Author: Nicky

Find me elsewhere

Posted July 27, 2018 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Interrupting your normal scheduled posts here to point out to anyone new that you can find me elsewhere online! I have two other blogs, and one of them is brand new.

First we have, of course, my popular science blog. I suspect it’ll always be biology-heavy, because I’m a biologist, but it’s partly based on what I get questions about. So feel free to make me put my research skills to work and ask me awkward questions…

Notable posts have included an introduction to my dissertation, experimental proof that reading is good for me, a warning about the upcoming post-antibiotic world, and an explanation of why science is WEIRD.

Then we’ve got my fiction blog, which is brand new and which you can find here. It’s a bit of an experiment for now, but let’s see what happens.

And because it’s so new, there’s only one post: a 300-word piece of fiction called How the Story Goes.

So hey, if those interest you, now you know they’re out there and can follow them or drop in occasionally. Don’t forget to wave!

Tags: about me, not about books

Review – Gorgon

Posted July 27, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Gorgon, Peter D. Ward

If you’re looking for information on the gorgonopsids and their world, this book is rather thin on that. Instead, it’s mostly about Ward’s career and some of his excavations and initiatives. Admittedly, much of that is in the service of getting information about the gorgonopsids, but the book is rather thin on what was actually found. There is some interesting stuff on pinning down that mass extinction and figuring out how fast it happened, but the gorgonopsids in life — how they lived, what they did — are absent.

So pretty interesting in terms of understanding Ward’s career as a palaeontologist, with the appropriate set pieces about how hot it was and how difficult, etc, etc, but low on actual pre-dinosaurian monsters ruling the Earth.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – Thirteen Guests

Posted July 26, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Thirteen Guests, J. Jefferson Farjeon

Like Seven Dead, this actually includes a love story as well, although of a rather different stripe (and maybe a bit less of the focus, since neither party is seriously suspected of the murders). It’s less prominent than the love story in Seven Dead, and thankfully less creepy as well, with some rather good scenes between the two of them negotiating their relationship. At the same time, there’s a convoluted mystery going on with several deaths, complex interrelationships and, well, the usual stock in trade of Golden Age crime fiction, really. It’s a country house mystery, too, just to hit all those traditional notes.

I found it solidly entertaining, and though it’s a bit less weird/creepy than Seven Dead, I think it was probably stronger for it. There’s something about Farjeon’s writing that I find rather more-ish, and I’d gladly pick up a bunch more of his novels. Sadly, I only seem to have The Z Murders left… though I should check for something by other publishers or maybe as an ebook.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery

Review – The Henchmen of Zenda

Posted July 25, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Henchmen of Zenda, K.J. Charles

If you don’t know The Prisoner of Zenda, then I doubt this will be of much interest — and I think you’d also have to be interested in m/m romance to really appreciate it, as well. With both those things in mind, it’s a fun romp, turning aspects of The Prisoner of Zenda on their head and making a little more of two background characters, and particularly the flamboyant and unrepentant Rupert of Hentzau. Detchard is a total cipher in the original book, really, so he makes good ground for Charles to play with in rewriting the story.

Ultimately, is it an amazing work of literature? No. Does it do anything particularly new or interesting in rewriting The Prisoner of Zenda? Also no (though I enjoyed that Charles didn’t try too hard, Black Michael is still as black as he’s painted). It doesn’t depart too far from the original, though I enjoyed the friendship between Detchard and Antoinette, and Rupert’s actual loyalties, as additions to the original plot.

It may not be very startling, but it’s solid fun, and I do enjoy the bantering, slightly adversarial relationship between Detchard and Rupert. Charles doesn’t lay it on too thick or try to change the essentials of the characters, and it produces a good romp.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, romance

WWW Wednesday

Posted July 25, 2018 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

The Zoo, by Isobel Charman: it’s not exactly “wild and wonderful”, as the subtitle goes, but it’s still quite an interesting reconstruction of history. It probably takes too many liberties in imagining what the real people it follows thought and felt, but it’s entertaining enough.

I’m also partway through rereading The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman. That’s as entertaining as you’d expect, and I’m looking forward to finally getting onto the fourth book, The Lost Plot.

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Crooked Kingdom. Everyone who told me it picks up halfway through was right — yeesh, I barely put it down after I got just past 50%. At first it felt like Kaz’s team just weren’t coming together properly to pull things off, but once they figured things out… Also, ouch, that ending. Ouch.

What will you be reading next?

Record of a Spaceborn Few is out, so I’m thinking of rereading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit first, because that’s how I roll. Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw is also about to come out, so I want to reread Strange Practice as well, but I’ll probably read Small Angry Planet again first.

What about you?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All The Way Home

Posted July 24, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home, Catherynne M. Valente

It’s been a long road with September, and she’s grown up so much. The final book does so much, winding all the stories to a graceful close and doing so with style, emotion and a lot of cleverness. In other words, exactly as you’d expect from Valente and this series. I won’t say she can’t put a foot wrong, but the narrator is so charming and the world of Fairyland so wild and wonderful that I’m willing to forgive it any number of sins. (Whether it’s willing to forgive me entirely depends on its mood that day. But there, that’s the whimsy getting hold of me.)

And again, the ending is why I think this series is really more for adults than it’s been marketed, or even reviewed by a lot of people: you need to know the stories and have the experiences to understand what Valente does with them fully. The cleverness isn’t all obvious, and if you think you’re too adult for this series, well… I can understand it not being your thing, but there’s also a fair bit of snobbishness going round about books that get classed as YA.

In any case, it’s always a relief to come to the narrator’s reassurance at the end that she’s waiting for us to come back, settle in, and read it all again. I have no doubt I will.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Catherynne M. Valente, SF/F

Review – Human Universe

Posted July 23, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Human Universe, Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen

If you’re expecting something based a bit more on humans and how they evolved, remember it’s Brian Cox and think bigger — it’s more about our place in the universe, our understanding of it, and what we might find out there in the vastness of space. It’s not really about us as a species, I think, but about how we see the world around us. So yeah, more physics, less biology. Which makes sense, given the author, and it’s easier to absorb than his other book I’ve read (Universal). It goes into interesting stuff like the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, which is right up my street, and it avoids too much jargon or demands that the reader understand math.

That said, it wasn’t amazing, from my point of view — mildly interesting, but not really my thing.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science

Discussion: Rereading

Posted July 23, 2018 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

I’ve probably written about rereading books here before, but it bears talking about again. I can’t understand the people who feel it’s a waste of time — it seems like hubris, to imagine that for every book you read, you get absolutely everything out of it on the first try and never need to read it again. I’m an English Literature grad, and I wouldn’t claim that — and in my Natural Sciences degree, I wouldn’t presume to think I understood most papers until a third or fourth reading, though granted they tend to be technical.

I mean, that’s the fancy excuse for rereading: I want to get everything I can out of it. (And for some books that’s definitely true: I’m still getting new stuff out of The Lord of the Rings and The Dark is Rising to chew over now, and I don’t know how many times I’ve read them.) It’s a good reason, but honestly, I don’t want it to eclipse the real reason I might reread a book: because I feel like it. Because I want to revisit that world. Because it was just that good the first time and I want to re-experience it. Because I need to refresh my mind before I read the sequel.

I mean, if you don’t enjoy rereading, then that’s one thing — but if it’s just because there’s so many books and so little time, well, that’s going to be true whether you reread or not. If you feel like rereading, why not? Again it comes down to the principle I keep reminding myself of: I read for fun. I don’t read to hold the record of the most unique books read in a single lifetime, or have an impressive list of all the classics checked off. What’s the point?

There is a flipside: you can read a book until it’s too predictable, too worn through in your mind. The best books can survive this, but even a good book can get a bit threadbare. (Good Omens, I’m looking at you.) But then it’s not so fun anymore, so the fun principle still holds.

So yeah. For my money, go reread books until your physical copies are floppy and faded with age and they fall open on your favourite bits. Talk about books you’ve reread until people are sick of hearing about it (I won’t get sick of hearing about it). Take any excuse if rereading is something you enjoy. You don’t owe those other books a thing.

Tags: books, discussion

Review – Children of Time

Posted July 22, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky

As an idea, this is a really fascinating novel. There’s the fall of human civilisation, a not-quite-a-generation-ship ark of humanity trying to find old terraformed worlds after humanity began to rebuild itself, there’s genetic experiments, there’s a whole novel society in the form of uplifted arachnids… For me, it was more of a novel of ideas than one in which I got to care about any particular character — especially since the spider characters may have shared names, but weren’t the same people or even roles across generations. There was some pathos in the relationship between the main crew member we follow and Lain, but… Mostly it wasn’t about individuals.

As a biologist, I’m not sure I agree with how Tchaikovsky has set up the uplift story. He uses a nanovirus, which… I guess is basically magic handwaving, because an actual virus wouldn’t be able to do nearly what he suggests. The ‘message’ of the virus would be scrambled within a couple of generations, if not immediately, and a virus couldn’t work intelligently toward a particular goal — especially not with multiple different species. It sounds like hard science because the explanation is there and holds up if you don’t have detailed knowledge of viruses, but it isn’t really hard science because once you’re talking about a “nanovirus” that isn’t really a virus (which it manifestly can’t be) then you’re just magically handwaving. We can’t do accurate gene editing yet at all, even with CRISPR/cas9, let alone with a viral vector, so he’s extrapolating way too far from the data for it to be hard science (which is how the person who recommended me this sold it, as an antidote to wishy-washy socially based science).

Obviously, that’s all a bit of a personal peeve since I love CRISPR and understanding diseases: most people wouldn’t want to argue so much with it, I think! After all, it’s really just there to explain how the uplift happens — and one key event at the end. As far as I’m concerned, hard science should be much more closely beholden to known facts and existing technology, or it’s just magic. (Any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic…)

That aside, I did enjoy the book as an exploration of uplift, as an exploration of the uplift of an Earth species very different to us, and as an exploration of the clash between that species and what’s left of the human race. The AI and her struggle to understand herself and what happened is also well done: her loneliness and obsession is well depicted, even if you can’t really like her as a character. I’m not sure how to feel about the ending, how the spiders resolved things, but all in all… definitely worth chewing on and thinking about some more.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – Hadrian’s Wall

Posted July 21, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Hadrian’s Wall, David J. Breeze, Brian Dobson

This is a fairly in-depth examination of the Wall and the archaeology done around it to try and understand what it was used for and at what times. As such, it’s a lot of information that most people wouldn’t expect to hold in their heads after, unless they’re deeply interested in the topic. Which is pretty much exactly why I read this, back during my exam period. I really love reading books like this that sift through the archaeology, present possible conclusions and discuss what is most likely. I don’t expect to remember this or that about the forts — no one expects me to remember it — but all the same I learned about the Romans and the British of the period, and got to connect some dots in what I know.

It’s perhaps not the most scintillating reading if you’re not pretty engaged and interested in the topic, but it’s interesting stuff and they make a good case for their ideas.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction