My life in books

Cynthia Ward’s The Adventure of the Dux Bellorum continues the exploits of Lucy Harker, not exactly human daughter of Mina Harker by the vampire Dracula, adventuress and spy in the employ of the WWI era British secret service, where she works for the consummate spymaster known as M, short for Mycroft Holmes - who is also her stepfather.

Her mission, to protect Winston Churchill, who, currently out of favour and out of cabinet, has decided to join the army and fight the Germans at the front if he cannot fight them in the halls of power. But some things not even a dhampir can fight. When a squad of 20 German created and controlled wolfmen attack, kidnapping Churchill and leaving Lucy for dead, then the only choice is for Lucy and her lover Clarimal - the 300 year old upior, or vampire, Carmilla von Karstein - to go behind enemy lines in search of him. But there is much worse waiting for them than wolfmen.

I’m really enjoying this series, not the least because of all the material from texts that form the basis of science fiction and fantasy, and other genres from the adventure fiction of the Victorian era to the classic mystery. References to characters, milieus and events from authors as diverse as H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Agatha Christie are found here, intermixed with historical characters such as Sophia and Catherine Duleep Singh.

Definitely a series that I hope will continue.

Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series is not one of my favourites. I’ve read a few of the books in the series, and enjoyed them, and bounced rather hard off some others. And there have been some that, based on the brief publisher’s descriptions, just didn’t interest me. However, the 11th novel in the series, A Study in Sable, caught my attention because it involves Sherlock Holmes, and John and Mary Watson, both of whom, in this universe, are Elemental magicians - and have had to keep their activities more or less secret from Holmes, who is, of course, a sceptic. It’s rather fun watching Holmes becoming slowly convinced that there are, in fact,some powers and abilities he knows nothing of, and slowly come to see how they may be useful to his investigations.

A Study in Sable also involves three other main characters, Sarah, a gifted medium, her friend and partner Nan, a telepath and psychometrician, and their ward, the child Suki who is a former street urchin, and, like Nan, a telepath.

In this tale, a case that intrigues Holmes, one that involves a young woman who apparently ran off to Canada with her lover, intersects with a case that Sarah is hired to deal with, the haunting of a melodramatic opera singer who, coincidentally, is the sister of the missing girl who is the focus of Holmes’ attention.

The main plot is quite interesting, and offers some surprising twists on its way to a satisfying conclusion. However, I found the novel somewhat marred by a few self-contained incidents that added nothing to the unravelling of the main plot, and seemed to serve solely to show Watson and his wife working in concert with Sarah, Nan, other magic holders - and other creatures not human.

The 12th installment of the series, A Scandal in Battersea, brings Sarah and Nan together with Holmes again. This time, the threat to England is first revealed in the terrifying dreams of a young woman of good family being cared for in a genteel home for the insane. When John and Mary Watson, along with Nan and Sarah, do their standard Christmas duty of visiting the madhouses to see if any of the poor souls are actually psychics or potential magicians put away because of the strangeness of their perceptions, they discover that young Amelia is a clairvoyant, and that her visions are of a horrendous being from another universe that is preparing to break through into our own. Though they cannot discover who is the human magician working to bring the monster through the gate, they soon realise that he is kidnapping other young women as sacrifices - some disappear altogether, others are found, with their minds empty and their souls beyond even the reach of Sarah’s mediumistic talents. Calling on all their allies, they race against time to prepare for the breakthrough of the creature before all is lost.

There are very strong Lovecraftian overtones to this story, from the somewhat mediocre magician lured into following the rituals in a mysterious book, to the other-dimensional nature of the monster and its mostly glimpsed, never fully described nature.

These are not my most favourite enlargement to the vast corpus of Holmes-insired work, but they are still quite enjoyable on their own merits - indeed, they would work as well with some other intelligent but otherwise ordinary human being in the roles that Holmes portrays. But it wouldn’t be quite as much fun, I suppose.

In a near-future America wracked by civil war, wounded army doctor Janet Watson, a surgeon who no longer has two flesh and blood arms with which to operate, heads to Washington. In addition to the physical trauma of her injury and the retrofitted prosthesis that doesn’t quite work right, she is dealing with the knowledge that her final military action was a shameful one, its veterans viewed with disgrace. Battered by war, without a promise of work or the skills she was trained in, alone in a city that distrusts veterans and dies not seem too fond of black people who appear homeless or out of work, Watson’s immediate future seems bleak. Then, a chance encounter with another veteran she once treated leads to an opportunity to share an astonishingly inexpensive apartment with the unnerving and enigmatic Sara Holmes, a brilliant, aristocratic, apparently wealthy, black woman who diagnoses Watson’s trauma and insecurities on the spot, and then challenges her to share the apartment.

This is the opening to Claire ODell’s Holmesian science fiction novel A Study in Honor.

Watson’s life with Holmes is indeed a challenge for her. Holmes gives peremptory instructions, never consults Watson, has strange visitors, and generally behaves in an enigmatic and annoying fashion. She takes Watson out to dinner on occasion, gives her expensive gifts, at times almost appears to be courting her in a peculiar fashion. Watson is by turns curious, angry, resentful, and bewildered. She finally wrests a minimum of information from Holmes, who acknowledges that she is government agent, but can say no more fir security reasons.

Meanwhile, Watson struggles with PTSD and her job as a med tech at the VA, where her medical skills are barely utilised - she essentially does initial intake interviews with each patient and records the information in the VA files. She’s frustrated by the inadequate care the veterans receive, and by her inability to be a doctor, to order tests and make the attempt to find out whether there is anything to be done for the people she sees again and again.

Everything changes when Belinda Diaz, a patient that Watson has seen repeatedly, been deeply concerned about, and risked her job to order diagnostic tests for, dies suddenly. Watson digs into the records to see if the death was preventable, but fails to find any indication of the tests she herself ordered. On her way home that night, she’s attacked, almost killed, but Holmes appears unexpectedly, saving her life.

If there was any doubt that the two events were connected, that vanishes when Holmes discovers that three other veterans from Diaz’ unit died the same week. Holmes, with Watson in tow, makes a flying weekend trip to Miami and Michigan, where the other deaths occurred. When they return, Watson reports for work, to learn she has been ‘fired with cause’ - which they are not required to explain.

As they investigate, Holmes and Watson are drawn deeper into a conspiracy that reaches into dangerous places in government, industry and the military. It’s a complex plot, and, like some of the investigations the original Sherlock undertakes for Mycroft, ends up being too politically sensitive for the truth that Holmes and Watson uncover here to be revealed. But through it all, a solid partnership is forged between Holmes and Watson - who ends up getting a real job as a respected surgical specialist, and a brand new prosthesis that will allow her to work with confidence, as a thank you from an intelligence agency that cannot acknowledge what she’s done in any other way.

And yes, the door is open for more of Sara Holmes and Doctor Janet Watson, and I dearly hope that O’Dell is inclined to write it, because these are wonderfully developed characters, clearly inspired by Conan Doyle’s heroes, and yet equally clearly their own fully realised selves. And who doesn’t need a black, female, Holmes and Watson duo in their lives?

Mary Russell’s War and Other Stories of Suspense is a collection of short fiction by Laurie R. King. The title story, Mary Russell’s War, is a novella that I’ve previously read as a stand-alone ebook, but the other pieces, all part of the Mary Russell saga, were new to me.

“Mary Russell’s Christmas“ is a delightful story about Mary’s childhood, her charming rogue of an uncle, Jake, and her introduction into the fine arts of card sharking and con jobs. And how she got her throwing knife.

“Beekeeping for Beginners” retells the story of Mary Russell’s first meeting with Holmes, and the early days of her “apprenticeship,” from the perspective of the retired consulting detective.

“Mary Russell’s Marriage,” which is set just after the events of A Monstrous Regiment of Women, is exactly what the title suggests, an account of the wedding of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, these two can’t just have a simple wedding, either in church or registry office - there has to be a mystery, a scheme, a unique circumstance, an adventure.

“Mrs. Hudson’s Case” features Holmes’s intrepid housekeeper in a case that both she and Mary Russell suspect that Holmes would not deal with appropriately - so they do what must be done, making certain that the great detective never knows the truth.

“A Venomous Death” is a short story indeed, merely a few pages in which Holmes almost immediately deduces the murderer. It’s mostly about bees.

“Birth of a Green Man” deals with the backstory of Robert Goodman, one of the characters of The God of the Hive.

“My Story” is a piece of metafiction, in which Mary Russells discusses how it came to be that she chose one Laurie R. King the editor of her volumes of memoirs, and the madcap adventures surrounding the timing of her decision. Its sequel, “A Case in Correspondence” is told entirely in postcards, letters and newspapers articles, and deals with the mysterious disappearance of Holmes and the political repercussions of the volume of Russell’s memoirs published as “The God of the Hive.”

In “Stately Holmes,” Russell and Holmes return to Justice Hall to deal with a singularly material ghost.

With the exception of the novella, Mary Russell’s War, which I have spoken about elsewhere these are for the most part slight pieces, enjoyable largely for the small glimpses into the characters lives when they are not in the throes of a full-blown adventure. I found the ones set earlier in Russell’s life the most interesting, with “Mary Russell’s Marriage” being perhaps the most moving, as it gives us a glimpse into the emotional lives of two people singularly notable for keeping their emotions quite firmly to themselves. The collection as a whole is best seen as something fun to read for Mary Russell fans awaiting the next novel.

Annelie Wendeberg’s historical suspense novel The Fall is a sequel to The Devil’s Grin, which introduces the character of Anna Kronberg, a brilliant German medical doctor and bacteriologist, living as a man, Dr. Anton Kronberg, in the Victorian England of Sherlock Holmes. I rather enjoyed the first volume, first because of the inclusion of Holmes as a character, and second, because of the interesting portrayal of the practical and psychological issues of being a woman passing as a man.

It took me longer to engage with this book, in part because it’s primarily a novel about Kronberg and Moriarty, with Holmes appearing infrequently, and because in this novel, Kronberg is now living openly as a woman, because it is now possible, though still extremely unusual, for a woman to be a physician or scientist.

As the title suggests, this novel take place during the run-up to the canonical Conan Doyle story “The Final Problem” and provides a plot for Moriarty’s to engage in and a reason for the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty to take place in Germany. And of course Kronberg is at the centre of it.

Moriarty’s plans require the expertise of a medical researcher capable of creating almost single-handedly the field of germ warfare. Having been connected to the organisation that Holmes and Kronberg brought to justice in The Devil’s Grin, he knows that Anton Kronberg is the scientist he needs, but it has taken some time to track Kronberg down, and realise that the woman he finds at the end of the trail is in fact the brilliant supposedly male bacteriologist he seeks. True to form, Moriarty kidnaps both Kronberg and her father, using the threat of harm to the old man to force her to create weaponised anthrax.

What follows is a deadly game of wits and power plays. Kronberg manages to get word of Moriarty’s plans to Holmes, while trying to persuade Moriarty that she is becoming more amenable to his plans. We know, of course, that Holmes will succeed in breaking Moriarty’s organisation in the end, and that Moriarty is doomed, but the price paid for this outcome by Kronberg is both high and bitter in the extreme.

As I said, it took me a while to fully engage, but the psychological complexity of the unfolding relationship between Moriarty and Kronberg, two brilliant and damaged people, both in their own ways tied as much to Holmes as they are to each other, made for fascinating reading.

The third Kronberg novel, The Journey, begins with Holmes and Kronberg - five months pregnant with Moriarty’s child - hiking through wilderness, hiding from Sebastian Moran, who is undoubtedly seeking them both to avenge the death of Moriarty. It’s not an unexpected scenario - even the most casual reader of the Holmes canon knows that it will be three years from the fall at Reichenbach before Holmes resurfaces.

The novel is indeed about a journey - several of them in fact, both geographical and psychological.

Kronberg’ pregnancy gives her several months of grace before Moran will take his revenge. Moriarty, before his death, gave orders that of anything should happen to him, she should not be harmed until after his child is born. The birth of the child is key to the disbursement of Moriarty’s considerable fortune. As Moriarty’s widow, she is entitled to inherit one-third as dower right, and to be the executor of a trust which provides for the child until their majority. Moriarty’s relatives want to control the child and the money. Moran wants to be paid.

Holmes and Kronberg spend her pregnancy travelling throughout England and Europe, sometimes together, sometimes not, knowing that when she delivers, the day if reckoning will come, one way or another. Hunted and hunting simultaneously, seeking to avoid Moran while setting a trap fir him at the end of the chase.

Meanwhile, Kronberg is forced to deal with her pregnancy, her hatred if Moriarty and inability to feel anything for the child, the loss of freedom, career, independence, that will follow on becoming a mother.

And emotionally, the time spent together, learning more about each other, brings Holmes and Kronberg closer in some ways, further apart in others.

I found the ending .... unsatisfying. The back and forth, maybe we have a relationship, maybe we don’t unravelling of emotions between a deeply repressed and controlled Holmes, and a woman who, like Kronberg, fears the ways in which a relationship might trap her as much as she might long for emotional intimacy with a man who is her intellectual equal, are perfectly good reasons for them to part after the birth of Kronberg’s child. Holmes remains in Europe, to hunt down Moran, Kronberg relocates to America, a more progressive country where she may find a career while living openly as a woman. That part worked.

What seemed too facile was the sudden deep attachment she has fir her daughter. She has struggled with this from the moment she became aware of her pregnancy. The abusive, manipulative, often violent nature of her relationship with Moriarty has weighed on her mind throughout. And it all vanishes in the act of giving birth. I could accept the beginnings of a change, but for all the trauma, all the ambivalence about being chained by motherhood that she expresses, to resolve itself into unconditional acceptance and love - it does not seem realistic.

With the two most interesting aspects of the series so far - the connection with Holmes, and the struggles of a brilliant woman living a life that rejects conventional female roles, functions and behaviours - apparently gone from the ongoing narrative line, I’m not at all certain that I’ll seek out any further adventures of Anna Kronberg.

Cynthia Ward’s delightful novella, The Adventure of the Incognita Contessa, is an adventure in exploring the realms of speculative fiction from the late Victorian era, a spy story set in an alternate universe where the British government is working to understand Martian technology following the failed invasion of the British Isles by inhabitants of that planet, and Lucy, the daughter of Mina Harker, works for the head of the British secret service, known as M - short for Mycroft.

Lucy’s mission is to provide unseen protection for Major Butt, an American military officer travelling home, carrying secret engineering specifications concerning the submarine Nautilus, recently recovered by German scientists. Among the other passengers on the newly commissioned oceanliner The Titanic are the vampire Millarca, also known as Carmilla, here cslled Clarimal, a mysterious English Viscount, Lord Greyborough, and his American wife (one must remember that the works of Edgar Rice Bourroughs remain under copyright, unlike many other works of a similar era which have entered the public domain), and assorted wealthy persons with names like Astor and Guggenheim.

Lucy, as we quickly learn, is not herself human, but a dhampir, the child of a vampire - in her case, Dracula himself - and a human. As a British spy, she is obliged to protect the British Empire. As the child of vampire hunters, she has an additional mission, to kill monster. Unless, of course, they are in the service of the Crown themselves. Lucy has justified her killings with the secure knowledge that vampires are soulless creatures who can only mime the emotions and conscience of humans, to lull them into a sense if security so they can feed. But as she becomes close to Clarimal, she begins to wonder if everything she has been taught is true.

Constant Reader has likely noticed that I enjoy speculative ventures of this nature, works that take a canonical source and stretch it, expand it, play with its conceits and give its characters new and interesting things to do. This is a splendid example of the genre.

Laurie R. King's novella Mary Russell's War is a prequel to her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, covering the year immediately preceding the first volume of that series. It takes the form of a personal journal kept by Mary during the run-up to, and first year of, the first World War.

The journal alternates between events in Mary's life - which include the traumatic accident in which her parents and brother died, and her decision to leave the custodial care of her paternal grandparents in Boston to return to her mother's home in England - and actual photos and news articles that appeared in various American and British publications during the time period covered by the novella.

It was unintended but somewhat serendipitous that I read this so soon after Remembrance Day; the historical war-related documents included in the journal had perhaps a bit more of an impact than they might otherwise have had on me.

It's quite an introduction to Mary Russell, and plants the seeds of much that comes out slowly during the later books of the series. A quick but enjoyable read, with a distinctly serious quality to both the narrative and the additional material.

"The Great Detective," Delia Sherman; tor.com, February 17, 2016
http://www.tor.com/2016/02/17/the-great-detective-delia-sherman/

Steampunk and spiritualism, in an alternate literary universe where noted mechanical inventor Sir Arthur Cwmlech and his apprentice Miss Tacy Gof turn to colleague Mycroft Holmes and his masterwork the Reasoning Machine to solve a mysterious theft. A young Doctor Watson, recently returned from Afghanistan, seeks a new life as an inventor. All that is missing from the tale is the Great Detective himself - and if he does not yet exist, then surely someone will have to invent him. A light and witty tale that should appeal to fans of Holmes and the steampunk genre alike.

"Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies," Brooke Bolander; Uncanny magazine, November 2016
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/talons-can-crush-galaxies/

This was a short piece, essentially flash fiction, a stunning gut-punch. Hard to read, hard to breathe afterward. Searing and powerful indictment of male entitlement and rape culture.


"Seasons of Glass and Iron," Amal El-Motar; first published in The Starlit World (2016), reprinted online at Uncanny Magazine
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/seasons-glass-iron/

There are many fairy tales about women. Women who must do impossible things, or accept impossible circumstances, because of men. Men who say they love them, men who want to test them, men who want to woo and win them. Sometimes, though, these women walk out of those tales and live their own lives instead, creating new kinds of tales.


"Lullaby for a Lost World," Aliette de Bodard; Tor.com, June 8, 2016
http://www.tor.com/2016/06/08/lullaby-for-a-lost-world/

De Bodard has said that of this story that it is "a sort of answer to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (one of my absolute favourite short stories)." It is very much a story about the prices paid for security, stability, and the like - and who makes the decisions on what prices are acceptable, and who pays those prices. A worthy counterpart to the story that inspired it.


"Things with Beards," Sam J. Miller; Clarkesworld, June 2016
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/miller_06_16/

A meditation on monsters and how they walk undetected in the world, both the monsters and evil aliens of speculative fiction (the backstory of the protagonist evokes the classic sf/horror film The Thing), and the monsters that have always been a part of the human race, the callous, the cruel, the killers of those who are labeled less than human.


"You'll Surely Drown Here if You Stay," Alyssa Wong;
Uncanny Magazine, May 2016
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/youll-surely-drown-stay/

A young boy with an uncanny heritage to communicate with, and control, the dead is forced to use his powers for the greed of others. A supernatural Western with a deep friendship that survives dead and retribution at its heart.


"An Ocean the Color of Bruises," Isabel Yap; Uncanny Magazine, July 2016
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/ocean-color-bruises/

Five young people, former college friends, take a vacation together to a second-class resort with a tragic past. When that past awakens, the quality of their own lives is called into question.


"A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflower," Alyssa Wong; Tor.com, March 2, 2016
http://www.tor.com/2016/03/02/a-fist-of-permutations-in-lightning-and-wildflowers-alyssa-wong/

A story about two sisters with unimaginable power, the depth of grief and guilt, and the futility of trying to change the past. Deep truths about grieving, accepting and moving on - and the tragedy of refusing to do so.


"Red in Tooth and Cog," Cat Rambo; originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2016, republished online February 21, 2017
http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2017/02/21/story-red-in-tooth-and-cog/

A young woman frequenting a park has her phone stolen by an unlikely culprit, leading her to discover a new ecosystem in development. An interesting perspective on the definitions of life.


“Blood Grains Speak Through Memories”, Jason Sanford; Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 17, 2016
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/blood-grains-speak-through-memories/

Sanford's novelette is set in what seems to be a far distant future, long after the ecological disasters of pollution and the exploitation of natural resources have resulted in massive social change and, one infers, biological engineering on a vast scale. The land is infused with "grains" - semi-sentient beings, possibly organic, possibly cybernetic, it's never made clear - that infect people thereafter known as anchors - who are responsible for protecting the land and its ecosystems. Anyone not part of an anchor's family is doomed to a nomadic existence, destroyed by the anchors and other beings created/controlled by the grains if they tarry to long in one place, or injure the land in any way. Frere-Jones is an anchor dissatisfied with the way the grains control the anchors and limit the lives of the nomadic day-fellows. Her husband, who shared her opinions, was killed by the grains, and if they could replace her, Frere-Jones suspects the grains would kill her too.

I was both intrigued and dissatisfied with this novelette. I enjoyed the themes of rebellion and of sacrifice, but I was frustrated at knowing so little about the grains, the biomorphing of the anchors, and how it all came to be that way. Perhaps a longer format might have allowed more worldbuilding.

I first discovered Laurie R. King's Mary Russell historical Holmesian mysteries a few years ago, and devoured most of them in a few reading binges. After reading the earlier Russell/Holmes books in rapid succession, however, the difficulties I encountered in slogging through The Language of Bees, which was quite slow-paced in comparison to the preceding novels, led me to leave off reading the series for a while.

Returning to the series with The God of the Hive rekindled my interest, and as there had been several more books in the series published since then, I decided to see how far my reawakened enthusiasm took me, and I am now fully caught up and eagerly waiting to get my electronic hands on the recently published Dreaming Spies.

King's The God of the Hive is a continuation of The Language of Bees, in which we discovered the existence of Damien Adler, Holmes' son by Irene Adler, an artist with PTSD from The Great War and a history of drug abuse, who has been living in Shanghai. His wife, Yolanthe, has an unsavoury past which has brought brought them both, and their daughter Estelle, into the orbit of an occult cult - The Children of Light - led by Thomas Brothets, a charismatic Aleister Crowley wannabe. The cult, its leader, and the Adler family have relocated to England, and now Damien's wife and daughter are missing. The Language of Bees followed Holmes' and Russell's adventures following on the discovery of the murder of Yolanthe, and ended up in the aftermath of a magickal ceremony (in which human sacrifice was intended to be part of the ritual) in the Orkney Islands with the words "to be continued."

As The God of the Hive opens, there are warrants out for the arrest of Holmes and Russell, and Mycroft is being held prisoner in an unknown location by persons unknown. Russell, with Holmes' grandaughter Estelle, is trying to make her way south in the company of the aviator she hired to get to the Orkneys in The Language of Bees, while avoiding arrest and the murderous intentions of Brothers' henchmen. Holmes, with Damien - wounded during a confrontation with Brothets - is trying the same thing, aided by a sympathic fisherman and later an even more sympathetic female doctor Holmes more-or-less kidnaps in order to get medical aid for Damien.

Holmes and his group end up in Denmark, Mary and hers in the care of a strange forest-dwelling hermit after their plane crashes during the flight south. And we discover that all of the business with Damien, his family, amd the cult has been a very small part of a very large plot aimed directly at Mycroft.

God of the Hive was quite fast-paced and held my interest well. And it delivered a strong conclusion that made the entire two-volume story arc worthwhile in the end.

The volume that followed, The Pirate King, was a delight for me to read, being set amidst a company of film actors who are making a film about a company of film actors making a film of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Shot on location, as it were, in Portugal and Morocco, there's a great deal of funny business about show business - showing that things really don't change much in the performing arts despite advances in technology - and a very interesting brush with real pirates.

The novel ends with our heroes Sherlock and Russell in Morocco, unknowing about to embark on a much more important and harrowing adventure.

Garment of Shadows opens with an injured and amnesiac young woman that readers will instantly recognise as Mary Russell, alone but recently tended, waking in an unfamiliar room in what she will soon discover to be the Moroccan city of Fez. Realising that soldiers are about to enter the house, her first instinct is to grab everything useful in her room and flee before she can be found.

A switch in viewpoint to Holmes gives the reader much necessary background about the political situation in Morocco, which will bear heavily on the story. Holmes has been visiting his maternal fifth cousin, Morocco's Resident General, Maréchal Louis Hubert Lyautey while Russell finishes up her work with the film. While visiting Lyautey, Holmes meets former friend and ally, Ali Hazr. Hazr is one of Mycroft's agents but seems to have aligned himself with self-declared Emir of the Republic of Rif, Mohammed bin Abd-el-Krim, the leader of one of the many factions in the current struggle for political control of Morocco, its mineral resources, and its strategic position at the southern side of entrance of the Mediterranean (the northern side being British-controlled Gibraltar).

As the plot unfolds, Ali and Holmes have two important tasks to undertake - arranging a secret meeting between Abd-el-Krim and Lyautey, and finding Ali's brother Mahmoud, last known to have been in the company of the also missing Mary Russell.

In Garment of Shadows, King gives us not only a fine Russell/Holmes adventure in which Russell takes the lead and demonstrates her many skills and competences, but a well researched account of an early attempt to throw off European colonialism in Northern Africa. Naturally, I enjoyed both aspects of the novel, although some readers may be less enthusiastic about Russell and Holmes sharing the stage with the politics of the imperialist project and the struggle to overthrow it.

Sarah Schulman, People in Trouble
Sarah Schulman, The Child
Sarah Schulman, The Mere Future

2011 was the year in which I discovered Sarah Schulman. Her work focuses relentlessly on the lives of lesbians and gay men, and she tackles hard subjects with uncompromising honesty. Her work can be stylistically difficult, and is often controversial, but I have found the three novels I of hers that I have read so far to be both compelling and rewarding.

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Winterson's classic examination of relationship did not draw me in quite as strongly as some of the other books of hers that I have read, but was still in my mind worth reading.


Laurie R. King, The Language of Bees

My Sherlock fetish, let me show it to you again. I found this volume of King's Mary Russell/Holmes mysteries to be harder to get into than earlier books in the series, but it did start to pick up at the end. And being essentially the first half of a much longer mystery, and thus incomplete, I suppose that makes some sense. On to God of the Hive!


Margaret Atwood, Good Bones

oh my, was this a fun book to read. A slim volume, full of very short fables and vignettes, all of them overflowing with Atwood's delicious and acerbic wit. There is a great deal of critical social commentary and trenchant feminist analysis buried in these small gems.