Slade House, David Mitchell

I want to enjoy Mitchell’s books, but it annoys me that they’re all connected. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s how I feel all the same; it seems so consciously literary and over clever, in many of the cases. Granted, I’ve only read this and Cloud Atlas, but I’ve seen a chart. A chart, for goodness’ sake. So I was a bit annoyed when reading this, because I came to the phrase ‘the bone clocks’, a reference to the title of another of Mitchell’s books. I don’t want to have to read all your supposedly stand-alone books to understand all your characters!

Pet peeves aside, the different voices were interesting, though not always as distinct as I’d like. I figured out the “mystery” of it pretty fast, and thus wasn’t surprised by things which rather surprised the characters themselves — the trouble of having seen it happen to another character before them, I guess. There’s a creepy atmosphere about the book, though that works best in the earlier sections: later, I’ve got too good an idea of where things are going.

It was fairly absorbing, but if it had been much longer I might have got bored. There’s only so many cycles you can go through before it all becomes rather obvious, and repetitive to boot.

Rating: 3/5

The Litany of Earth, Ruthanna Emrys

You can read this novella online here, and it’s good background to have if you’re interested in reading Emrys’ novel, Winter Tide. It helps orientate you and figure out the characters, how they’re related, what they care about, where they’ve been. I paused in reading Winter Tide to read this, and it definitely clarified things. In fact, I liked it more than Winter Tide: it felt better paced, perhaps because it does have to have a beginning, middle and end in a fairly short stretch of words.

It’s beautifully written, as well; both this and Winter Tide are excellent reworkings of Lovecraft’s ideas concerning the Deep Ones, taking away a lot of the horror he held and expressed about anything Other. It stands alone well, even though it serves as a good introduction for Winter Tide. It’s definitely a good way to dip into Emrys’ work to see if you like her style and ideas.

Rating: 4/5