Book Reviews: What I’ve been reading since the last review

The Quantum Curator series by Eva St John

The Quantum Curator and the Faberge Egg is the first in an ongoing series, and I've read all four published so far, which shows both how short and how entertaining they are.

These are fast-paced and funny novels, reminiscent of Jodi Taylor’s St Mary’s chronicles, in that they have a feisty heroine and involve time travel. St John’s novels explore the notion of multiple earths and are mostly set on Alpha Earth, a much more civilized place than our own Beta Earth. On Alpha Earth, Neith is a Quantum Curator based in the sparkling modern city of Alexandria where everyone is polite and friendly, and there is virtually no crime. Or at least that’s what they think.

Back on grubby Beta-Earth, academic Julius Strathclyde – young, handsome, clever and charming – finds himself caught up in one of Neith’s adventures. She and her team are trying to save a Faberge egg from destruction, but unknown to Neith there is a traitor in their midst. As the series progresses, we learn that the treachery goes much deeper than a single team and threatens the entire foundation of Alpha-Earth.

I particularly enjoyed the time-travel sections of the books where our heroes travel into Beta-Earth’s past, and I enjoyed the appearance of the gods in book two. These books move quickly and are quite short so you can read them swiftly. They are lively and imaginative, though sometimes implausible and sometimes the characters feel under-drawn. Though the stories progress at a rapid pace, there are long sequences where very little seems to happen, which is an odd phenomenon. The plots take unexpected turns, but occasionally I found myself thinking they could have saved themselves a lot of time by just communicating better with each other. What I mean here is that, occasionally, the plotting seems rather contrived.

Nevertheless, overall, I would recommend them as light reading if you enjoy Jodi Taylor. 

*** [quite an entertaining way to use up some spare time]

 

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The Unhappy Medium Book One by T.J.Brown

 

I'd never heard of T.J.Brown before he popped up on my Kindle as a recommended read based on my previous reading, but I thought I'd give him a go, as I had nothing else to read at that moment. And I’m glad I did. His humour in places reminded me of Douglas Adams - and, to a lesser extent, Tom Holt - though he is more maximalist in his style and not as original in his ideas.

This is a genuinely funny novel, with a whimsical plot and eccentric characters. Dr Newton Barlow is a sceptical scientist who discovers, much to his horror, that the afterlife exists. He is hired by the ghosts who run Purgatory, as a kind of Indiana Jones, minus the hat but with the cynicism fully present and correct. On my MA in Writing course, we were told constantly that we should always ‘show not tell’, and Brown is pretty good at showing – there are some excellent action sequences in the story, including a wonderful car chase through Spain, and a terrifying journey through the night-time horrors of a derelict psychiatric hospital. The characters are vividly drawn and memorable – I particularly enjoyed the ninja C of E vicar, and the ghost of Professor Sixsmith. But Brown does also do a great deal of ‘telling’ and I can imagine the tutors on my MA course moaning about this – however, he does it generally very well. This is where he reminded me most of Douglas Adams, as he adopts a similarly wry, humorous tone of voice. I found his lengthy exposition generally very readable and done well, and I suspect that ordinary readers [ie, not those studying or teaching on Masters courses] quite like this sort of thing.

A more serious issue is the fact that Brown does at times over-write. Some of his set-piece scenes could be shorter. At times, I felt his humour would be funnier if he adopted a lighter touch. For instance, at one point Dr Barlow has his gun confiscated and Brown comments that he ‘was now armed only with his sarcasm’, which felt like over-explaining to me. There were occasional mis-steps like this, though Newton’s actual sarcasm is usually very funny and doesn’t require any highlighting. But I did feel that some judicious editing here and there would sharpen up the funnies. This is a writer with a great sense of humour, a dry wit that is also often silly, but his writing would benefit from a little paring down. Do we really need Newton’s full life story prior to his encounter with the ghost of Professor Sixsmith? Do we really need such detail about the village of Langton Hadlow? Many readers might well answer these questions with a resounding ‘yes’ and I can see good reasons for why Brown includes this material, but I just felt it might be made a little more succinct. I thought the novel might benefit from being a bit shorter.

Though The Unhappy Medium was first published in 2014 and is set roughly in the modern world of mobile phones and computers, there are some hints that Brown is a middle-aged man, mostly in his portrayal of women. Sister Wendy is intended to be a comic character, but even before she is taken over by the spirit of La Senza’s beloved ‘evil nun’, the receptionist Miss Dyer is a Carry On film archetype of the over-sexed older woman which made me feel uncomfortable. Similarly, Newton’s ex-wife Rowena is a cliche of numerous sitcoms, a ball-breaking, self-centred, greedy, cold-hearted woman with no redeeming features except her looks.  Newton's daughter, Gabby, and his girlfriend Viv are drawn more fully and are definitely more likeable, but I felt that female characters perhaps weren’t Brown’s forte, though I have to say that there are cliched male characters in the novel too, such as Chris Baxter the misogynistic super-salesman.

I really enjoyed the discussions about science versus superstition, however, and I loved the fact that Viv lives in Greenwich, a place I used to live myself. I also thought the creation of the bonetaker was inspired, and the description of him was excellent. I think the book is worth reading for this character alone!   

You would think that the very least you should expect from a novel is that it is written in full, correctly punctuated sentences and correct grammar, with no spelling errors, but it is surprising (or maybe not) how many novels I read these days on Kindle that are written very badly, from this technical point of view. Commenting on such things often feels reductive – surely, it’s the artistry  that counts, the creativity and literary flair, the plots and characters?  However, I have read many novels on Kindle where the ‘technical’ aspects have rendered them unreadable, in my opinion, though I have to admit that my own standards and expectations in this regard have been lowered over the years so I can now tolerate far more errors than I would have tolerated in a print book. Therefore, the fact that I was impressed that Brown can write in full, often elegant sentences says something about modern publishing.  I found it refreshing to read something written in a confident style that didn’t make me feel insecure as so many novels I read on Kindle do these days. You know that feeling, when the author doesn’t seem to know what constitutes a sentence and can’t use punctuation properly, so you find yourself re-reading ‘sentences’ to try to work out their meaning? There were some errors – he doesn’t seem to know that he needs to mark off the names of characters in dialogue, when they are being addressed, with commas: ‘Hey, Bill, come over here’ rather than ‘Hey Bill come over here’. But this is a minor failing, and sometimes he does it right! There were a few other – occasional and unimportant – errors such as spelling ‘wuss’ as ‘woos’, but they were genuinely minor compared with a lot of stuff I read these days.

**** [an excellent way to pass a few hours if you enjoy comic fantasy]