Yet if these stories demonstrate nothing else it is the appalling unpreparedness of the average nineteenth-century gentleman when he accidentally stumbled into Faerie. The Duke of Wellington is a case in point. Women do seem to have fared somewhat better in these perplexing circumstances; the heroine of “Mrs. Mabb”, Venetia Moore, consistently demonstrates an ability to intuit the rules of Faerie, which the older and more experienced Duke is quite without.

What really charmed me about the book was how authentic all the stories sound, as if they were really taken from actual folklore passed by mouth to mouth in the countryside until recorded into writing by an eager amateur researcher. They’re all slightly different too: you can see the direct fairy tale inspiration for “On Lickerish Hill”, which draws on “Rumpelstiltskin”, but “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” sounds vaguely Gothic, while “Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower” is in the form of diary entries. It’s mindboggling to think how much Clarke must have read, from all periods of English history, to carry off such different voices so effortlessly. But her talent for imitation doesn’t mask her style: each story exhibits that unique touch of whimsy mixed with a slightly sinister twist, much like the fairies themselves. Like a prism in the window, casting a shadow next to the insubstantial rainbow: an imperceptible shiver down one’s spine to accompany each charming phrase.

Empire of Ivory, by Naomi Novik: I read this book without having read The Black Powder War, which breaks my usual rule of reading series in chronological order whenever possible. I still enjoyed the book though. Where Throne of Jade reimagined imperial China in Novik’s alternate world history with dragons, Empire of Ivory takes us to Africa, where certain tribes consider dragons to be reincarnations of heroic ancestors. Isn’t that such an interesting idea? Of course, Laurence is held prisoner by the African dragon-king so I suppose he didn’t exactly share my fascination with the culture, but nonetheless, it’s funny to think that the Europeans, and the English in particular, seem to be in the minority in their insistence on treating dragons as “beasts”. The ending is, alas, another cliffhanger, but I’m glad to see Laurence doing what he believes is right, even though he has to betray his country to do so. For someone like Laurence, it must have been one of the most difficult decisions of his life: choosing between honor and loyalty.

Making Money, by Terry Pratchett: The return of Moist von Lipwig! Who turns from the Post Office to the Royal Mint. I didn’t like this novel quite as much as I liked Going Postal—the book was, to put it simply, not as funny—but it was still clever and entertaining. Dropping the gold standard, printing paper bills, fighting off the machinations of the Lavish family who owns the Bank…Moist manages to juggle it all with his natural instincts for charlatanry. I was a little surprised at the ending (the subplot with the golems felt a little like deus ex machina), and I’m still not sure what Pratchett intended with Mr. Bent. But I was very amused by Hubert (whose model of the Ankh-Morpork economy uses water to represent money and not only predicts but causes economic change), and if I understood economics or finance better, I’m sure I’d find even more amusing references to laugh at. Probably not going on my list of most memorable Discworld novels but still a good sequel, which makes me look forward to Moist von Lipwig’s next change of career. (I’m still waiting for Ankh-Morpork to build its subway system!)

Idoru, by William Gibson: I suppose I should simply resign myself to being perpetually confused by the ending of Gibson’s novels. I think Idoru was more coherent than Neuromancer, but it still ended abruptly for me: I still don’t quite understand what Rez and Rei were aiming to accomplish. What is the Project? What is the island that the idoru owns? I like the atmosphere of Gibson’s cyberpunk novels—the creatively imagined technology, the densely urban settings, even the eccentric characters he creates—but I’m always left with a feeling of dissatisfaction at the end. Did I not read carefully enough? Am I missing something important? In any case, I kind of wish I had Laney’s talent for intuiting “data nodes”—we could certainly use that sort of talent in genomics research, what with all the eye-glazing massive datasets we have to deal with and essentially no good method for determining signal from noise—but of course without the traumatic past as an involunatry experimental subject in an ethically dubious orphanage.

The Birthday of the World, by Ursula K. Le Guin: Almost all of the short stories in this collection focus on the worlds of the Ekumen, the loose universe in which The Left Hand of Darkness, Rocannon’s World and many of Le Guin’s other stories are set. It includes one of my favorite short stories by Le Guin, “Solitude”, which is as compelling on rereading as it was the first time I read it. For several days afterwards, I kept thinking of the end, when the narrator goes back to the planet as an adult and how she lived there, how she could go back to being alone again.

The rest of the short stories were new to me. A few were set in worlds that I had already read about, e.g. “Coming of Age in Karhide”, which was set several years after The Left Hand of Darkness. (Interesting to read about the helplessness and rage that the young Gethenians feel about the onset of kemmer; how like our own puberty despite all the biological differences Le Guin posited.) There was also a short story about Werel, which Le Guin had explored previously in Four Ways to Forgiveness, although I thought it was a little unfocused. “The Matter of Seggri” was much more interesting, containing multiple “primary source” excerpts concerning a world where there is a large gender imbalance, and women run most of the civilization, while men are kept in castles where they engage in violent games to show their physical strength while women choose the ones they like to father their children. The boys are treasured and pampered as children then sent off to the castles when they reach puberty. An interesting inversion of gender prejudices: men are not educated, they are not expected to know about technology or art, they do not form families. Le Guin writes about the effect that contact with the Ekumen has on the society as well; there are rebellions, both physical and intellectual. I was struck by the short story, purportedly written by an avant-garde author on the planet, where a man, who becomes the favorite of a particular woman, falls in love with her and is devastated when she finds his attachment unnatural and ultimately rejects him. Also by the first-hand account of a boy who escapes the castle and goes to the university for education: when asked what he wants most, he says he wants to be a wife, to be able to love another person and create a family, rather than be the breeding tool that his society expects him to be. Another interesting set of stories is set on a world where marriage occurs between four people, two couples of opposite gender and different moiety. I’ve been informed that the moieties actually do exist among Australian aborigines and certain tribes in South America, which is unsurprising given Le Guin’s extensive anthropological background. The difficulty in meeting a single person suitable for marriage…imagine how much more complicated it would be to meet three!

The best story in the collection though wasn’t part of the Hainish universe at all. “Paradises Lost” is set on a spaceship that has been traveling to colonize a new planet. It’s been several generations since the spaceship left Earth, so that all the inhabitants have only known the world of the ship. They have no knowledge of what it’s like to live on Earth and are not expected to live long enough to see the new planet. A new religion denies that the destination even exists; only the Journey is important. They have slowly started to erase records of the old Earth and alter curricula so that the younger generations are receiving less and less education about how to live on ground. Thus, the ship is caught unprepared when an unexpected acceleration schedules their arrival several decades ahead of the expected date. Life on the ship: sterile, peaceful, without danger. Everything is provided and recycled in a near perfect closed system. You never really think about how different it would be for people who were born and lived and died on that ship, and how strange, even frightening, the natural world of a planet would be.

The story traces the lives of two friends, Hsing and Luis, in excerpts over the span of their lives: it’s as much a wonderful portrait of their relationship as it is a commentary on religion and community. I loved the last line, when they have landed on the new planet and grown old together:

Swaying, she lifted her bare feet from the dirt and set them down again while he stood still, holding her hands. They danced together that way.

Cut to the Quick, by Kate Ross: The first of the Julian Kestrel mysteries featuring a Regency dandy as the detective. When you hear such a premise, the sort of protagonist brought to mind is a flippant, well-dressed wit whose trivial façade hides a sharp intellect. In a word, rather like Peter Wimsey minus perhaps the appearance of foolishness—in any case, someone who puts on an act of superficiality as befitting a dandy. I am not the first to hold such incorrect assumptions before making the acquaintance of Mr. Kestrel, arbiter of fashion and amateur detective, but I soon revised my impressions. Julian, to put it simply, is the epitome of cool. His very way of life can be summed up as “It’s not what one wears but how one wears it.” (I’m certain a quote to that effect occurs in the book.) I was surprised to find him such a sober character, and the resulting mystery is hardly the humorous novel of manners I expected, but rather dark and unsettling. More Brontë than Austen, with all the suppressed passion, buried family secrets, and declining noble houses (as Gothic as one can get without resorting to supernaturalism). Julian remains calm, collected and rational throughout the story but nonetheless he is rattled and provoked by events (no Holmesian detachment here).

Four Ways to Forgiveness, by Ursula K. Le Guin: Four interconnected novellas in the Hainish universe, describing the planet Werel and its former slave colony, Yeowe, which recently gained independence. Both planets hope to join the ranks of the Ekumen but are reluctant to accept the social and cultural changes sweeping both societies, in the wake of Yeowe declaring independence from Werel. After years of warfare attempting to keep control of its colony planet, Werel itself faces an internal emancipation movement and a breakdown in its internal caste system. Of course, Le Guin does not examine these societies from a bird’s-eye view; instead we are given a picture of these two planets piece by piece through the stories of the individuals living in this time of tumultuous change.

I confess, the reason why it’s taken me so long to update this blog is because I have been trying and trying for many months to write down my reaction to this book. That it made an impact is certain, although I can’t say that the book provoked any major change in my way of thinking. However, these four novellas are some of the most compelling stories I’ve read by Le Guin (I would rank it with The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness and the short story “Solitude”). Le Guin chooses outsiders for her perspective: outsiders because they are marginalized by society or outsiders because they are strangers. There are many social issues explored in new and thought-provoking ways, from the institution of slavery itself to the position of women in an oppressed society to the tension between tradition and progress. Slavery forms the major theme, and Le Guin creates an interesting twist on the issue of race and skin color. The Werelians all have blue-toned skin (a pigmentation developed in response to their sun’s spectrum), and the slaveowners have dark, blue-black skin while the slaves are pale, almost ashen. I appreciate these details of worldbuilding in Le Guin’s writing; she is as memorable to me for the cultures she constructs as she is for her characters. Indeed, an easy connection to draw is the slave-based societies of the Confederate South and the aftermath of the Civil War, but in fact Yeowe reminds me also of African countries, struggling to build a nation post-independence, and Werel’s caste system reminds me at times of Hindu India and at times of even more ancient civilizations. But I think drawing such comparisons is useless and reductionist. These novellas are not commenting on the history of one specific nation; they are describing something fundamentally human. Le Guin is describing the journey, both metaphorical and literal, of an individual in a changing society and culture: the struggle to define yourself as a person when others are so willing to reduce you to anything less. It is not a paean to individualism but rather a testament to human integrity. There, it took me far too long to figure out how to say that, but now that I have, it’s almost a relief.

A Broken Vessel, by Kate Ross: In retrospect, I think this mystery was my least favorite of the series. I liked Sally well enough but didn’t understand why she was so fascinating to Julian (I don’t know if he quite understood that himself). More to the point, the crime itself was dreadfully unpleasant, especially the abduction of young girls and women. That isn’t to say that crime is ever pleasant to read about, but the theme of degradation ran throughout the novel, from the reform house for “fallen” women to the horridness of the crime itself. So many of the incidental characters, not to mention the main culprit himself, repulsed me, and Julian didn’t play enough of a role to erase the bad flavor left in my mouth. But it does Kate Ross credit, since it’s a much more realistic depiction of Regency society than the drawing rooms of Almack’s alone.

Whom the Gods Love, by Kate Ross: Quite possibly the best constructed mystery in the series. Through Julian, we get to see the dead man from the perspectives of the people affected by him: first as the man he appeared to be, then more gradually, the man he really was underneath. We are left with vivid portraits not only of Alexander Falkland but of all the other characters as well, with their fears and passions, at both their best and their worst. I think this book is the only one in the series where Julian doesn’t fall in love with a woman. Of course, my favorite part of the book was Verity Clare, better than the most audacious of Shakespearean crossdressing heroines. The scene where Julian meets the Clares’ grandfather was also a rare insight into Julian’s past; he is such a self-contained, unreadable person that he makes it difficult for anyone, including the reader, to get a handle on him. Julian is someone who takes excruciating care not to expose his vulnerabilities in public or private. It was nice, I thought, to see him drop his defenses, even for a second.

Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver): I don’t understand at all how people can tolerate the insipid prose of The Da Vinci Code when they have a sheer masterpiece like Foucault’s Pendulum to fill all their occult conspiracy-theorizing needs. Actually, mentioning the two books in the same paragraph seems a sin, since the two operate on completely different levels. I once heard that reading Foucault’s Pendulum was a prerequisite for any would-be modern literate, but it was not so much the cleverness or the erudition that impressed me as the sheer epic impact of the book. The wittiness (I couldn’t stop laughing at the wry humor in some parts of the book, especially in the descriptions of some of the “Isis Unveiled” patrons), the growing uncertainty and suspense (the book begins on a foreboding note, that a joke gone too far would become sinister), the love, the tragedy, the mystery in the oldest sense of the word. The book covers an exhaustive spread of occult-related subjects, from the Templars and Rosicrucians to South American voodoo rituals. Not to mention speculation on nearly any other imaginable topic as well, like computer programming and pinball machines. I love literature when it thinks in such an exuberant fashion, drawing wild yet convincing connections, where everything is a metaphor, in both a meaningless and meaningful way. The book is not just about faith and skepticism, but about Europe in the post-war era, about falling in love and being in love, about dissatisfaction, about identity, about making sense of a nonsensical world. Foucault’s Pendulum was one of those books that washed over me like a tidal wave, such was its colossal force.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): I finally settled down to reading Calvino, after seeing him referenced just about everywhere. I was about to choose If on a winter’s night a traveler but changed my mind at the last instant, because who could resist the poetry in this image: Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, one listening for the first time of the cities in his own empire that the other has traversed. I was reminded of Schrödinger’s Cat, multiplied manifold: an infinite range of possible cities…Are they one city? Many cities? Something of the tone reminded me of Kahlil Gibran—the imagery, the traveling, the distant setting. Indeed, a book to read over and over again, in excerpts and in whole, on insomniac nights or long subway rides.