Raw Talent, Ramshackle Structure

A rich, gothic fantasy about Wull and his father who keep the river free from ice in the winter but whose lives are overturned by the arrival upstream of a mormorach, a huge, magical creature that causes all sorts of other long-dormant magic to awaken, including the terrible bohdan which takes possession of Wull's father.

Stewart's writing positively seethes with raw talent and imaginative power but his structure is slightly ramshackle. He has a tendency to move the plot on by generating an endless supply of lavishly grotesque characters. They are great fun but it's not always clear why they are in the story.

As a result the narrative ends up littered with loose ends and abandoned sub-plots so that in the end you are left wondering what it was all about. Nonetheless, Riverkeep is a remarkable debut and heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in children's fantasy.

A Little Knowledge

The Ballroom is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in a huge lunatic asylum near Manchester, the centre-piece of which is a ballroom where weekly dances are attended by the normally segregated female and male patients.

At the heart of the story are four strongly-drawn characters: Ella, the factory worker committed for breaking a window, John the Irish labourer recovering from a breakdown after the collapse of his marriage, Clem an educated young woman who refuses to accept her father's choice of husband, and Charles, the second-rate doctor fascinated by the newly-popular ideas of the eugenic movement.

A study in the abuse of power, The Ballroom examines the consequences of poorly understood scientific thinking , in this case the extension of evolutionary theory to ideas about race, class and mental illness, and, in particular, the ideas behind the eugenics movement.

Eugenics ultimately gave birth to the horrors of Nazism, but in its early days it was supported by influential people on the right and left of the political spectrum including, in Britain, the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, whom ambitious Charles hopes to impress with his plans for a programme of compulsory sterilization for the feeble-minded.

Lyrical writing, a compelling emotional narrative and a nail-biting plot make for a novel that functions on a number of different levels and afterwards lingers powerfully in the reader's mind like a warning from history.

Set partly in the late eighteen seventies and partly in the early nineteen twenties, The Shadow Hour is the story of two governesses, grandmother Harriet and grand-daughter Grace, whose lives become inextricably bound up with those of the family whose children they are engaged to teach.

The plot is complex and, frankly, rather contrived, being dependent on coincidences and on an inherited gift of clairvoyance that Harriet and Grace refer to as the 'glimmers'. Moreover, it takes a long time to unfold and I grew impatient, feeling the pacing could have been better managed.

What gives the book its strength, however, is the atmospheric quality of Riordan's writing. She is particularly good at period detail and at telling sense-impressions. I loved this description of a railway carriage:

Taking a seat in first class, he breathed in the familiar scent of a carriage on a fine spring morning. They smelt different according to the weather and season. Warmed dust, shaving soap and a hint of varnish on dry days; mackintosh wax and damp wool on wet ones. Winter after a downpour was least pleasant, stale smoke and sour breath turning the tightly closed windows opaque.

Readers who enjoy recycling the tropes of governess fiction - an old house, ageing servants, family secrets and and plucky but dis-empowered heroine - will love this. Others must content themselves with the very considerable flashes of talent in those descriptive passages.

Convinced that the world is going to be destroyed in some apocalyptic scenario, eight-year-old Peggy's father takes her to a forest wilderness in Bavaria where he convinces her that they are the last two people left alive.

For the next nine years their life is one of bare subsistence - growing vegetables, trapping small animals, eating acorns . Without sufficient clothing or tools, they soon turn into half-wild creatures themselves, descending eventually into outright madness that ends in terrible violence.

This is a story of psychological and physical abuse and the victim is a child. Consequently, I found it extremely hard going. Moreover, the way the book was written contributed to the difficulty. There's a great deal of jumping about between the past and the present for what seemed to me to be little significant gain in terms of narrative force. There is also a good deal of extended description of nature which I strongly suspect the author enjoyed a good deal more than I did.

A powerful novel with a compelling premise, Our Endless Numbered Days is a tremendously brave piece of writing - but it's not for the squeamish. I was mightily relieved when I reached the end.

An Impressive New Voice In Children's Fiction

This book has a really cracking opening paragraph:

My dad died twice. Once when he was thirty nine and again four years later when he was twelve. The first time had nothing to do with me. The second time definitely did, but I would never even have been there if it hadn't been for his 'time machine'..."

And it pretty much carries on in the same vein.

It's the story of Al Chaudhury, a twelve year old mixed-race boy from North East England, who discovers his dead father's time machine (a laptop and a zinc bathtub) and sets off on a mission to prevent his dad having the accident that led to his death. Only, altering time is not a simple matter. You make a small mistake and everything goes haywire. Al makes more than one mistake.

Very funny and hugely readable with a likeable central character and a plot full of twists and turns Time Travelling With A Hamster is a terrific piece of storytelling and a very impressive debut. And it's great to see a mixed-race Indian heritage boy at the centre of the action. I loved this.

The third part of Harris's trilogy based on the life of Cicero, Dictator, like its predecessors, is told from the point of view of Tiro, the orator's secretary. The book deals with the events surrounding the seizure of power by Julius Caesar, his assassination and the subsequent power struggle between the forces of the Senate and those of Marc Anthony, Lepidus and Octavia. It chronicles Cicero's vain attempts to preserve the republic, a struggle which ultimately cost him his life.

Meticulously researched, eminently readable and hugely enjoyable, Dictator is a first-class piece of historical fiction. The ambition, vanity, cruelty, jealousy and spite which motivates so many of these power-hungry individuals is immediately recognizable; as are their weaknesses, compromises and the occasional moments of lucidity and courage.

Harris's gift is to make political life in Ancient Rome entirely accessible to the contemporary reader so that one entirely forgets one is reading about a conflict that happened over two thousand years ago. It is as if someone had come across the abandoned ruin of a magnificent theatre, flung a switch and suddenly the whole edifice had come to life, with all the brutality and poetry of which for so long we had only heard rumours.

Beginning with the death of Marcus Aurelius and the accession of the administratively incompetent megalomaniac Commodus, Goldsworthy seeks to explain the collapse of the Roman empire not, as it is sometimes seen, as a phenomenon created almost exclusively by external pressures but as stemming largely from a cumulative failure of leadership.

The over-reliance of insecure emperors upon the army, the tendency to reward loyalty above merit, the growth of bureaucracy as an end in itself, and the decline in revenues caused by buying off enemies with territory, all combined to hollow out the state. In consequence, its collapse, though slow in coming on account of the sheer size of the institution, was remarkably swift when it finally arrived.

This is not to deny the part played by the barbarian invasions. Indeed, Goldsworthy suggests that the reason why the eastern empire survived longer than its western counterpart was that the incursions it faced were less widespread. The Bosporus presented a significant barrier to invaders, and while the Persians posed a formidable challenge, it is arguably easier to face one large adversary that a series of smaller enemies.

The eastern empire did not lose as much territory and revenue. Thus it was able to maintain a large standing army, while in the west the army which looked good on paper was consistently under-manned. Nevertheless, the east suffered from a similar sclerosis to the west. It lingered on after the collapse of its sister, gradually diminishing in size, a venerable and impressive institution but no longer a super-power.

Goldsworthy's narrative is clear, comprehensive and, given the speed with which emperors rose and fell in the declining years, remarkably easy to follow. It offers the reader a satisfyingly coherent over-view of one of the most significant cultural earthquakes in human history.