Tag: health

Camilla Bruce, The Witch in the Well (Tor Books 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55077699-the-witch-in-the-well?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=gVhigj6vIT&rank=1

200 years ago in the town of F-, Ilsbeth Clark drowns in the well.
Elena Clover is dead, and schoolteacher Catherine Evans wants to write the true account of it, to exonerate herself. She remembers a happy childhood with Elena.
Elena is clearing out the house, called ‘the castle’ of her deceased Uncle John. She remembers a rather supernatural experience from childhood. She is very drawn to the well.
Cathy happily researches the story of Ilsbeth. Then, Elena announces she will write her own book, and her version is very different, suggesting a female-driven magic cult. Elena claims a ‘soul connection’ to Ilsbeth, their consciousnesses intertwined. Ilsbeth’s soul imparts her witchcraft to Elena.
Cathy and Elena have it out, but Elena refuses to halt her book. Elena is visited by a white horse, Ilsbeth’s token? She finds a dead rabbit on her doorstep and catches Cathy breaking into her house. She takes out a restraining order.
Ilsbeth, reluctantly wed to Archibald Clark, enters an affair with the reverend Owen Phyne. Her mother Anna gives her a ‘daemon’, which she releases into the well, from there to consume quantities of raw meat.
The plot, which mostly deals with the relationship between Cathy and Elena, unravels slowly. It’s page 241 until the death of Elena is narrated. It’s page 265 until we learn what childhood event influenced Cathy.
The narrative probes deeply into the characters’s feelings. While Elena is obsessed with ‘Ilsbeth’s soul’ Cathy becomes obsessed with stopping Elena’s book. Point of view shifts between Cathy and Elena, and Ilsbeth, including excerpts from Elena’s diary and Cathy’s book, making an patchwork of material.
Cathy, Elena and Ilsbeth are all, due to their obsessions, unreliable narrators. Is witchcraft real? Are daemons really eating children? How does it work? This gives the story a dream-like quality.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Sally Gardner, The Weather Woman (Head of Zeus 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62079482-the-weather-woman?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LE57yQhoTL&rank=1

Russian girl Neva Friezland has a gift—she can predict the weather.
Regency England January 1789.The Thames is frozen over, and London is enjoying a winter Frost Fair. Three-year-old Neva mimics the sound of ice melting, but the adults don’t heed her warning. She can also read ‘the weather inside people’. Her mother, fiery red, and her father, ice-blue, fight constantly, and she lives in terror.
An accident kills her parents, and Neva takes up with clockmaker Victor Friezland, who also is Russian. She wears boy’s clothes, puts on blue-lensed spectacles, and calls herself Eugene Jonas. People are noticing that her predictions about the weather always come true. Victor fears for her safety and builds an automaton to have her speak though.
Neva meets Henri Dênou, Lord Wardell’s nephew, who gives her a shiny black pebble. Henri bets on her forecasts and wins. In the guise of Eugene Jonas, she goes to a club with Henri Dênou and has a whale of a time.
Though it’s not a comedy, there are errors of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Mix-ups arise when lovers don’t declare themselves, mix-ups which are complicated by them dressing up as the opposite gender. Letters remain unsent.
Victor’s death—and his surprising will—brings all the characters into conflict.
Any period would love to have a magic weather predicting machine, but there’s a quirky Regency feel to the story of Neva’s special power. This is a period when people were fascinated by magicians and mesmerism and when the provision of public entertainment for the masses was just beginning.
Modern readers can appreciate a tale of female empowerment, and there’s a climate change message in Neva’s predictions.
The early chapters, the three-year-old voice is very good; Neva’s voice is strong throughout. The interplay between characters is full of love, jealousy, greed, skulduggery.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Tom Callahan, The Bitcoin Conspiracy (Kindle 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196444218-the-bitcoin-conspiracy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=oT9t9x2V4l&rank=1

The mysterious ‘Sakashi Nakamoto’ introduced the world to Bitcoin in 2008. But will it change the world, overthrow global capitalism, bring down corrupt governments and corporations? Or is it just one more new technology?
Zhang Wei of China and V V Petrov of Russia strike a devilish conspiracy to challenge the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, the offspring of two US heroes—Laura Roberts and Tom Michaels—connect. Laura teaches at Johns Hopkins and researches cryptology and espionage; Tom is chief of the China desk at Langley and learns Mandarin.
Nakamoto’s hoard of bitcoin reaches 70 million USD, but he doesn’t emerge to claim it—the ‘Satoshi Hoard’.
The story plays on the popular myth that cryptocurrency could undermine hegemony of the dollar, if not bring down global capitalism, and the Sinophobic conspiracy theory of Wuhan laboratories developing the C-19 coronavirus as a biological weapon. It also works in references to real history. As well as the history of money, currency and cryptocurrency, we have the now-familiar picture of a moronic US president and a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
We spend a good few chapters just getting to know the characters, who all have extraordinary backgrounds and impossibly wonderful talents. Full of sumptuous metaphors (e.g. the US is a ‘captivating starlet’ with ‘geopolitical finesse’), over-generous with adjectives. I loved the idea of encoding secret words into the blockchain.
A great Concept, good Plot—which gets quite exciting in the latter third—and well structured, though not quite techy enough nor thrilling enough to be a techno-thriller. The tantalising ‘Chekhov’s gun’ of the Wagner PMC insignia is left hanging, as are the Johnson family. I wanted to read action and dialogue-packed scenes of how one ‘channels vast quantities of nuclear power into [an] illicit Bitcoin mining enterprise’; how one ‘[weaves] a thick web of misinformation and deception’; how one ‘uncover[s] a chilling trail of collusion and corruption’.

Charles Cordell, God’s Vindictive Wrath (Myrmidon Books 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60806288-god-s-vindictive-wrath?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=exvRkjkbrE&rank=1

1642 Warwickshire. Francis Reeve looks up to the hill carving, the Red Horse, and down upon the king’s forces, among whom is his half-brother Ralph. On the other hill, Ralph thinks about Francis. Why had he sent that angry letter? Perhaps Francis was still angry with Ralph for being caught with his master’s wife.
This is an exciting, minute-by-minute story of the English Civil War, from the Battle of Edgehill to the Battle of Brentford. It’s told from multiple points of view, enabling us to see battles from all angles, but largely through Francis and Ralph. On opposing sides, the half-brothers must ultimately confront each other. That the author was a career soldier himself is evident in the detailed descriptions and analyses of battle strategies. We learn about Dutch-style defence, Swedish King Gustavus’ brigade formation, as well as the mechanics of cannons and muskets.
We are used to looking at historical battles from a bird’s-eye-view, since we know the outcome. This is from the soldier’s point of view—do-or-die determination for the cause, hearts filled with fervour yet terror, eyes witnessing pain, blood and death, never knowing what the overall state of play is until after it is all over.
Most of these characters are known to history. Though the detailed accounts of battle and multiple points of view don’t leave much time for character development, their lively interactions bring the reader right into the scene.
The attention to historical accuracy is fantastic. I was impressed by the duplication of the religious expression that was especially characteristic of this revolution. Also well portrayed are the lifestyles of people at the time, not to mention the gore and mayhem of war. Both the storyline and the writing style are tremendously exciting.
Contains some sex, swearing and gore. Fans of military fiction will love this.

This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Aidan K. Morrissey, The Awakening Aten (Troubador Publishing 2019)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45997590-the-awakening-aten?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Z8HRePsJjs&rank=1

1420 BCE. In prison, Yuya interprets Perneb’s dream and tells him about the ten laws of the One God. Then, King Amenhotep’s (II) guards come for him. The king has had a dream. Yuya interprets it as foretelling famine, and the king appoints him Overseer of the King’s Granaries.
They are going to war against the Naharina (Mitanni), who are anxious for revenge after their defeat at Megiddo and have now formed an alliance of seven princes with Nubia and the Hittites. Royal tomb painter and architect Kha and stonemason Minmose are commissioned to immortalise the expected victory in stone.
The battle is won, but Kha is horrified by the carnage. A Mitanni princess is taken captive and given a Kemetian (Egyptian) name, Mutemwiya. Prince Thutmose has a dream instructing him to renovate the Great Sphinx, at the time buried up to its neck.
Haqwaset grows under the influence of grandfather Yuya; he becomes Amenhotep III. He has some 300 wives and concubines but prefers the company of his Chief Wife Tiye. He has designs for young Thutmose, his eldest, to be high priest of Ptah and Anen, Yuya’s son, to be high priest of Amun. He corresponds diplomatically with the rulers of neighbouring lands and entertains ambassadors. Tension grows between him and the priests of Amun.
Amun priest Nahkt plots to rob the tomb of Thutmose III and threaten the king himself.
The beginning leaves out from the familiar myth the juicier bits (the coat-of-many-colours, Potiphar’s wife) and instead focuses on the less interesting details (the stocking of the warehouses). I understand that the Amun/Aten conflict was one of class, but as it played out in religious matters, I would like to have seen more discussion of the relative merits of monotheism/Aten worship. Basing the plot around this class struggle would have been a ‘bigger’ plot, in my view, than a tomb robbery. The plot contrives a plausible scenario whereby certain persons and items were buried in certain tombs.
Morrissey goes with the identification of Yuya, father-in-law of Amenhotep III, as the biblical Joseph, a hypothesis with some merit. Thanks to the Egyptians’ tomb paintings and marvellous preservation of their dead, we know quite a lot about Yuya and the family of Amenhotep III, and around these details, Morrissey has constructed a narrative. This is also the period of the Amarna Letters, providing much juicy detail about the relations between Egyptian kings and other neighbouring royalty.
The is Book 1 of The Aten Saga series.