You would think the period 1640-1660 would be a perma fixture on school curriculums and still pulse through the collective cultural consciousness. After all it has everything. A despotic King, rising tensions played out via impassioned parliamentary speeches, the breakout of a true Civil War, a ravaged country, the world turned upside down, the rise of religious and politcal radicals, regicide and power’s corruptive influence and a country sliding into dictatorship. Then the reinstatement of the monarchy and, if you run the film onto 1688, bloody revenge by a useless King leading to said useless King hopping it on a moonlight flit, while a foreign royal family swans in at the request of, well, everyone.  Oh and a legacy of representative parliamentary democracy that has lasted 400 years.

Yet  for some reason the English Civil Wars do not hold a prominent a place in the popular imagination. Blair Worden’s excellent book perhaps explains why. It is, despite the victory of the forces of “democracy” not a story of goodies and baddies.  Baddies there are aplenty, but it is harder to spot the goodies the longer it goes on. Perhaps it’s also the austerity of the Parliamentarians against the dash of the King’s cavaliers. Yet Blair Worden shows even this to be a mere cariacature. This was a true Civil War with unclear class divisions, unclear geographical lines and no roundhead v cavalier split.

In any case the story is messy with a lack of clarity over the outcomes and the legacy. Worden does a great job of laying out the thrilling chronology without trying to over personalise events. This is not Simon Schama throwing light by human detail but a Brodie’s Notes version of history and is all the better for it. Nasty, brutal and short.

At the end of the last volume, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, things were brought to a sort of closure, with Adrian settling down with the mother of his third child, Daisy, in a coverted pigsty next door to his still-awful parents. The intention for it to be the concluding volume to the saga was fairy clear, but Townsend has exercised her prerogative to change her mind, and I for one am very glad she did. In this latest volume, Adrian is approaching middle age, yet the positives in his life seem destined to turn sour: Daisy is tiring of her nerdy husband, his mother is determined to go on the Jeremy Kyle show and address the issue of his sister’s paternity live on national television, his kind-hearted employer is ill and the business is going badly, and worst of all, Adrian is diagnosed with prostate cancer (or prostrate cancer, as various well-meaning but ill-informed characters call it).

This would not be an Adrian Mole book if Townsend did not reflect the zeitgesit, so investment banker half-brother Brett goes from superman to down-and-out when the credit crunch hits; eldest son Glenn Mole is serving in Afghanistan and repeatedly asking his dad to remind him why he’s there, and Pandora is still climbing the greasy pole of Labour politics, bending with the prevailing political winds. It’s funny stuff, combining with Adrian’s usual neuroses, pretensions and problems to evoke everything from wry smiles to sympathetic laughter.

Ultimately, though, this is, as it should be, Adrian’s story: he endures the effects of the cancer treatment with stoicism, despite being badly treated by his wife. Meanwhile the network of characters who have been touchstones throughout Adrian’s life – his parents, Nigel, and Pandora, showing here more humanity than I had hitherto suspected her to be capable of – pull him through. It’s really quite touching, and finishes on a hopeful note, though this time there is no suggestion of final closure. I suspect, in fact I sincerely hope, that Adrian Albert Mole will continue to proceed through life, always a few years ahead of me, for a good while to come, being a luckless yet likeable nerk so I don’t have to be. We can but hope.

The storyline is a clear continuation from Raven: Blood Eye – our hero, part of the band of Vikings known as the Wolfpack, starts the second book in pursuit of the English noble, Earldred, who cheated him and his comrades out of promised loot, and who brought about the death of his own son. Accompanying the Vikings are an English monk, Egfrith, and Cynethryth, Earldred’s daughter, out for revenge on her father. What breathes fresh wind in to the sails of this Viking adventure is the author’s decision to send his protagonists in to the land of the Franks. After capturing Earldred and securing the holy relic he tried to keep from them, they decide to sell it to the King of the Franks, Karolus, better known to history as Charlemagne, who by this point was ruler of much of Western Europe, protector of the Pope and committed to furthering the spread of Christianity as part of his foreign policy. In short, not someone likely to offer a warm welcome to two shiploads of pagan warriors.

Still, influenced by Raven’s suggestion, Sigurd, leader of the Wolfpack, takes his ships deep in to Frankish territory, rowing down the Seine to Paris and then further, eventually portaging the great longboats from the headwaters of the Seine to the river Mass on the way to Aix-la-Chapelle, site of Charlemagene’s favourite palace. The tension derived from having the Vikings journey inland, surrounded on all sides by Christians and having to suppress their essential nature to survive, lends a frisson of fear to the voyage, and when the Wolfpack arrive at their destination, it’s no great surprise that things don’t go according to plan, leading to a frantic and exciting dash for the sea.

There’s a life and an energy to Kristian’s writing, and some lovely deft touches of characterisation: the gradual evolution of the monk Egfrith as he learns to co-operate with and understand the Vikings, is a subtle pleasure, while Raven changes from an outsider to an integral part of the crew, in a group that becomes more diverse and less obviously Norse as the story progresses. As for Raven’s origins, the story of his blood eye, of those we learn little, but as the Wolfpack turns for their home country, and Raven anticipates his first visit to the lands of the Norse, we can only hope his story has much further to take us.

This story begins with a party thrown by Lord Henry Winthrop to celebrate his return, mummy in hand, from an expedition to Egypt.  Mann sets the scene well here with a description that perfectly captures both the possiblilty of scientific investigation and the spectacle that is the real point of the ”unwrapping”.

Glass cabinets had been erected at regular intervals all around the tiled floor, filled with the most wondrous gilded treasures from the tomb of the mummified king. People milled around these cabinets, cooing appreciatively, drinks in hand, courting one another with sidelong glances and averted gazes. Purefoy almost laughed out loud.  It was like every cliche he could have imagined, and more sumptuous and extravagant than even those.

George Purefoy, whose breathless entry to the party serves to underline its importance, is a newspaper reporter with excellent instincts and an eye for the unusual.  His chance meeting with Sir Maurice Newbury effectively draws the reader back into the series, and the novel soon leaves the bizarre unveiling of the mummy and spirals off to the offices of Newbury and Veronica Hobbes in the British Museum.  Here, though Newbury is currently working on tracking a missing agent, Hobbes has her eye on another set of disappearances, missing girls who have seemingly vanished without a trace and with what may well be a bit of magic.

Both of these mysteries throw the detectives into danger, and Newbury and Veronica’s determination to find and punish those responsible draws them ever closer to the darker side of this version of Victorian London. Mann does an excellent job keeping the action moving and, while the character of Newbury owes much to Sherlock Holmes, he also feels like his own man and a character that will continue to grow as the series progresses. Veronica, his Watson, shows a strong knack for investigation herself, and Newbury’s active encouragement and appreciation of her strengths makes them a formidable pair.

The world-building is exemplary.  Mann captures a world on the brink of technological revolution, where robots and steam are appearing and machines are integrating themselves into daily life (and, it must be said, the occasional human being). This mixture of hard scientific inquiry and gruesome spectacle permeates the book, and it is certainly a wild ride (I won’t spoil Newbury’s meeting with the Queen for you, but it is an image that is difficult to forget). These are not just any machines, neutral or ambivalent helpers for humanity, there is a certain aura of menace cloaking the world and the men who live in it. The Osiris Ritual may have begun with an ancient Egyptian mummy, but the true danger, danger that Hobbes and Newbury must risk their lives to defeat, exists in the heart of Victorian England.

Are you a bookgeek? (we alway ask that one!)

I am a bookgeek in every single way, except I guess I’m not a fine book collector – my books are in every imaginable kind of condition. I’m a story geek.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given (and do you follow it?)

The best piece of advice has been given by lots of people, and it boils down to just sitting down and getting to work. In the long run the difference between a pro writer and most others is that we learn how to make the stuff even on the days we don’t want to.

Where do you write?

Almost always at my desk in our often messy, reasonably sunny office. I can watch the hill behind our house through the window, and make sure it’s not sneaking up on us. I also get to watch the periodic forays of dogs and children. At any given time, from where I sit there are literally dozens and dozens of ways to distract myself within arms’ reach. It is a miracle I ever finish a book.

Shadowrise was going to be the third and final book in the Shadowmarch Trilogy… and then it wasn’t! At what point did you realise that you were going to overshoot and go in to four volumes?

It was somewhere around page 1,400, with what was still at least a couple of hundred pages’ worth of characters and plot still to be jiggled out onto the page. Um… It’s not that I’m as stupid as I seem, although this does make the third-straight trilogy I have had to publish in four volumes (with Otherland I just planned it that way) — it’s just hard to foresee the tenacity with which your characters will cling to having their every deed chronicled.

In his reviews of the three Shadowmarch books we have had so far, Bookgeeks’ Simon Appleby has commented that the books are much more morally ambiguous than Memory, Sorrow and Thorn – it’s much less obvious who (if anyone) is on the side of right. Is that how you see it, and was that a conscious choice you made?

Part of it is probably that I’m a different person in some ways, but some of it may also simply be due to my trying not to repeat MS&T too closely. Also my artistic tastes may be less romantic than they were. It’s not like I’ve lost the taste for the big gesture – all my books go crash boom bang. This newest one, Shadowheart, I’m writing the last bit of it right now and it’s like supervising a shooting war – stuff is just blowing up right and left.

The Qar are developiing in to a deeply tragic race the more readers discover about them – when you were writing, was it your intention to draw any parallels with aboriginal peoples in our own history?

Absolutely. But also I was very strongly moved by Tolkien’s Elves, by the way their long and glorious lives were so tempered by loss. When something really affects me in that way, I tend to try to take part of it as a seed and then grow something that has some of the same feeling without merely being a copy.

Are you very conscious of wanting to avoid the cliches of high fantasy – orcs, dwarves, elves and dragons, etc.?

That’s one of the fun things about writing genre fiction – you have a well-established set of cliches to play with. It’s like choreographing a modern tango — yes, freeform dance is wonderful, but you can use the classic rhythms of the tango to give something a special texture. That’s what the familiar tropes of a genre will give you.

How do you think fantasy has changed since you first started writing?

I think it has become vastly more segmented. Like other genres, the energy of the market seems to have gone more and more into specializing for pocket constituencies. It’s kind of like what the last twenty years of rock’n'roll music has been if you take out the only important new influence, hip hop.

With the works of Terry Goodkind and George R.R. Martin making their way to the small screen, do you think we will ever see TV or movies based on your work? Is that something you would like?

I would quite enjoy it. I think I would be quite willing to see what would come and I’d be perfectly aware that it was someone else’s version of my idea. So far, I’ve been very pleased with other adaptations like the wonderful German radio series, and the upcoming Otherland MMOG from RealU. The good thing about the game and what I would hope for in a movie is that they didn’t slavishly follow everything but very much made their decisions about how to tell the stories in the spirit of my writing.

Can you give us a few hints about what’s going to happen in Shadowheart? And when do you think it will be released?

We’re shooting for this autumn/winter. The mythological and magical side of the story comes closer and closer and really dominates the last volume. Also I think it will be – I hope it will be – by far the most surprising volume.

Elena Deveraux is one of the best vampire hunters around. In a world where the existence of vampires and other supernatural beings is common knowledge amongst the human race, angels and Archangels rule as powerful presidential figures, feared by every living thing that claps eyes on them. Vampires are ‘made’ by these powerful creatures and, in much the same fashion as moody teenagers rebelling against their parents, they often run away. Elena’s job is to capture and return them to their rightful owners.

When we meet Elena, she has perfect control over her life. Her reputation is well earned and no job ever seems out of reach. Until now.

When the beautiful but dangerous Archangel Raphael hires her, Elena knows this is a life or death situation. Completing her given mission (finding an archangel gone bad) seems impossible but failure is not an option if she wants to hold on to her life. Raphael’s reputation for destroying any creature that crosses him leaves the hunter in constant fear yet, at the same time, she can’t help but notice the undeniable chemistry between them.

Determined to focus on what seems like an impossible assignment, Elena must get ready for the job of her life while also trying not to succumb to Raphael’s unrelenting seduction games.

Singh’s sexy and romantic story set amongst a New York backdrop run by angels is the perfect read for lovers of supernatural and fantasy romance. The idea of vampires as beings created by angels and used as ‘slaves’ of some sort is an interesting and fresh new take on the genre. Angels having this power over the creatures we’ve become obsessed with instantly gives them a strong command of the story as beings not to be reckoned with.

The descriptions of them as almost too beautiful to look at is quite reminiscent of those we’ve already heard of vampires but their control over humans and other supernatural beings immediately puts them at an advantage and gives them a thrilling new power we’ve never seen before. When characters are able to control the story in this way, the reader knows they’re on to something good.

Singh’s writing is steamy, passionate, and, at times, quite erotic. The undeniable chemistry between our two central characters is apparent from the start and, as more seemingly minor characters begin to involve themselves in the story and complicate things, we are always left on edge wondering whether they will finally give in to temptation. Elena stubbornly refuses to let an Archangel show that he has power over her – even though that could mean her death – while Raphael is struggling with his own problem: a growing conscience.

There is already a huge community of fans that love paranormal romance. These stories seem to have a Mills & Boon way of introducing a lonely character who finds raw passion that she’s afraid of at first. Elena’s quite a strong, independent character, refusing to let the ‘good-looking man in charge’ take whatever he wants as he’s used to. Though it’s clear she’s fighting a losing battle as her lust and temptation begin to prove too much.

Fans of supernatural and fantasy romance are going to love this book. It has everything you’d want when looking for a good bit of action-packed intimacy. Far from being too smutty, it has the right amount of sexiness, desire, and intensity needed with a good dose of eroticism thrown in to get your heart racing.

Angels’ Blood is the first in Nalini Singh’s exciting new Guild Hunter series which is sure to be a must-read and a breathtaking introduction to a soon-to-be popular fantasy figure.


The possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence is a topic which attracts more than its fair share of neurotic and credulous fantasists. It is therefore admirable to read a book-length study which retains a level-headed rationalism throughout, whilst never loosing sight of the excitement and wonder which should rightly attend the subject. Paul Davies deals thoroughly with every aspect: the statistical probability of ET, the forms it could take, the history of our search, the methods used, the contingency plans in place should a message be received. However, while this book is ostensibly about the electronic eyes and ears aimed at outer-space, it actually proves a remarkable prism through which to regard the human condition as it currently stands.

In teasing out the prospects for alien life, Davies must turn to the only example we have to base guesses on: the biodiversity of earth. The theories of its origin, and the amazing diversity which it exhibits, are the only evidence on which we can build conjecture for its appearance elsewhere. The lives of earth’s extremophiles and the hunt for a ‘shadow biosphere’ throw new light on the wonder of our planet. We should not need reminding of this, yet it is all too easy to become complacent. The work of futurologists who have predicted alien technology shows us a potential future for our own. The utterly hypothetical Matrioshka brain, for example, now ranks as the number one technology I would like to live long enough to see constructed. In contemplating the various reactions likely to be elicited in the realms of philosophy, religion and politics by discovering that something is ‘out there’, we are forced to re-examine human nature and our interactions with each other here on earth. All in all, this is a far deeper and more wide-ranging book than the subtitle might suggest.

So, what about the search itself? The release of The Eerie Silence coincides with the 50^th anniversary of SETI and is therefore an apt moment to look back on the project and consider its future. The history of the organisation as told by Paul Davies demonstrates once again the unfailing willingness with which committed individuals will work ceaselessly against the odds. While some may regard it as a fruitless exercise in wishful thinking it is impossible to read the description of how events would unfold immediately following a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence without experiencing a vicarious thrill and concluding that while chances of success may be slim, it is nevertheless an enthralling and worthwhile enterprise.

In reporter Peter Hessler’s case, the answer was to live there for many years, and that’s great for us, as Country Living distills his experience in to a book that follows the very best traditions of travel writing, being both deeply insightful and often very funny. The book consists of three distinct sections, loosely united by the theme of car travel, which went from being a rarity and a privilege to an activity for the masses during Hessler’s time in China.

Much of the humour in this book comes from the driving: due to their differing circumstances, many Chinese do not learn to drive until they are in their late twenties or early thirties, and when they do, it’s a miracle more of them don’t die in the process. Driving courses vary widely in approach: when Hessler’s friend Wei Ziqi finally learns to drive, he spends about fifty eight hours learning to drive a truck, while never actually seeing any traffic, so when he finally gets in a car, an accident is inevitable. Other instructors insist on their pupils pulling away in second gear, because it’s harder, and, ironically, seem oblivious to the existence of the blind spot, teaching that under no circumstances must the driver turn their head. The multiple choice questions from the written driving test quoted throughout the book are gems, but after a while you start to question what the Chinese think the right answer would be:

352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should

• not tell him.
• reply patiently and accurately.
• tell him the wrong way.

The three sections of this book are very clearly defined: in the first, Hessler takes a hire car on two massive journeys, following the route of the Great Wall as far as Inner Mongolia, and gaining all kinds of insights along the way. This is the section that most closely follows the idea of ‘classic’ travel writing, and will remind many readers of Bill Bryson’s mixture of bemusement, enthusiasm and wit. The second section is not really travelogue at all – it’s more the Chinese equivalent of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, as the author makes a second home in the tiny village of Sancha, where he befriends local entrepreneur Wei Ziqi and his family, and follows the many changes that affect the tiny community over the years he spends there, as well as documenting some of its prior history. In the final section, he makes it his mission to follow the blisteringly rapid pace of change in one of China’s Enterprise Zones, made possible by the huge road-building programme initiated by the Communist government.

In reality, of course, Hessler’s life was not divided in to such neat sections, but the structure of the book makes it easy for him to make the points he needs to make about China and the Chinese. He is a profoundly sympathetic narrator, and there is hardly a trace of cultural superiority anywhere on show – he lives in China because he likes it, likes its people, and during the course of his travels and experiences, gains a great deal of insight that is eloquently shared with the reader  (although the Chinese are always coming up with fresh things to surprise him). A wonderful example of the power of good travel writing to bridge cultural divides, and highly recommended.

Read an extract on Bookhugger

Bella Wallis is a respectable society woman with a secret identity: in an office buried deep within the seedy backstreets of London, she writes sensationalist novels exposing the scoundrels that litter high society under the pen name Henry Ellis Margam. She first appeared in The Widows’s Secret, and the in the follow-up The Captain’s Table. She can be found blogging here, and you can read Jennie’s review of The Captain’s Table here.

We caught up with Brian to ask him about his writing, and why he chose to set his mystery novels in Victorian England…

We always ask: are you a bookgeek?

I have about a thousand books in the house. Very few of them are fiction  and none of them literary novels, a genre that fills me with despair. I have just finished reading, with suitable awe, The Reach of Rome by  Derek Williams (1996), an exemplary piece of historical scholarship. Before that , Simon Sebag Montefiore on Stalin and before that, James Thurber.  So yes, that kind  of geekiness.

Do you have an audience in mind when writing?

Yes, about three people, all of them women, all of them happily unaware of the compliment, if it is one. When I started to write the Bella Wallis series I was very anxious about creating a heroine at all, for fear of attracting femininist displeasure in some way or another. I have been amazed by how much women take to Bella. It helps to have a brilliant editor in Clara Farmer, overseeing the series at Chatto & Windus. I would say she is the presiding genius of the whole affair.

What’s best piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

In a film called Dad, with Ted Danson playing the exasperated son of  a garrulous Jack Lemmon, there is a scene where Lemmon tells some complicated story about a baseball game where a rookie player saved the day.  ‘And what did that teach you, Dad ?’ Danson asks wearily. Lemmon studies his son with  the watery eyes of a frail old man. ‘It taught me that anything’s possible if you turn up for work.’ Just so.

Where do you write?

I have a single storey office attached to the house and write at a desk I bought from bankrupt office stock piled higgledy-piggledy in a farmyard barn. To one side is a ruined sofa which doubles as a filing cabinet. Untidy is a weak adjective to describe these arrangements. Just outside the window is a green plastic water butt with something of the Dalek about it . Maybe I am really writing to please him. Certainly I feel him watching me with no overt signs of encouragement. In some lights he seems to scowl. On occasions, snigger.

What are you working on at the moment?

The fourth and last Bella. I am also doodling with a  novel that recounts the three entirely plausible moments when Freud met Hitler. And this will be my swansong, I think – a leisurely one , it is to be hoped.

Why did you pick Victorian times as your milieu? It puts a lot of constraints on the characters and their relationships (and they are clearly “ahead of their time” socially, morally, and emotionally).

I’m interested why you should think that historical fiction must always betray a modern sensibility in its authors. That can’t be true of Patrick O’Brian for example; nor yet of  George Macdonald Fraser. A favourite author of mine is  Thomas Kenneally- the list goes on . I write about Victorian times at the moment that the sentimental idyll was being replaced  by a more realistic and hardheaded point of view. If you like , in the last of candlelight and at the beginning of  electricity-lit squalor.

The “character” of the writer-detective is a tried and true one, what drew you to it?

The whole point about Bella is that her published novels fall into the genre of  what were called  in those days ‘sensationalist fiction.’ These books were the lies that masked  an uncomfortable reality – that outside their pages, (even in the 70’s) , the century was dying . I wanted to find a cast of characters that in one way or another understood and reflected this.  They could be sure of one thing – that nothing about them  was represented in contemporary fiction.  The series is also about love in its various guises , a story that hardly changes from generation to generation.

Where, in the world, did Captain Quigley come from?

The immediate source for Captain Quigley was my grandfather, who was born just as this series ends. He too had a soubriquet – Jockie – and was an incurably facetious and sardonic cockney shortarse whose party trick was to eat the buttons from his shirt , his fly buttons and -  as a final flourish – his bootlaces. Captain Quigley would have been quite at home with Pistol, Bardolph and Nym in the Agincourt camp and so too would my grandfather. There’s a kind of heroic ineptitude in such characters that ( he said gravely) keeps the world sane.

As a boy, he had spent fascinated hours looking at the garden through each differently coloured pane. Depending, you got a rose pink sunset garden, hushed and windless; a stormy orange garden, where it was suddenly autumn; a tropical green garden, where there seemed likely to be parrots and monkeys any second. And so on. As an adult now, Andrew valued that glass even more. Magic apart, it was old old old. The glass had all sorts of internal wrinkles and trapped bubbles, and the long-dead maker had somehow managed to make the colours both intense and misty at once.

Aside from the magical hijinks that threaten to derail his orderly life, Andrew also has to deal with the eccentric cast of characters that he seems to have inherited along with Melstone House. He begins a stealthy war of attrition against Mrs Stock, the tyrannical housekeeper who wants Melstone House to remain exactly as it was during the life of Andrew’s grandfather. Everyday Andrew rearranges the furniture in the drawing room and then, every night, Mrs Stock puts it back exactly where it had previously been. For her part, Mrs Stock punishes Andrew for his “radical” ways by serving up endless portions of cauliflower cheese. Then there’s Mr Stock (no relation, it’s just that kind of village), the gardener, who barges through the back door every morning with no thought for the delicate glass embedded within it in order to grudgingly leave inedibly large vegetables on the kitchen table. Andrew is only able to avoid being buried under these monstrous veggies by secretly feeding them to the mysterious creature that comes to feed each night on the roof of the old shed. Almost as problematic as Mr Stock is his niece, Stashe, a truly feisty female and a potential love interest for Andrew. Added to the mix, is young runaway Aidan Cain, who arrives at the House begging Andrew for protection from the shadowy beings that are pursuing him.

As the mischief and madness escalate, Andrew frantically searches for the instructions for his grandfather’s ‘field of care’ in an attempt to curtail the craziness and to prevent the odious Mr Brown, the ostentatious owner of nearby Melstone Manor, from encroaching on Melstone House land.

Enchanted Glass is another excellent children’s fantasy book from Diana Wynne Jones featuring her trademark elements of magical unreality, peculiar characters and the struggle of good against evil. Wynne Jones is truly gifted at adding magic to the mundane and some of the most wonderful elements of Enchanted Glass are found in the small struggles that the characters engage in, whether they be battles over pianos or problematic vegetables. The final thrilling conclusion of Andrew’s struggle to gain control of the ‘field of work’ actually takes place during the village fete – magical shenanigans amongst the knobbly knees competition and so on. The contrast between the world of magic and the world of the normals is subtly drawn and no character is truly what they seem. Wynne Jones has succeeded in melding together her own staple fantastical considerations with those of long-established myth and legend.

Excitingly humorous and delicately magical, Enchanted Glass is a wonderful fantasy novel that is sure to please long-term fans of Diana Wynne Jones and newcomers alike.