Traitor's Blade - Sebastien de Castell

I'll be honest up-front: when I said Head of State was in my sweet spot of political intrigue and entertainment, I was not telling the whole truth. You see, there is a third circle of my Venn diagram of happiness, and it is labelled "fantasy/magic/swords".

This is because I am just a gigantic nerd.

This is also why Traitor's Blade has been one of the most enjoyable reads I've had recently. The plot centres around the leader of the Magisters; Judge Dredd for the dystopian past, rather than the dystopian future. And dystopic it is; assassins, plots, intrigues, and deeply unpleasant people abound. But naturally there are the good and the glorious, even if they are mostly stereotypes: the Archer, the Swordsman; the Leader with a Troubled Past.

The plot whips along, and while some twists are tropes and signposted from the first word - nay, from the title - there are enough that it keeps you turning the page. The characters are fleshed out, their ambitions more complicated than the everyday - although there is still the evil villain whose motivation appears only to be "I like being evil. Evilly evilly evil. Behold, an evil thing that I have done!"

If there are any complaints to be made, they are about the gang of thieves whose plot appears to have been forgotten halfway through; the distinct lack of female heroes grates; and the endless exclamations of surprise by the villains at the hero's lack of comprehension get very boring very quickly.

In short, this book is a great, easy, summer-time read. Enjoy it in the sunshine, if your skin can handle it. Mine can't, but then I'm so pale I'm practically see-through.

Honourable Friends? - Caroline Lucas

"This is not a manifesto," says Caroline Lucas, in the prologue to her book. While she is a politician par excellence and one of the few I might trust with the keys to my house, this line is proved something of an untruth as she takes the reader, over the course of the next 260 pages, through her vision of the next Parliament. This book was published just prior to the 2015 General Election; as a consequence, there are sections akin to watching a friend read A Song of Ice and Fire. There's such naked, impassioned hope that the new Parliament will be a coalition of the Left, such faith that the electorate will choose to shake off the arguments of the Conservative-Liberal austerity programme. Such a thing, of course, did not come to pass - did not come even close. 

But despite this - or perhaps because of it - there is a joy to this book. It lays bare some of the more arcane traditions of the Mother of Parliaments, and pulls no punches in talking about the reforms she would propose to the Upper and Lower Houses. At the same time, there is an intimate sense; a sense that she is sharing a fragment of a world most of us will never know. It is wonderful to experience.

For all that Lucas is a Cassandra, foreseeing chaos and yet effecting no change, she writes with wit, charm, and optimism. Whether you agree with her or not, these are qualities that are wonderful to behold in any politician.

Head of State - Andrew Marr (Spoilers!)

A book that is written and set in the 21st century but describes itself pompously as "a political entertainment" sits in the sweet spot of my Venn diagram of guilty pleasures. The resurgence of the excellent political drama/thriller House of Cards, the ongoing popcorn soap that is the United Kingdom Independence Party (he left - he came back! Is his deputy trying to bump him off? How on earth is there an LGBT group there?), and of course the nail-biting build-up to the EU referendum that may or may not see me moving to Canada...well. In such heady times, a political entertainment is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Regretfully, I remain un-consumed. Marr's story cracks along at a terrific rate, and there are the necessary twists and turns one might expect, but it never settles comfortably into a genre. There are humorous points; ex-spooks and industry chiefs lumber around, desperately trying to cover up the death of a the PM; in a moment of post-coital panic, a chap takes a wrench to the head; and the sweary Scottish spawn of Malcolm Tucker and Fraser Nelson (for who else could birth Nelson Fraser, a man with a mammoth-skin kilt) holds court with aplomb. These elements take the book into the glorious realm of political satire, even farce - but then, with no warning, it veers back into serious territory as limbs are lost and brains are damaged. It must have been enormous fun to write - it is a shame that it is less fun to read.

I suspect, as a final note, that my lack of enjoyment was coloured by the characterisation of the LGBT and female characters within the book. I appreciate that my ideas about treating non-hetero, non-male characters are something of a novelty, but: there is a word for a person who sleeps with women and men, and that word makes it on to the page just once. The only other LGBT character is an Indian man, who apparently ticks enough boxes to render a personality superfluous. This being British politics, the colour palette of the other characters is distinctly on the pale side.

What, then, of the women? We have a Bohemian woman, who does nothing but sleep around, smoke cigarettes, and shoot people. (She is naturally my favourite character.) Also starring: a woman who has a singular fondness for riding crops, bringing them into the bedroom and the briefing room with equal delight. It should be noted that I have nothing against women with riding crops, but if this is to be satire, could we have more personality than simply "whip wielding Dominatrix"?

In short, this novel has an interesting premise, and could work well as either high drama or low satire. However, unable to sit happily on either side, it meanders to its close as if it did not remember its tense beginning,

Introductions

This summer, I'm bored. I have returned to the town in which I grew up, and since - by some dark magic - we still have a library, I shall be reading and reviewing. That is what this blog is for.

There may also be comments on the unconscionable heat.