The sF and fantasy round-up
David V Barrett’s suggestions for summer reading range from a magical tale of five privileged girls facing a revolution and an adolescent boy’s experience of bullying to a new edition of Utopia
The Five Daughters of the Moon
Leena Likitalo Tom Doherty/Tor 2017 Pb, 286pp, $17.99, ISBN 9780765395429
Chalk
Paul Cornell Tom Doherty/Tor 2017 Pb, 265pp, US$17.99, ISBN 9780765390950
Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman Bloomsbury 2017 Hb, 279pp, £20.00, ISBN 9781408886816
Red Sister
Mark Lawrence HarperVoyager 2017 Hb, 500pp, £14.99, ISBN 9780008152291
The Science of Game of Thrones
Helen Keen Coronet 2016 Hb, 252pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781473632318
Paradise Lost
Pablo Auladell Jonathan Cape 2016 Hb, 312pp, £20.00, ISBN 9781910702239
The Time Machine
HG Wells, ed Roger Luckhurst Oxford 2017 Pb, 119pp, £5.99, ISBN 9780198707516
The Invisible Man
HG Wells, ed Matthew Beaumont Oxford 2017 Pb, 143pp, £6.99, ISBN 9780198702672
The First Men in the Moon
HG Wells, ed Simon J James Oxford 2017 Pb, 181pp, £8.99, ISBN 9780198705048
Utopia
Thomas More, plus China Miéville & Ursula K Le Guin Verso 2016 Pb, 216pp, £8.99, ISBN 9781784787608 The Five Daughters of the Moon is the first in a rare breed of book, a duology – and I can’t wait for the second one. Inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution, the story is told in successive chapters by the five daughters of the Empress of the Moon, aged from six to 22. It’s a fascinating narrative technique; they have different personalities and voices, and see events from different perspectives. And although they love each other as sisters, each finds at least one of the others irritating. Animal and bird souls are used to power magic – but early in the story the youngest daughters realise that their mother’s senior advisor, shadier than any Rasputin, is using human souls to power his Great Thinking Machine. And how will the five daughters cope when the taken-for-granted luxury of their lives is threatened by revolution? Subtle magics thread through this beautifullywritten novel from a Finnish writer, Leena Likitalo. And it has a gorgeous cover… Paul Cornell’s latest novel is a scream of pain from beginning to end. Andrew Waggoner is one of those boys destined to be bullied at school – and only a short way into the story the bullying goes horrifically beyond the normal. The Wiltshire countryside itself, the home of chalk figures, hears Andrew’s outrage and creates Waggoner, a doppelgänger bent on vengeance. Usually he’s by Andrew’s side, unseen by others like an imaginary friend, but at times he takes his place with terrifying results. Sometimes fantasy, sometimes horror, but utterly real and rooted in the landscape, Chalk is a novel of painful adolescence; it isn’t always pleasant, but it draws you in and holds you, and is one of the most powerful novels you’ll read this year. Retelling Norse myths is in vogue; I reviewed Joanne Harris’s Gospel of Loki in FT315. Neil Gaiman has been caught up in the tales since childhood, and now they’ve found a distinctive new voice through him. The Norse gods are probably more human than any other pantheon, and Gaiman captures their tetchiness, their jealousies, their unreliability – and also the bonds of love and loyalty and honour that make them a force to be reckoned with. Norse Mythology is certainly on a par with Kevin Crossley-Holland and other classic versions. I’d have liked it to be twice the length! Mark Lawrence’s Red Sister takes a while to get going – the first couple of hundred pages and we’re still on Day One – but once it does it becomes fascinating, more for its concept than for its story. Nine-year-old Nona is about to be hanged for attacking a professional fighter, the scion of a very wealthy and influential family, who was bullying her friend. She’s rescued by the mother-superior of the Convent of Sweet Mercy, which trains girls to be fighters and killers, and discovers she has rare genetic abilities which set her apart from most of the other girls. Throughout the novel the family of the fighter she attacked as a child come after her, seeking to destroy her. There are some great set- piece scenes and some thrilling fights – one ordeal in particular is excruciating – but overall in a 500-page book I’d like a bit more story. Alternative comedian Helen Keen will be familiar to many FT readers; she’s spoken/performed at UnConvention in the past. The
Science of Game of Thrones is a delightful tongue-in-cheek yet scientific exploration of some of the key ideas in the series, seeing what their real-life equivalents might be. Dragons? Well, Komodo dragons aren’t quite as impressive, romantic or beautiful. Were pterosaurs any good at flying, and how did they take off? Keen looks at weapons and poisons and created languages, at skinchanging and giants and the reality of dire wolves. A somewhat left-field and fun companion to the series. The graphic novel version of John Milton’s Paradise Lost came out last year, but it’s well worth a belated mention here. Pablo Auladell’s art is a stunning piece of work which captures and reinterprets Milton’s original. The text is minimal; the artwork is stylised, mostly monochrome or dull grey-green. Deeply thoughtful, eerily beautiful and quite astonishingly atmospheric. A new and startling way of appreciating a great allegorical work. Finally, there are some very smart-looking new editions of SF classics. OUP have The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon, with new introductions by Roger Luckhurst, Matthew Beaumont and Simon J James respectively. And if you don’t already have a copy of Thomas More’s Utopia, a new edition from Verso has a good introduction by China Miéville and fascinating essays by Ursula K Le Guin.