ellen Galford, Queendom Come

Galford's satirical, feminist, woman-centred view of the world is in high form in this novel. Set in Scotland during Thatcher's Blue Reign, the narrative focuses on the sudden appearance of an ancient Caledonian war-queen, called upon, like Arthur, to return in the hour of her nation's greatest need, and the near immortal seer/sorceress who was the queen's counsellor centuries ago and has awaited her return. Funny as hell.


R. A. MacAvoy, The Third Eagle

MacAvoy is a brilliant fantasist, but this foray into space opera is, while pleasant reading, not among her masterpieces. The protagonist, Wanbli Elf Darter, a skilled member of a clan of bodyguard/assassins who traditionally serve the landed classes on the planet of Neunacht, leaves his people and culture behind to travel in space. After many picaresque adventures, he ends up on the "revivalist" ship Commitment, which is crewed by survivors of generation starships sent out centuries before. The crew of the Commitment have adopted a mission to hunt down other such sleeper ships drifting through space - whereupon they decant a few of the frozen people aboard. The rest they kill, because there is no place for them to go - the colonised planets won't accept them, and the Commitment can only take on enough to replace crew lost to injury, illness or old age. Wanbli, of course, finds an answer that allows the sleepers to live. Despite the grim situation of the sleepers, this novel is mostly light-hearted and fun.

The Fires of Bride, Ellen Galford

Lizzie is a researcher with Caledonian Television’s Features and Light Entertainment department. It’s time for the channel to fulfil its “statutory obligation to provide a certain number of programming hours of cultural and social material covering peripheral Scottish viewing areas” and so Lizzie is sent off to Cailleach, “the outermost island of the Utter Hebrides” to hunt down subject matter for a documentary.

There she meets former lovers Maria Milleny, an artist who has lived on the island for years but is still called “the incomer,” and Catriona MacEochan, local doctor and clan chieftain.

Their story, told in flashback, slowly unveils an ancient tradition of Goddess-worship centred on the island’s two archaeological sites – the ruined convent of St Bride and the standing stones of the Callieach Ring – and a renewed recognition of the social, sexual, economic and spiritual power of women on the island, much to the dismay of the Reverend Murdo MacNeish, minister of the Second Schismatic Independent Kirk of the Outer Isles.

A wise and witty exploration of women’s sexuality and spirituality, with a large dose of social satire and feminist sensibility – and it’s funny, too.