richardabbott

The Handfasted Wife, by Carol McGrath, is one of the many books which have come out in recent years surrounding the Norman invasion of 1066. For me, this was a five star book that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Carol has chosen to tell her tale about a year or so either side of the fateful months, and to focus on the person of Elditha (Edith) Swanneck – married to Harold according to popular customs and accepted as valid by most Saxon Christians of the time, but not legitimate according to the stricter rules of the European church.

Carol has delved heavily into the various literary sources referring to these years, with an appropriately critical eye depending on their authorship as well as their distance in time from the events. Small extracts from approximately contemporary texts stand at the head of each chapter, a device I personally enjoy. Indeed, the quality and detail of research stands out from the book as a major feature. There was a real sense of immersion in the age.

To some degree, this was a slight distraction – much as I like research, there were times in the first half of the book where it threatened to overwhelm the story. In ruthlessly objective terms, not a great deal happens for a fairly large chunk of the book, but Carol uses a lot of space informing us of local customs and everyday objects. In complete contrast, the second half of the book, involving flight and pursuit into the west of England and beyond, accelerates at a rapid rate.

One of my great joys of reading this book was simply the pleasure of knowing the terrain Elditha and her various companions move across – at least, the modern version of it. The river trip along the Thames near Oxford, the approach to the Severn valley, the view of the estuary at Exeter – all were vivid episodes enhanced by my own experience of them. They are, I think, well enough described that someone who does not know the land would still appreciate them.

As well as the exterior landscape of England, Carol captures the interior world of Saxon women in a way I find very credible. The Norman rule was a cruel time for women, not only in the obvious forms of personal violence, but in the destruction of their role in society. As the dust of the conquest settled, women would find themselves in a completely subordinate position, with the rights and privileges accorded them in Saxon society swept away. These would not be recovered for many centuries.

Again on a personal note, this made an interesting connection with my own preferred period – the much earlier transition from Late Bronze to Iron Age in the middle east. Here also, a long-standing and stable social structure was being swept away and replaced by a system which put women at a considerable disadvantage and locked them into a few prescribed roles.

This was definitely a five star book for me – the minor reservations that I had with the level of research detail inserted into the text do not detract from the overall effect. I particularly enjoyed the blend of interior and exterior worlds, and the larger sense that a whole way of life was being swept away in ways that were rather unexpected to the parties involved. Definitely to be recommended if you like books set in this era which focus not so much on the fighting and battles as much as the personal experience of life.

Britannia’s Reach, by Antoine Vanner, is the second in a loosely connected series of books about the life and times of a British naval officer in the late 19th century. A while ago I read and reviewed the first in the series. Britannia’s Wolf. The books are independent of each other, and you do not need to have read the first one to understand the second.

Full marks to Antoine for his unusual choice of setting for this book. Dawlish makes a career of handling slightly shady.assignments and there is something of the Mission Impossible in the way he is routinely told that Britain will disavow knowledge of and responsibility for the endeavour if it goes wrong. Here, commercial rather than political interests drive the military goals. In common with many other naval officers of his day, the protagonist Dawlish is courageous, disciplined on a personal level, and very competent at conducting necessary actions on land or sea – or on river, in this case.

The details of naval technology and customs have obviously been very thoroughly researched, and it is clear from other reviewers’ comments that on a military level the book comes over as authentic. Certainly great care has been lavished on descriptions of the military hardware and its use.

However, the book as a whole did not click with me as much as the first one. For one thing there are essentially no female characters explored sympathetically or in depth. This would be fair enough for the shipboard experience, but in Britannia’s Wolf, Antoine successfully found ways to bring female balance into the narrative.

Similarly, the combat action takes over the whole book from early on, and other forms of interaction are largely discarded. The proportion of the book describing battle scenes is extremely high. The few “boardroom” scenes, and the one attempt to parley, scarcely provide balance. The very dubious moral basis for the action as a whole keeps drifting towards the surface, but does not drive the action or the plot: characters may dislike the position they are in, but apparently have no way to step out of it. Dawlish’s adversaries, who on the face of things might well have a greater moral claim on their side, are mostly flat characters who (with one exception) never attain a life of their own.

On a technical level there were a small number of proof reading errors, but none of a serious nature – basically minor slips of present for past tense or the like. Since these slightly increased towards the end of the book I did wonder if things got a bit hurried as a planned release date approached. The production of the kindle version is accurate and makes good use of the various features available – all in all a well turned out book worthy of the naval professionalism it describes.

The content and focus of the book means that for me this is a four-star book – I don’t really enjoy such a purely martial focus. But others who enjoy the vicarious experience of combat in the late nineteenth century will probably rate it more highly, and I feel sure that it will appeal to a lot of readers. Certainly I will be happy to look out for other books in this series as they appear.

I found The Ayah’s Tale, by Sujata Massey to be entirely captivating. After what has been a dry patch of slightly disappointing books, here at last was another five star read.

The Ayah of the title actually relates two different tales. The frame is set in 1950s Malaya, where Menakshi is an adult with children of her own. Inside that we are transported to pre-independence India of the 1920s, where she is Ayah (guardian/governess) to the young children of a high ranking British family.

Part of my motivation to read this book was a desire to encounter India through fiction as well as through daily contact with team members at work. The Indian voices in the book – Menakshi herself, as an intelligent and emotionally perceptive young woman, her friend and supporter Ram, and others – were immediately familiar to me. In 1920s India these people were trapped within the constraints of a social system which denied them opportunities to reach anything like their potential. A few Indians were starting to cross the social divide in terms of wealth and access to resources, but the vast majority could not move out of the circumstances of their birth.

The British voices are diverse, blending the unthinking arrogance of some with the kindness and compassion of others. For the children Menakshi cares for in the household, there is a gradual dawning of awareness of the realities of their family life. Some passages make for very uncomfortable reading for a Brit, along with a sense of relief that the underlying attitudes of assumed superiority have been considerably eroded since those days. It is, after all, nearly a century since the experiences of Menakshi’s youth.

The tone and vocabulary of the book make this accessible to young people as well as adults. However, it would take a certain level of maturity to be interested in the story line, and sensitive to the inter-personal dynamics. For those many of us who have no personal memory of the period of British Empire, it is a useful and timely reminder of what our nation took away from other countries as well as gave to them. But the focus of the book is not really on the dark side of British rule, but rather on the Indian potential for growth, and the ability to face challenges and rise above them.

The final chapter, closing the 1950s frame, is a beautifully crafted piece which both tidies up the plot line and also leads you to rethink what has gone before. Sujata has given us a fine example of how to use this particular structural device to conclude a story. All in all, a great book which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading. In case there was any doubt… five stars from me.

Timepiece, by Heather Albano, was an experiment for me into a sort of steampunk plus time travel experience. A little to my surprise, it was set overtly in a very recognisable version of our own world, beginning on the day of the Battle of Waterloo. As the story progressed it became clear that other fictional elements had been woven into the plot, most notably from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I suppose that I had expected something set in an invented world, or at least one in which the divergence from our own history had happened sufficiently early that there were many more differences.

As it was, I did not find the basic premise compelling. It seemed altogether too easy for Heather to inventively write her way out of problems, and I felt that difficulties raised early on were side-stepped later. Certain constraints in the time travel part were set up, but did not seem to be followed through consistently if the plot seemed to require otherwise (for example, being in two places at once at the same time, or whether or not it was possible to revisit a time already accessed). On the one hand, the world was too much like ours, but on the other, there were too many added ingredients to know where things stood.

Like several other books I have read recently, it is just the first part of a story, and it finishes rather abruptly, almost in mid-narrative. To some extent this incompleteness is signaled by clues dropped quite skilfully into the storyline. Certain relationships are suggested but then left unresolved. As reader, you begin to suspect that these clues are building into a pattern, but the characters remain ignorant of this. Perhaps they will become aware of the pattern in the next volume, which I am guessing is going to see the main characters try and resolve the problem that they were left in at the end of Timepiece - it's something of a `three wishes' plot where at each stage the central couple have to try to sort out the problems that were created last time. At any rate, this device of simply halting the story mid-flow did not endear me to the book, and has not left me eager to pick up the next one: instead I felt frustrated that it was left incomplete.

The book necessarily handles some science / technology plot components as it goes along, and I had mixed feelings about these. Some felt about right for the early to mid 19th century, but others felt out of place. But then, if you're writing about a parallel universe maybe it's fair game to just swap things around? I wasn't sure, and I think on balance I prefer dealing with the actual history of our own world, and the problems faced by people in it. From conversations with others I am aware of how hard it is to create a convincing imaginary world. In the world of Timepiece, I was never sure that I actually knew what the rules and boundaries were, and they seemed rather fluid as things moved along.

One of Heather's main interests is clearly to explore how people from one era might cope with a culture reasonably close to their own - in this case about 70 years. That is an interesting endeavour - it's almost within the protagonists' lifetimes, but with enough changes (quite apart from the time travel stuff) to make for some unexpected dissonance as well as reassuring familiarity. This worked well for a while, but it seemed that having gone into changes of costume, and some aspects of the role of women, Heather dropped back into differences more to do with social rank than cultural development. I would have enjoyed something further along the original lines.

Technically this is yet another book where kindle features have not been properly coded. The the hardware navigation works, and there is an HTML TOC, but this has not been fully integrated and you cannot `goto' table of contents. However, the content of the book has been carefully proof-read and is nicely laid out.

Timepiece is undoubtedly imaginative, but for me it slightly failed to reach a target, resulting in my four star rating. I do prefer books about the real past of this world, but am quite happy to delve into imaginary or parallel places... so long as the ground-rules are clearly set out and maintained. Alternate history books are a fascinating look into unrealised possibilities, but I did not find this one very compelling. Having said that, I am sure that readers who click more with steampunk than I do will have a great time with Heather's book, and appreciate its particular flavour more than I did. Worth a look, if this is a genre you enjoy.

I had very mixed feelings about The Girl in the Photo, by Wally Wood. In the end I think four stars is about right – for all my many misgivings I did want to find out how things ended, and the changes of scene and character development moved things along at a reasonable pace.

I had originally expected there to be a greater proportion of the story set in the past, but in fact the vast majority is contemporary, with just a few chapters relating events during the Korean War. Some people might well enjoy this mix, but I realised yet again that books set in today’s world don’t really grip me. There were quite a lot of casual references to American culture which for me were obscure and unexplained.

The story itself seems very derivative – without giving too much away, the plot seems far too much like The Bridges of Madison County, with a heavy dollop of Madame Butterfly. In part my quick reading through to the end was to see if the ending matched either of those sources. But repeatedly through the book I felt that there was too much similarity to other material.

The plot dwells a great deal on sibling dynamics, as well as wider family interactions revolving around the central brother-sister pair. Most of these carry conviction, and the central characters have a good blend of likeable and dislikable traits. Unexpected windows are sometimes opened into one or other person’s behaviour and attitudes. The story perspective switches quite often between several voices. That works quite well. I was not wholly persuaded, though, by the Japanese portion towards the end. It was clear that Wally had considered a range of possible options, but the final choice seemed to me to be rather rushed, skating rapidly over what was potentially the most complex and difficult encounter.

Technically as a kindle book The Girl in the Photo was very disappointing. It had obviously been prepared as a print edition and then just copied over. A fair number of words were force-hyphenated in the middle of words where this was not necessary, presumably because line breaks happened there in print. There are chapters but there is no kindle TOC, and the standard navigation controls do not work. Given how easy it is to prepare kindle books these days, the omission is striking, and makes it almost impossible to flick back to (say) one of the chapters set in the Korean War to check something out.

So all in all four stars so far as I was concerned. Readers of contemporary fiction set in the US, with brief forays into Japan, will probably like this. The historical elements are only a small part of the whole, and are more in the way of scene setting rather than actively developed.

I was reminded of George MacDonald’s writing by a friend on Google+, and he has been a great find. I already knew that CS Lewis acknowledged him as a major inspiration, but had not expected to find out just how large an influence he has been on modern fantasy as an entire genre.

I devoured two of his works in rapid succession – Phantastes and Lilith – and found them to have substantial differences as well as similarities. In both cases, MacDonald felt the need to devise a means for his protagonist to make the transition from the world we live in, into the particular fantasy world of the title in question. This is definitely a feature of the era, also seen in some equally inventive traveller’s tales stories of the 19th century which never aspire to magic or the land of Faerie. Many modern authors would probably begin his or her story directly in the other realm, but Lewis used various devices such as the well-known Wardrobe, or the ‘Wood between the Worlds’ to this end. For MacDonald and his contemporaries, the transition, and the relationship between the worlds, was an important ingredient.

Some of MacDonald’s ideas have become so commonplace that some readers may think there is little originality in the books. Tolkien’s ents are here, along with Lewis’s courtly culture and virtues, and just about everyone’s goblins and elves. In common with a great many other writers, the societies are basically medieval in outlook. People ride horses, fight with bladed weapons, and communicate face to face. Limited magical abilities are present, but not as learned talents for just anyone – they are an innate faculty of some beings and inaccessible to others.

Of the two books, Lilith is much more overtly concerned with Christian themes, building on the tradition that the woman of that name was Adam’s first wife. Some familiarity with Christian elaboration of this idea helps, but is not essential, since the tradition MacDonald is using comes from outside the written text of the Bible. His profound commitment to principles of eternal hope and redemption drives the conflicts and resolutions of the book’s characters. Themes of life and death fill the book, together with the Christian duty to lay aside the everyday life in order to put on a new kind of life. It is a duty which comes no more easily to the book’s main character than to any of the rest of us.

Phantastes, subtitled ‘A Faerie Romance for Men and Women‘, is, perhaps, a more conventional fantasy tale. It describes a quest and trial of passage in which the central character has to identify and master his shadow side – just as Ged has to in Ursula LeGuin’s EarthSea books. There are mysterious beings, often women, locked inside wood or stone and waiting to be released by the right individual. There are warnings about particular actions or pathways, most of which are ignored by the protagonist who has a rather exaggerated sense not only of his own safety, but also the ability of the wider world to survive his rash deeds unscathed. The theme reaches back to Greek mythology (if not earlier), and forward to our own ecological travails. And finally there is the necessary noble deed which cannot be accomplished except through the gates of death.

The books, especially Phantastes, will not just appeal to fantasy fans, but are also of interest to students of psychology. Some passages anticipate the later formal development of psychotherapeutic understanding. Students of the life and work of, say, Freud and Jung will already know just how much of their thinking rested on earlier foundations laid by artists, philosophers, and authors. Here in 1858 we already have MacDonald writing about the “forgotten life, which lies behind the consciousness”, and the mutual dependence of external objects with the “hidden things of a man’s soul”.

Having said all that, some people will, no doubt, be impatient with these works. For me they were definitely both five star books, not least because many of my favourite authors have so obviously been influenced by them. They have survived over 150 years of literary development remarkably well, but inevitably use some constructions and habits of thought which will seem dated to the modern reader. If you are keen on exploring one of the foundational authors of modern fantasy, and willing to work with the conventions of the 19th century, these books are for you.

I was introduced to The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng, at a book club I frequent. I have enjoyed a good fraction of the books we have selected there, but this was the first one I thought was beautiful. Well-researched historical fiction often ends up being thorough and workmanlike, rather than elegant or stylish: this book definitely bucks the trend.

It is clear from comments at the book club, and those of other reviewers, that many people have disliked the deliberate ambiguities of time and memory in which Eng delights. The book shifts frequently, even within a chapter, often without overt clues, between several time periods in the life of the central character. The uncertainty is strengthened since she is also struggling with progressive memory loss as she ages, and has an understandable and deep-rooted desire to keep certain episodes concealed. Themes of both ordinary and wilful forgetfulness thread through the book, and the author plays his own part in this by refusing to give some issues the prominence which in inter-personal or plot terms they probably deserve. This book invites the reader to engage carefully and deeply.

Superficially the book is about the garden of the title, but both the garden itself and the act of designing it are used as metaphors of personal and social transformation. The garden, the gardener, the novice herself, and the various other people living nearby, all hide important issues within a facade of surface detail. The Second World War and its aftermath was experienced very differently in south east Asia as compared with Europe, and the tensions and traumas of those years have left indelible marks on the people and the land. They emerge in the lives of the characters of this book.

For me The Garden of Evening Mists was without doubt a five star book, and one which has continued to exercise both my imagination and family conversations for many weeks. However, it is clear that it will not appeal to all comers. If you are looking for an action book, or one in which the story flow is clearly signaled and unambiguous, you will not find it here. However, if you like exploring the psyche after it has survived trauma, and do not mind coping with the indeterminacies of memory leading you to and fro in time, this could be a great discovery.

Sons of the Wolf, by Paula Lofting, is one of several books which have come out over the last few years exploring the period shortly before or shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Paula has chosen the earlier time, and so the modern reader is aware of the encroaching invasion from the time markings which annotate each chapter. The protagonists are of course ignorant of this, though they are aware of the rising tensions in society at large. Readers should also be aware that Sons of the Wolf is only the first half of the full story which Paula has in mind, so the ending comes rather abruptly, with many plot threads still unresolved.

The book oozes with details collected from very extensive research into the period. As reader, I was left with a sense of thorough immersion in the age and the culture. Unfortunately, this also left me with a sense that I did not like either the culture or the age! To my own astonishment, knowing a little about the cruelty and harshness of the invading Normans in parts of the country (particularly the north), I found myself wanting to get to 1066 so that William and his army could sweep the lot away. I found none of the Saxon characters to be likeable. Whilst I am all in favour of characters being portrayed with flaws, I found myself unable to sympathise or empathise with any of these ones. I hope, and suspect, that Saxon men and women had more to commend them than this, even recognising the fact that the virtues Saxon society held in highest regard are very different from those of today, or indeed those of the ancient world which is my own favourite era.

The subject matter of the book switches between the family difficulties of a moderately important Saxon family head in Sussex, and the bigger political and military events of the early 11th century. Although the central character would say that family was important to him, his actions frequently undermine the possibility of a close-knit harmonious group. On the wider national stage, just as on the personal one, betrayal and rivalry often lead to unexpected difficulties or defeats. I imagine that most issues in both of these arenas are resolved in the second half of the story.

For me, this was a four star book. Paula’s research and attention to detail is beyond doubt, and the book was carefully and attractively presented. The plotline worked well, though as mentioned above some issues are raised and never resolved within these pages. The characters who are the main focus are drawn convincingly, and interact in what seem to me to be credible ways for their relative station and gender. However, I could not feel warm to any of them, and the writing style did not evoke for me anything appealing or beautiful about the age. I think other readers who do feel more at home in pre-Norman England might well enjoy the book more than I, and I would certainly recommend Sons of the Wolf as a thorough exploration of middle-rank Saxon culture on the threshold of the Norman invasion.

Realmgolds, by Mike Reeves-McMillan, is set in an alternative world with an earlier level of technology than our own, but where magic is a reality. Mike's books were my first foray into steampunk as a genre, so initially I was not sure what to expect. Happily I have enjoyed the experience, and am very happy to recommend this book and its successors, and to explore the genre further.

The Realmgolds series, of which this is the first, are not arranged in sequence, but overlap one another and often touch on the same events from a different perspective. As such, they do not strictly need to be read in order, although inevitably the later ones assume more familiarity with the world and its denizens than the earlier ones. Indeed, to some extent I feel you need some general acquaintance with the conventions of the genre in order to get what Mike is doing. There are (I came to realise) numerous places where his dryly humorous comments only really make sense if you know how other authors have tackled these issues.

This book's main focus is on the military and political changes taking place in one of the world's countries (Realms). A civil war takes place, and the legitimate ruler of that country (one of the Realmgolds of the title) is temporarily forced out before rising to the occasion and reclaiming his rightful position. The campaign and military sections are written well and persuasively, with believable levels of technology and tactics. However, I found the political plans at the end less convincing, with a rather Utopian plan for future prosperity schematically laid out and enthusiastically received. The bad guys and girls are portrayed as obviously economically wrong as well as morally dubious. If only it was so easy to run a country here in this world!

I think that the book could best be classed as Young Adult rather than Adult. Only one of the main characters is substantially transformed by the events of this story, and most of them, even the second , are very simply delineated. Character details are usually supplied for their contribution to the plot rather than to build complex personalities. The emotional impact of major events on the characters seems low, and perhaps in consequence, the story did not generate strong responses in me. Sex and intimacy are treated in a rather coy manner - when the characters get involved with such things they cease to seem like adults, and appear more like teenagers who have found a copy of the Kama Sutra. It was unclear to me if this was part of Mike's world-building or to do with his target audience. The world itself has obviously been carefully thought through by Mike, with considerable detail provided or implied about prior history and culture.

Overall for me this was a four star book. It is confident and consistent in its presentation of the world, and has clearly been given huge attention to detail. The prose is well-constructed though plain. The kindle version which I read was excellently produced, complete with proper navigation guides and so on - touches which are often omitted in books that I have read recently. At the end I wanted to know more about this universe. However, I prefer more depth and more ambiguity in characters, and felt that this world could potentially offer me much more of its evident mystery and antiquity than I had been granted in these pages. I have no idea if it would appeal to regular steampunk enthusiasts, but it is certainly accessible to those, like me, who have had no prior acquaintance.

Hatshepsut, Speak to me, by Ruth Whitman, was an unexpected gift brought to me from America. I had not heard of the book before, but am delighted to have read it now. Unlike most of what I have read recently, it is a book of modern poetry rather than prose. However, it is not all modern, as Ruth blended translations and rewrites of New Kingdom Egyptian material along with new compositions in her own voice.

The result is a vivid and credible dialogue between the Ruth of today and the Hatshepsut of about 3500 years ago. The two women are seen to share a great deal in their experience of life, sexuality, loss, and managing the difficulties of being a woman in a role traditionally seen as male. Indeed, part of the poignancy of the conversation is simply that the two women could never actually meet in real life, and can only converse through the written word or glyph.

Hatshepsut’s life fades away in the textual record left to us from Egypt. This has given rise to a great deal of speculation about the transfer of power from her to Thutmose III. Ruth presents her as a perceptive nurturer of culture, not the conqueror of other lands that so many New Kingdom pharaohs sought to be. As such, despite the internal wealth of goods and knowledge she cultivated, in the end she was rejected by a martial faction within elite society. Her voice fades away into the still-surviving splendour of her memorial at Deir el-Bahri, along with the resting places and histories of those she loved. This book was also to be Ruth Whitman’s final one, so that both women leave us with the closing words of the book.

I personally thought the book was a great piece of imaginative exploration, and have no hesitation in giving it five stars. Having said that, I am aware that not everyone will enjoy it. It is poetry rather than prose, and although it spans the lives of both women it does not intend to tell a story which goes anywhere. Part of the connection between the two women is that their simple struggle to gain acceptance absorbed so much energy that their full potential could not be realised.

For those who like the human side of New Kingdom Egypt – inquisitive, sensitive and exploratory as opposed to assertive and combative – this could be a book for you.

The Prophet Motive, by John Bimson, is fundamentally about the narrow divide between understanding and misunderstanding. This swings from the minor and often hilarious slips which constantly hover in the background of English-American conversation, right through to the life- and world-threatening consequences of extremist interpretation of biblical prophecy.

The book was originally written with an expectation that the year 2000 would see an outbreak of millennial doomsdayism. As things turned out, this did not happen on a large scale, and even the excitement about the year 2012 – complete with feature film – was rather understated. However, The Prophet Motive can still be read as an echo of contemporary thought and preoccupation. Like so many former prophets, you just have to move the dates…

The book is undeniably funny, though with a very dry British sense of humour that some people may not click with. If you read it, be prepared to find serious subjects tackled in an offbeat way. The scenes towards the end, with multi-way puns on the word “seal” are something of a tour de force, and show up the military habit of thought as just as rigid and fundamentalist as the extreme religious group they confront. Conversely, if you cannot find humour and a sense of fun in tackling biblical prophecy, fringe views on the end of the world, middle eastern relationships, and archaeology, then this book is not for you. The position is summed up in the closing words, “Laughter… fosters self-critical detachment and has the power to defanaticise. I believe it is no coincidence that the Essenes of Qumran imposed penalties on members who giggled.”

The primary technical vehicle for the plot is the investigation of the history of Israel in the couple of centuries before and after the time of Jesus. It is handled with skill and accuracy, including the state of Dead Sea Scroll research up to the time of writing the book (the late 1990s). The wide variety of motives that different people and groups have for looking at this period is captured, together with the whole spectrum of ability levels and preconceptions.

The book is very much plot driven, and only one or two of the characters change to any real degree from start to end. I did feel that the very last episode (Project Peter, Phase 2) was rather too easily dismissed as a non-event in favour of the climax of the personal quests of the two main characters. I suspect that Phase 2 was only really brought in for two reasons. First it takes the triumphal edge off the successful struggle against Phase 1. Secondly it allows a very cool snippet of humour turning the tables on the millenarianism that dominates the book. On balance, though, a potentially much more serious threat is casually discarded in a few words.

Sadly The Prophet Motive is currently out of print owing to the demise of the small press who took the project on, and at the time of printing no thought was given to electronic publication. It is to be hoped that this might change with the revolution in publishing which has happened in the last few years. Technically the book has been well proof-read and well edited, and I think it has good mileage in it still.

I really enjoyed this book, and think it would be accessible to a general audience. Certainly it helps already to know something about the areas tackled – the interpretation of prophecy, the nature of archaeological work and evidence, and so on. However, there are enough explanations along the way that if you did not know much about (say) the Dead Sea Scrolls beforehand, you will get to know what you need.

For me this was a four star book. I don’t often read fiction set in the present day, nor stories that are quite so plot-focused. So for me personally, the book missed a few elements which I look for. However, I would certainly recommend it as an exciting and entertaining read, and am very glad to have come across it. I suspect that people who are more familiar with this genre might rate it with five stars.

Finally, a disclaimer – John was my PhD supervisor a few years ago when I was working on Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian. However, that was long enough ago, and on a sufficiently different area of biblical and related studies, that I don’t feel this has compromised my objectivity at all.

Dead Romans, by David Cord, is set in a place and time that I did not know much about - Ephesus around 165 AD, at the end of the Parthian campaign conducted by Lucius while he was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius. The immediate crisis is a particularly severe outbreak of plague, apparently brought back by the soldiers as they return from further east.

The book gives every impression of being carefully researched, at both the wider political level and as regards the details of ordinary Ephesian lives. Even a brief search online will reveal something of the history behind the novel. This wide spectrum of background research supports, and is crucial to, the particular style of the book.

David has chosen to structure the book by showing us three very different perspectives on the same events. In this way, the same people, places and events adopt a quite different significance in each portion. A person who might be a powerful and intimidating figure to one of the three is a mere annoyance or irrelevance to another. The first protagonist is a local shepherd, the second is Lucius' mistress, and the third, intermediate between these in social location, one of the city bakers who also has pretensions to be an author. Their lives intersect in various ways. I am very partial to the inclusion of several different voices within a book, and have not often come across this particular strategy for including them.

So this triptych effect worked very well as a structural device for me, and gave considerable depth to the presentation. The three individuals naturally had entirely different views on what was or was not important, and their varying positions in society are well described. One difficulty for some people might be that the story does not go very far beyond what you have learned after the first third. However, there is some advancement in the plot, and there are certainly new pieces of the jigsaw that are provided.

Each of the three is given a fairly plausible back-story, so that you as reader can see how their personal histories are driving their present-day actions. Reasonably enough for story purposes, each of them is somewhat unusual as a member of their class. They stand out as remarkable individuals who each try to push back the limitations of their social role.

There were some difficulties. The central section, focusing on Lucius' mistress Panthea, relied rather too heavily for my preference on her sexual activities, which tended to be squalid rather than exciting. Her back-story provides a rationale for this, and to be sure she is a courtesan whose main attraction to Lucius was presumably her sex appeal. However, Lucius is presented as a sensitive individual who wants more than an athletic bed partner. Panthea herself is supposed to be multi-talented in languages, philosophy and the arts - which makes good sense for someone aiming to catch the eye of royalty. But her part of the story is overwhelmed by sex, and somehow loses sight of other facets of her self.

The final portion, following Aristides the baker and potential author, ends up rather blurring his life with that of his prospective literary patron. Towards the end of the book is was not very clear which of them was in central focus. However, Aristides has much more contact with the soldiers than the other two, and these encounters are handled very persuasively. He certainly emerges as a plausible figure.

On a technical level, the pre-release kindle file I was provided with had a number of quite serious flaws. However, both author and publisher have told me that these problems have been corrected in the release version. All being well, future readers will not be distracted by these. Taking this final piece of editing into account, I have not let this affect my opinion.

On balance, for me, this was a four star book. On the basis of imagination and background research, I have no hesitation in commending it to others. It is a good introduction into a rather lesser-known slice of history, and many of the people described, both major and minor characters, are convincing. However, I was not won over by the central portion dealing with Panthea. It felt to me as though her potentially fascinating contribution was rather flattened into a single, rather repetitive, series of movements. The book as a whole is definitely worth reading, especially for those, like me, who enjoy historical fiction that is not preoccupied with battle scenes. The details of daily life in Ephesus emerge well from these pages, and I am certainly glad to have read this book.

I was provided with a free kindle copy of the book in return for a fair review.