No snow in forty years, no true winter, no true Christmas, just the water and the mildew; it was whatever you called the reverse of a miracle. [loc. 2134: 'The Signal Bells', by Natasha Pulley]

From the creators of The Haunting Season and The Winter Spirits, this is another collection of ghost / horror stories with a wintry theme and a historical setting. I read one a day over the Christmas / New Year period, which gave me time to reflect on each: definitely a better way to appreciate the individual stories than reading them back to back.

Something, you might think, happened here, long, long ago; something, you might think, is on the cusp of happening again. But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will. [p. 4]

A short novella from the co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War. The River Liss runs from Faerie, past the Refrain (an assemblage of standing stones) and through the Modal Lands, between two ancient trees known as the Professors, and between ordinary fields to the town of Thistleford. ( Read more... )

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. [Prologue]

Audiobook reread, after listening to The Sparrow. It's many years since I last reread: here are my brief notes from 2007 reread. I stand by my original opinion, that this is not nearly as good or as well-structured a novel as The Sparrow. There is gorgeous prose, interesting ideas and a crowd of new characters: but there is also uneven pacing, political manoeuvring, and outright war.  There are, possibly, too many viewpoint characters, and a lack of the precise focus of the first novel. And there are several developments which felt unnecessarily cruel. ('She died last year.')

Narrated by Anna Fields, who manages the many accents and character voices -- across three species and a dozen nationalities -- admirably, with the sole exception of Northern Irish priest Sean Fein. I was especially impressed by her range of masculine voices.

I still hope for more SF from Mary Doria Russell, and I wish more of her books were available as ebooks in the UK.

‘At the end of his description of the first contact, in a locked file, Father Yarbrough ... wrote of you, “I believe that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Today I may have looked upon the face of a saint.”’
‘Stop it. Leave me something.’ [p. 298]

Audiobook reread on a lazy Boxing Day -- perhaps inspired by the excellent Jesuit priest in Snake-Eater. I first read this novel in 1997, when it was a submission for the Arthur C Clarke Award (which it won): some thoughts from an informal review back then. I hadn't reread since 2007, and was surprised at how much I remembered -- mostly about the humans, rather than the Runa and the Jana'ata.

The audiobook is splendidly narrated by David Colacci, who manages a huge range of character voices. Listening to the novel gave me a better appreciation of its structure: the pacing, the braided timelines, the suspense. ( Read more... )