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Category Archives: women in sf


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Boxing, bugs, bounty hunters and bismillah: God’s War

When Kameron Hurley’s God’s War was published earlier this year, I took note of it, as I generally do of sf novels which feature Arabs or Arab-inspired backgrounds. I checked out the book’s website, and even read the first chapter, which was posted online. But I didn’t see anything there that made me want to buy and read the book immediately. At some point, yes, I’d probably pick up a copy, but nothing I saw encouraged me to do so there and then.

A few weeks later, Niall Harrison tweeted that God’s War was one of the best books published this year he’d read so far. He described it as “Gwyneth Jones meets Richard Morgan” – or words to that effect. And so, after a bit more conversation on Twitter, a group of people all bought copies at his urging. I was one of them.

I have now read God’s War.

Nyxnissa is a “bel dame” on the world of Umayma, which means she is a government assassin charged with killing deserters from the army. Because Nasheen has been at war with neighbouring state Chenja for generations – so long, in fact, that no one is really sure what they are fighting over. All Nasheenian men must fight at the front, and many women also volunteer. The end result of this is a female-dominated society at home, much like Britain during World War II.

But Nasheen is also an Islamic state – or rather, its state religion is one which appears to be descended from Islam. The Nasheenians have mosques and a holy book called the Kitab (which is Arabic for “book”; and, in Islam, members of the Abrahamic religions are known as “People of the Book”). There are further clues in the names of people and places – although a reference to the Kitab being written in a “the ancient language of prayer” (p 91) suggests that the Nasheenian language is not true Arabic. This may explain why some of the female characters have male names, such as Bashir, Husayn or Zubair. Or indeed why some of the place-names don’t entirely convince as Arabic – Chenja, for example: Arabic has no “ch” phoneme. And also Ras Tieg, another nation on Umayma: Arabic has a “j”, though it is pronounced as “g” in Egypt. (None of the nations’ name are entirely parsable either – ﻧﺶﺀ (nash) means “youth”, and -een could be the dual ending; Ras Tieg – ﺭﺍﺱ (ras) is “head” or “headland” but I can’t find anything close to “tieg”. But perhaps the names are not intended to mean anything.)

As muslims, the Nasheenians are moderates – possibly unsurprising, given that the society is matriarchal. Many of the teachings seem to be ignored, if not flouted – such as those prohibiting the consumption alcohol (Nyx drinks a lot of whisky during the story). Chenja, however, is far more orthodox. It practices polygamy, and its women wear the veil. One of the other characters, Rhys, is Chenjan, and while Nyx may be lapsed he certainly is not. He speaks a translation of bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem (p 91), and also recites the ninety-nine names of God (p 80). Nyx further mocks him for “pounding [his] head on the pavement six times a day” (p 78). It is also implied that the Chenjans venerate saints, suggesting perhaps they are Shi’ites to the Nasheenian Sunni muslims. Though, according to Rhys, this cannot be the case as the two nations comprise “… believers from different moons, united in their belief of God and the Prophet and the promise of Umayma. For a thousand years, they had carved out some kind of tentative peace, maneuvered around a hundred holy wars … Chenjans would submit only to God, not his Prophet, let alone any monarch who wanted to sever God and government.” (p 78)

There are other nations on Umayma. The Mhorians, for example, are racially different to the Nasheenians, and are descended from refugees who were given permission to settle on the world hundreds of years earlier. Clues in the text – a reference to Saint Mhari, for example – suggest they may be Christian.

Hurley does an excellent job with her society-building, painting a picture of two nations with different approaches to a shared religion. The way she integrates the religion and its practice into the daily lives of the characters certainly resembles Islam in a way that Christianity does not. It is not, happily, just the mention of mullahs, burqas or the other trappings of Islam or the Arabic world. Having said that, the easy prevalence of acts and attitudes considered haram does render the end result a little less convincing.

Then there’s the technology in God’s War, which is almost entirely insect-based. Vehicles, called bakkies, are powered by a fuel generated by a sealed hive of cockroaches. People called magicians have some sort of unexplainable power over these insects – pheromonal, perhaps? – which allows them to control them. They even use them as, er, bugs – i.e., surveillance devices. Magicians are masters of biotechnology (I think they are all male), and so of advanced medicine too. Not everyone returns from the front in one piece – but the magicians patch them up, often using body parts from those who didn’t make it. Umayma’s sun is also stronger than ours – or the world’s atmosphere is thinner – and skin cancers are prevalent. Biological and chemical weaponry is used extensively in the war between Chenja and Nasheen, which in turn has its effect on the world’s population.

But perhaps the strangest element of God’s War‘s world, and the least convincing to me, is the presence of “shifters”. These are people who can “shift” into other forms – an animal, and each person is, I think, limited to one other form. One character can transform into a dog, another into a dove, and yet another into a raven. How? Where does all that mass go? There’s a hand-wavey mention of “quantum effects”, and it is stated that shifters didn’t start to appear until the various peoples had colonised Umaymi… But. It just feels a bit unnecessary, a bit over-the-top.

Likewise the magicians’ gyms. For reasons not entirely clear, the magicians are fans of boxing. The sport may be a signifier for emancipation in God’s War, given that it is acceptable in Nasheen but underground in Chenja, and popular in both. The gyms are all interconnected, irrespective of the distance between them – as if the magicians had a secret, and instantaneous, travel network. I couldn’t quite work out the reason for this – it only seemed to impact the story peripherally.

The plot of God’s War is complex but also relatively straightforward. Nyx does something she shouldn’t have done, is booted out of the Sisterhood of bel dames and sentenced to prison. When she is released seven years later, she becomes a licenced bounty hunter. She hires a team – magician Rhys (who is a Chenjan deserter), Mhorian shifter Khos, gun-nut Anneke and comms expert Taite. When Queen Zainab hires Nyx and her team to recover an offworlder, Nikodem, who has gone missing, things get complicated very fast. The Sisterhood don’t want her to succeed. She tracks Nikodem to Chenja, which means infiltrating an enemy country. Meanwhile, Nyx’s sister, a biotech scientist, is murdered, and her work somehow seems linked to Nikodem’s disappearance…

God’s War is a brutal book. Nyx is a brutal protagonist. A lot of people are killed or maimed in the story. A lot of people who have been maimed appear in the story. The magicians’ medicine is sufficiently advanced that even the most severe injuries are survivable, although why this should result in such a low value being put on life is beyond me. There is a lot of violence, and it is graphically described. Umayma is dirty, primitive in many respects, and populated by physically and psychologically broken people. God’s War is a bleak novel, with a cast that are not far from being monsters. I think it was this, more than anything else, that made it hard for me to love God’s War. The world-building is superb, Nyx is a well-drawn protagonist, and the plot is pleasingly complex, but I still found it a little too bloodthirsty for my tastes.

I couldn’t quite see the Gwyneth Jones in God’s War, although there are some small similarities with Richard Morgan’s Black Man. I don’t think it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year, though it may prove to be the best book published in 2011 I read this year. I would not be unhappy if it appeared on a few shortlists next year. I will certainly be buying the sequel, Infidel, due to be published in October.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the mention of Deep Blue Something – is Hurley a fan of the group, perhaps? “Nyx pulled her burnous up and followed the dimly lit signs to room tres-bleu-chose.” (p 224)


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Women in sf reading challenge #6: The Year of Our War, Steph Swainston

This post is a bit late because I had to reschedule my reading. I decided several weeks ago to make July a month of reading only women writers. But then I was sent three novels by men for review, with a deadline of the end of July. So I moved them to the top of the reading pile so I could finish them in June and not break my promise for July. Anyway, I managed to finish them in time, and so the first book of July was…

When I picked The Year of Our War for my reading challenge at the beginning of this year, I’d heard it argued that the book could be read as sf even though it was marketed as fantasy. I’d also heard it described as “New Weird”, although quite what that means no one seems really sure. But never mind: I wanted to read it, so I bent the rules a little. And, now that I have read it, I have to be honest and say that to me The Year of Our War seems very much a fantasy novel.

Jant Shira is half-Rhydanne and half-Awian. The Rhydanne live high in the mountainous region of Fourlands, are very much used to the cold, and are extremely quick. Awians are very much like normal humans except they possess small wings on their back. Because Jant has the Rhydanne speed and build, and the Awian wings, he can fly. He is the only person who can do this.

He is also immortal.

Two thousand years before, god left Fourlands. He put San, the Emperor, in charge and made him immortal. And in the years since then San has gifted fifty exceptional people with immortality. They form the Circle, and all have superhero-like names – Jant, for example, is Comet. Another member of the Circle is Lightning, a superlative archer, and one of the first people to be made immortal.

Around the same time god left, the Insects invaded Fourlands. These are pony-size ant-like creatures, and they have overwhelmed the northern quarter of the continent. But, after centuries of stalemate, more and more of them are now appearing and encroaching on human-inhabited lands.

The Year of Our War is, I believe, the first book in a series. Certainly, the novel does not resolve the bigger questions its plot asks. A possible source for the Insects is mooted, but not confirmed – and no explanation of that source is offered. Why god left is certainly never revealed. In fact, much of the story of The Year of Our War revolves around a fight for supremacy between a pair of immortals: Mist, the Sailor, and his wife.

There’s much to like in The Year of Our War. The story is narrated by Jant, who is a junkie, and he gives an interesting perspective on the plot. In fact, the entire cast are extremely well-handled. The prose is polished and very readable, although there’s a tendency in the first half of the book to describe everything everyone is wearing, often using unfamiliar and archaic terms. There’s a feeling of depth to the world of the story, as if the author has spent a great many years building it.

But.

Swainston names M John Harrison as an inspiration, and there’s certainly a little of Viriconium in Fourlands. There’s also that same refusal to be ruled by the “clomping foot of nerdism”. Which unfortunately manifests as gaps in rigour. Towards the end of the novel, for example, a famous sword appears and is described as a “katana”. But there’s a lot of cultural baggage that goes with such a weapon, and none of that is present in The Year of Our War. There’s a sense that Fourlands is built from magpie-like borrowings from the real world, but without the history and culture which underpins those borrowings.

The Year of Our War is a not a novel which makes immersion easy – there are too many details which throw the reader out of the world. Sometimes the characters respond in ways which rely on knowledge of the real world, not on knowledge of the world of Fourlands – in other words, they don’t always react like characters in a fantasy novel.The names of people and places seem… odd, as if there are no languages behind them, they’re just random conglomerations of letters. Also not helping is the story’s refusal to provide neat answers – or indeed, provide neat puzzles requiring answers. The concept of god leaving Fourlands, for example, and putting an immortal in charge is extremely cool – there’s an entire novel series just in that – but here it’s merely background. The presentation of the immortals as a sort of superhero team also feels slightly out-of-place in a fantasy world.

As I read The Year of Our War, I concluded I’d be unlikely to ever try its sequels. But as I drew nearer to the end I started to change my mind. And not simply because I wanted to find out what happens. The lack of rigour which had annoyed me no longer seemed to matter. Thing is, I’m not a big fan of fantasy. I’ve read my fair share, but I’ve found little to admire in much of that I’ve read. When reading KJ Parker’s Colours in the Steel last year (see here), I had a similar response to that I was having with Swainston’s novel. That book was a great shambolic monster of a story, which seemed to spend more time on world-building than it did plot. But the engine of its story was driven by such an innovative power-source (and I’m mixing metaphors here, but never mind) that I found myself liking the book more and more as I drew closer to the end. The Year of Our War is less inventive plot-wise than Colours in the Steel, but it does present an interesting – and perhaps even opposed – approach to its world-building. And that, I think, is enough to warrant further exploration.


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Results: Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Books by Women Writers

Back in 21 June, I asked people to nominate their five favourite fantasy or science fiction novels by women writers. And yes, I’m doing what everyone else does in these sorts of polls and conflating “favourite” and “best”. Well, it is a sort of popularity contest type poll…

Anyway, some twenty-nine people left comments. And I have now counted up the results…

Best/Favourite Novel
1 The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin (7 votes)
2 The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin (4 votes)
3= Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle; Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones; The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood; The Many-Coloured Land, Julian May; To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis; Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy (3 votes each)

A broad selection tying for third place there, though the first and second positions don’t really come as much of a surprise.

Best/Favourite Writer
1 Ursula K Le Guin (14 votes)
2 CJ Cherryh (7 votes)
3= Diana Wynne Jones, Gwyneth Jones, Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, Tricia Sullivan (4 votes each)

Le Guin’s success is not really a surprise. Most of her books are still in print, she consistently appears on best of the genre lists, and she has written highly-regarded sf and fantasy. Cherryh’s books seemed almost ubiquitous during the 1980s and much of the 1990s, but are less visible these days – which is a shame. In total, 58 authors were named.

Books by year

  1810s 2
  1920s 1
  1960s 8
  1970s 21
  1980s 33
  1990s 29
  2000s 21
  2010s 3

This probably says more about the age of those who voted than it does the success of women writers during those particular decades.

Given a wider pool of voters, the results might have looked different. But even so, this poll is as valid as any other genre list you might find on the internet.


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A month of mistressworks

SF Mistressworks has now been up for a month. During that time, 38 reviews of 35 books have been posted. Some authors have received more reviews than others – Ursula K Le Guin has had four separate titles reviewed, and both Joanna Russ and Doris Piserchia two apiece. Maureen F McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang has received two reviews, as have Sheri S Tepper’s Grass and Elizabeth Hand’s Winterlong. Otherwise, there’s been a wide mix of books covered, with 19 of them from the sf mistressworks meme list.

In terms of visits, SF Mistressworks had a good first week, but traffic subsequently dropped by about 60% after that – although those figures may be wrong as I’m not sure the WordPress statistics include RSS or Google Reader feeds. Visits have remained steady ever since. I’d like to see them rise, obviously; but it’ll take time for word to spread further and wider.

The most popular reviews by visits have been: 1) The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood; 2) China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh; 3) Grass, Sheri S Tepper; 4) Ammonite, Nicola Griffith; and 5) The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin. The most popular search term bringing people to the blog has been “the handmaid’s tale”, which explains the review’s popularity. The Handmaid’s Tale is clearly a very popular book, perhaps an order of magnitude more so than the rest – which were published as science fiction. The biggest referrer to SF Mistressworks has been, er, me – i.e., this blog. Second is Twitter – so, many thanks to everyone who has tweeted or retweeted about SF Mistressworks.

I’d like to thank Cheryl Morgan, Martin Wisse, Joachim Boaz, Cara Murphy, Shannon Turlington, Kev McVeigh, Richard Palmer, Larry Nolan, Paul Graham Raven, Sandy M, Sam Kelly, Paul Charles Smith, Michaela Staton, Kathryn Allen and Ian J Simpson for providing the blog with reviews, or allowing me to republish their reviews. I hope they will continue to contribute, and that more people will become involved.

I doubt I’ll be able to maintain my current rate of posting a review a day (except for Sundays) for much longer. I have a week or so of reviews in hand, but I may have to go to a less-frequent schedule. Unless, that is, people start sending me lots more reviews…


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Meme! Women sff writers of the 1970s

Got this from Nicholas Whyte, who got it from James Nicoll. Italicize the authors you’ve heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you’ve read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.

Lynn Abbey
Eleanor Arnason
Octavia Butler
Moyra Caldecott
Jaygee Carr
Joy Chant
Suzy McKee Charnas
C. J. Cherryh
Jo Clayton
Candas Jane Dorsey
Diane Duane
Phyllis Eisenstein
Cynthia Felice
Sheila Finch
Sally Gearhart
Mary Gentle
Dian Girard
Eileen Gunn
Monica Hughes
Diana Wynne Jones
Gwyneth Jones
Leigh Kennedy
Lee Killough
Nancy Kress
Katherine Kurtz
Tanith Lee
Megan Lindholm (AKA Robin Hobb)
Elizabeth A. Lynn
Phillipa Maddern
Ardath Mayhar
Vonda McIntyre
Patricia A. McKillip
Janet Morris
Pat Murphy
Sam Nicholson (AKA Shirley Nikolaisen)
Rachel Pollack
Marta Randall
Anne Rice
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Pamela Sargent
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Susan Shwartz
Nancy Springer
Lisa Tuttle
Joan Vinge
Élisabeth Vonarburg
Cherry Wilder
Connie Willis

I’ll also note that I own every book written by Gwyneth Jones, Mary Gentle and Sydney J Van Scyoc.


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Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Books by Women Writers

After all the arguments over the results of the Guardian poll of best/favourite sf novels, it seems the US’s NPR has decided to have a bash here: “Best Science Fiction, Fantasy Books? You Tell Us”. Sigh. I’m not going to bother trawling through the 1700+ comments (as of the time of writing of this post) to see what the gender ratio is. I fully expect it to work out to about 5 – 10% female.

Instead, what I am going to do is suggest an alternative poll: your favourite five novels by women sf/fantasy writers. Leave a comment listing them. Let’s see how we do.

To start with, here are mine:

Kairos, Gwyneth Jones
Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle
Angel with the Sword, CJ Cherryh
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
The Grail of Hearts, Susan Shwartz

This proved harder than I expected. There are a lot of genre novels by women writers I like a great deal, and many I have have read several times. And quite a few I’ve read recently which I expect I will return to one day. But actually picking the best of that long list? To make it a little easier, I’ve limited myself to one book per author, though there’s no reason anyone else need do so.

EDIT: and if you’re stuck for suggestions, check out the SF Mistressworks blog.


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Apology, explanation and – oh well, it didn’t work…

Yesterday’s post, Home truths, was something of an experiment. As one commenter pointed out, my opinion of Asimov and Foundation are well-documented, and there’s little need to repeat it. But that fact, and the responses to Fabio Fernandes’ Mind Meld on the Russ Pledge on SF Signal yesterday and Cheryl Morgan’s post on the SFWA website on gender balance on 13 June, suggested a small test…

On two previous occasions on this blog I’ve made my thoughts on Asimov’s fiction plain, and both times I received around a month’s worth of hits in a single day. I was also on the receiving end of a number of threats and insults. One person even called me a “retarded nazi pedophile”. And all this for suggesting that Asimov is a rubbish writer and Foundation not a very good sf novel…

Then there’s the “mansplaining” on the Mind Meld and on Cheryl’s piece on the SFWA site. I covered some of the choicer ones here. A lot of male sf readers, it seems, turn combative when accused of sexism in their reading choices – despite an unwillingness to question those same choices.

So, it occurred to me, which of the above two would upset sf readers the most? After all, it takes a hell of an emotional investment in a book to call someone a “retarded nazi pedophile” for daring to slag it off. Would sf readers respond with such passion to being called sexist?

Sadly not. Most of the comments on my Home truths post are about Asimov.

But then, as someone pointed out, most readers of my blog already accept that most male sf readers are sexist. And my thoughts on the contribution of women in sf is also well-documented. For my experiment to have worked, it really needed a bigger pool of test subjects, ones that were ignorant of the women in sf debate – but unfortunately no one linked to it from reddit or fark.

So, sorry for the trollbait. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And it didn’t exactly prove what I wanted it to prove. It sort of did, but not really; and the results are probably tainted anyway. Ah well.


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Home truths

Truth #1
Isaac Asimov was a rubbish writer, and his Foundation is a rubbish book. It has cardboard characters who act as though they belong in 1940s middle America and not a galactic empire. The invention is minimal, the prose is bland and uninspired, the plot doesan’t make sense, and how the book has come to be consider a classic is beyond me. I am embarrassed when people think to suggest it as a good introduction to science fiction, or one of the genre’s best books.

Truth #2
The majority of male science fiction readers are sexist. They not only refuse to read books by women sf writers, they refuse to acknowledge that not doing so is wrong. They attempt to justify the evident unfairness in the genre through such mealy-mouthed justifications as “The gender of the writer is irrelevant” or “why should I impose quotas on my reading?” or “what about the men’s studies?” This is sexism. It is wrong.


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The Battle of the Sexists

So Fabio Fernandes put together a Mind Meld on SF Signal about the Russ Pledge and invited a bunch of very reasonable people and myself to contribute. It prompted a lively comment thread. Many of the comments contained the following “mansplaining” gems:

1. You have the numbers wrong – it wasn’t 4% of the books in the Guardian poll were by women, it’s closer to 12%.

And this is acceptable? According to Niall Harrison’s survey at Strange Horizons, 41.7% of books received by Locus were by women; in the UK, it was 37%. It’s not gender parity, but neither is it around 12%. Books by women sf writers are under-represented. Fact. Stop arguing about numbers and do something about it.

2. Why should I impose quotas on my reading?

Because if you’re part of the problem which results in that 12%, then you need to change your reading habits. You have an unconscious bias. You need to make a conscious effort to break that bias. And if that means imposing a quota on the genders of the authors you read, then that’s what you need to do.

3. A book stands on its own merit.

Right. So you have this magical ability to determine exactly how good every book ever published is, then? You can just look at a book and know it’s going to be good. Maybe that’s because you have a bias towards books by male writers and find them more enjoyable because they confirm your prejudices. Maybe you need to change that bias, and next choose to read a book by a woman writer. Who knows, it might “stand on its own merit” too.

4. I don’t care about the gender of an author.

Of course, you don’t; that’s why there’s an imbalance in the first place, that’s why women writers are under-represented. The fact that you don’t care just means you’ve never taken the trouble to think about your bias. So start thinking about it.

5. Writing by women is at least as good as writing by men.

I know you’re trying to be helpful, but… Writing by women is as good as writing by men. There’s no “at least” in it.

6. What about other under-represented minorities?

Women aren’t a minority – in the US in 2009, there were 155.6 million females and 151.4 million males; in England, 25.2 million females and 23.9 million males (2001 census figures). Women are a majority. Except when it comes to talking about science fiction books. This is not acceptable.

Clearly something needs to be done. Being reasonable is not a solution – all that does is perpetuate the unfairness. And, to be honest, I don’t even understand why people would argue against something that is blatantly unfair. Being asked to take the Russ Pledge does not infringe your human rights, it is not asking you to do something that will cost you money, or may lead to injury. It is asking you to make a conscious choice in one particular aspect of your life. It is asking you to question your own biases. It is asking you to stop being a sexist. And, be honest, how is sexism defensible?

Sadly, this appears to be a situation that few actually care about, or are willing to do something about. After an initial burst of enthusiasm, the hits on SF Mistressworks are now a third of what they were, even though I’ve been posting at least one review a day since the blog started. Most people, it seems, would sooner look at a photograph of John Scalzi’s new car (which is not a slur on John Scalzi himself).

At the beginning of the year, I decided my 2011 reading challenge would be to read, and blog about, a sf novel by a women writer each month. And I’ve been doing that. But next month, I’m going to do more: in July, I will only read books written by women, irrespective of genre. I already have a dozen titles picked out. One of them will be God’s War by Kameron Hurley – because last week on Twitter, Niall Harrison raved about the book and a number of us were persuaded to buy copies. The book was already on my radar – as any sf novel based on Arab culture would be, given my background; and one day, perhaps, I would have got round to buying and reading it. But Niall’s comments were enough to convince to buy a copy there and then. That’s the way this sort of thing should work – for books by women writers just as often as for books by male writers. And yes, I will post something here about God’s War here when I’ve finished reading it.

And, incidentally, I’m still looking for more reviews for the SF Mistressworks blog.


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It’s not just the women of sf

Though I’ve posted here about women sf writers – on both the sf mistressworks list and SF Mistressworks blog – I do read fiction of other genres written by women. And I thought it might be worth mentioning some of the non-sf works by women writers I’ve enjoyed and admired in the past:

Helen Simpson is one of my favourite mainstream short story writers, and has been ever since I came across her story ‘Heavy Weather’ in a collection of modern short fiction (it’s also in her Dear George And Other Stories). Simpson has yet to write a novel but she’s had six collections of short stories published. I have them all.

Given the amount of time I spent in the Middle East, it’s no surprise I’m fascinated by Arab culture – and yet I’ve not read that many Arabic authors. Of the few I have, the best book I’ve read so far is Hanan Al-Shaykh’s Women of Sand and Myrrh. Which reminds me: I must get hold of one of Freya Stark’s books…

Kate Ross wrote four novels set in Regency England featuring an upper-class dandy who turns amateur detective. As crime novels go, they’re a bit fluffy, but the last one, The Devil in Music, is an all together different matter. It is masterfully-plotted, surprisingly dark, and nothing like the consciously-Austenesque comedy of manners that are the earlier three books.

I’ve always preferred female crime writers to male; I’ve no idea why. The best of them is easily Sara Paretsky. But I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favourite VI Warshawski novel. Guardian Angel, perhaps; or Toxic Shock. Hell, just read them all.

Fisher’s Face, Jan Morris, is a sort of biography of Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher, who was instrumental in building up the Royal Navy during the early years of the twentieth century. Fisher was responsible for HMS Dreadnought, the battleship which made every other warship on the planet obsolete the moment it was launched. Fisher’s Face is a fascinating meditation on the man.

You can blame the Acnestis APA for the fact that I’ve read most of Georgette Heyer’s books. Several of the members were fans, and their comments led me to try one of her novels. And so I too became a fan. The history is dubious at best, and some of her later books were a little too romantic for my tastes, but they’re also witty and great fun. I’m not sure I have a favourite – The Talisman Ring, perhaps; or An Infamous Army. It’s proper comfort reading, for when it’s chucking it down outside, there’s nothing on the telly, and you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps.

Years ago in my middle or late teens, while spending the holidays with my parents in the Middle East, the only books I had access to where the ones they’d bought. I worked my way through my father’s handful of thrillers quickly, but then I was stuck. So I picked up one of my mother’s books: MM Kaye’s The Far Pavilions. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so I read her other historical novels and, years later, I tracked down and read her crime novels.

It was the Lawrence Durrell connection which brought Olivia Manning to my attention. She was in Cairo during World War II, as he was, and they both belonged to the same loose group of poets and writers in the city. So I read The Balkan Trilogy and thought it excellent, and then read The Levant Trilogy and thought that excellent too. I even bought the DVD of the BBC adaptation, Fortunes Of War, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. It’s also very good.

Finally, a couple of cheats…

RA MacAvoy is on the sf mistressworks list, but she has written both science fiction and fantasy. And her fantasy trilogy of Lens of the World, King of the Dead, and Winter of the Wolf is very, very good indeed. The books are out of print now, but definitely worth tracking down.

Also on the sf mistressworks list is Susan Shwartz, but she too wrote fantasy as well. Her The Grail of Hearts was a novel I never expected to like as much as I did. The title suggests it’s a fantasy romance, but it’s actually a clever re-telling of the Matter of Britain featuring a female Wandering Jew. It’s also worth hunting down.