Winter is finally over! August is the last gasp of Sydney winter and we are now hurtling towards spring. It has been a great month of reading for me: dipping into some old friends in preparation for new favourites. I read seven books this month and this is what I thought of them.
Siwan – Saunders Lewis
This is a translated version of the play by the acclaimed Welsh playwright, Saunders Lewis. I was drawn to reading this because one of my all-time historical novels is Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman and the main character, Joanna of Wales, is the titular Siwan here (Siwan is Welsh for Joanna or Joan as she may have been known.) This play focuses on a key event in her life, her infidelity with William de Braose and his subsequent discovery by her husband Llewelyn the Great. The play covers the initial relationship between the lovers as well as the eventual reconciliation of Joanna/Siwan with Llewelyn. I really liked this play, I liked how obvious Joanna’s power was as Lady of Wales and I liked the relationships with the two men that loved her; William and Llewelyn. I would really love to track down a copy of the 1960 film of this play with Sian Phillips and Peter O’Toole if anyone knows where I could get a copy!
Saevus Corax Gets Away With Murder – KJ Parker
The final instalment in the Saevus Corax books. I think this was my favourite of the three, and it featured all the hallmarks of a KJ Parker novel: logistics and battles and smart people outwitting each other. I really liked how Saevus was called the most dangerous man in the world – that opened up a lot about how everyone else saw him that I hadn’t put together from being inside his head. I would have read more of Saevus but I still have a backlog of Parker to get through and I have every faith that there’ll be another excellent series on the way.
Ancillary Sword – Ann Leckie
Reread before tackling Translation State. God this is good. I think I loved it even better the second time around. I LOVE Breq, she’s such an amazing character and I adore all the others too, they’re all so brilliantly drawn. The Imperial Radch is such a believable empire and yet also so foreign and strange. I also think the Presger, present in their Translators, are the most truly alien aliens I’ve ever read.
Ancillary Mercy – Ann Leckie
More excellence! I liked this book more because of the time we get to spend on Mercy of Kalr and I always enjoy ship based narratives. What can I say other than Translator Zeiat and her fish? Darling Child Tisarwat? An all time great.
Translation State – Ann Leckie
The newest Radch book and the most direct sequel, (Provenance has little relevance to the overall arc). TS follows a suspected child of a Presger translator as they return to the treaty point and grapple with what it is to be human or alien or anything in between. I enjoyed this book in its own right, but it didn’t quite land for me as a sequel. I liked the answers about the translators but they didn’t seem totally congruent with the Ancillary books. It was also difficult to follow Breq as a protagonist as she’s just so great. Maybe next time I will try and read this as a standalone without an Ancillary run up.
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
A book that is constantly recommended – AYOMT follows the immediate aftermath of Didion’s husband’s sudden death and hospitalisation of their only child. I think I was perhaps in the wrong place to read this book as I haven’t suffered any recent losses and while I felt for Didion it didn’t seem particularly revelatory to me. I was very moved by her relationship with her husband and it seemed long and happy. I couldn’t quite get past her assertion that she had never felt lucky – when she had spent her whole life in this wonderful relationship, running in the highest literary circles and making a living doing what she loved. The inevitable loss of her partner, while obviously shocking, didn’t seem to contradict the 40 years of happiness. Maybe I am in the wrong, it has been known to happen! I felt much more sympathetic about her daughter’s medical troubles. I might give some of her other essays another try as I did enjoy her writing style.
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed – Eric Cline
I love a good history book and I was looking forward to this one. It covers the collapse of the Mediterranean Bronze Age civilisations around 3000 years ago, when every kingdom except for Egypt failed. This was really a review of previous works and papers, collated into a rough narrative and I would have liked the author to take control of it a bit more and lead me through a story. This felt like an academic book that had been marketed as pop history. Nevertheless I had a great time listening to it and learnt a lot – especially about the interconnectedness of the time and how advanced the people were.
Comments