The Bookseller's Tale

The Bookseller’s Tale by Martin Latham (2020 Particular Books hardcover 349pp)

 

 

It was the title and online blurb of this book that attracted me – I thought it was going to be another work of light-hearted memoir along the lines of Shaun Bythell’s recent works. But this turned out to be something quite different so I am a little disappointed with what I ended up reading.

Although there is a smattering of memoir and personal anecdotes in the text, this book is more a collection of loosely connected essays each covering a different aspect of book history and/or how we’ve related to books throughout the ages.

There’s some interesting stuff in here – from a discussion of ‘comfort books’, the excesses of book collectors, medieval marginalia through to notable booksellers and bookshops. Plenty to amuse and educate, some things I had never heard of before so that’s a bonus.

Overall, however, I found it a little dry and dare I say even boring in parts. It only really took off for me when the author recounted events from his own past or (as in the very last chapter) gave us his personal bookselling history.

I don’t want to run down this title too much – after all its about books and that can’t be all bad. Probably something you could dip in and out of over a week or two and learn a few interesting facts rather than to be binged over a couple of sessions like I did, I suspect my expectations worked against me in this case.

 

Shards Of Earth

 

Shards Of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021 Tor paperback 565pp)

 

Although I own a number of his other books (including the well-regarded “Children of Time”) this is the first time I’ve read Tchaikovsky’s fiction. After a number of good reviews and interesting interviews I decided to start with this, the first volume of his most recent series.

If you’ve read any of the contemporary ‘space opera’ sci-fi produced over the last 20-30 years this book will feel very familiar – all the tropes are there. A plucky crew of stereotypes in a beat-up old spaceship, inscrutable aliens, big dumb objects and so on.

The plot, as such, is as follows:

Decades before the story opens Earth was turned into a giant floral sculpture by a moon-sized crystalline alien ship from the race henceforth known as “The Architects”. Billions lost their lives and soon many human colony worlds were under attack from the mysterious foe. As part of the war effort mankind developed the “Intermediaries”, humans with surgically altered brains which allow them to psychically combat the Architects and also navigate ‘Unspace’ (the book’s hyperspace equivalent) with ease. After a prolonged conflict, the Intermediaries managed to make the Architects vanish as suddenly as they came and the war was over. Since the end of the conflict mankind has fractured into factions distrustful each other and, oh yeah, there are several other alien races out there was well.

There are two main viewpoint characters (a couple more are added as the story progresses) – Idris, a first-generation Intermediary who was instrumental in ending the war and who has never slept or aged since. He ekes out a living as a navigator-pilot on the salvage ship Vulture God. Solace is a member of a race of genetically-engineered female warriors, The Parthenon. At the end of the war, she developed a special relationship with Idris and she is now chosen to contact him with an offer of employment. The Parthenon is in some sort of cold war with the main human authorities and nobody trusts them.

The plucky crew of the Vulture God uncover evidence that the Architects are coming back and soon they are chased, hijacked and variously harassed by all number of thugs, gangsters, spies and religious nuts.

There’s some pretty good world-building going on and some intriguing central mysteries but on the whole, it feels pretty generic. I do give the author kudos for killing off some characters which could have become fan-favourites. Some of the aliens are interesting ideas but usually turn out to just have human motivations and personalities.

The book contains a lot of action scenes but oddly in a story that repeatedly tells us how various spaceships ‘bristle’ with advanced weaponry most of the combat is face to face with gunfights, knives and general melee going on. Some of those scenes go on a little too long for my taste.

In the end I feel it just doesn’t do much new. As wide-screen sci-fi entertainment it’s a good enough read but I think we’ve been down this road a little too often now.