It’s been another bumper reading month for me. Again, I didn’t finish every book in my pile, but I did manage to read two that weren’t in my original selection. Here is my May 2024 book review round-up!
The Book With All the Hype
The Ministry of Time was everywhere in my timeline when it hit the shops during May. It was in all the newspaper review round-ups too. A book I described as “time travel adjacent,” The Ministry of Time is as much about the experience of living as an expatriate as it is about clever multiverse reveals. A thought-provoking novel about the strength of human friendship and how the more things change, the more they stay the same. You can read my full review here.
The Book I Wasn’t Expecting
During May, I received an email about reviewing a new Lauren James book and was fortunate enough to be sent a copy. I loved The Quiet At the End of the World and was thrilled to be given a chance to read Last Seen Online. While not published until August, the novel’s premise and structure wormed its way under my skin and I just had to read it.
I’m a sucker for novels that use mixed media to tell a story, and here we have diary entries, WhatsApp chats, and blog posts to reveal the truth behind a possible miscarriage of justice. The novel is based on James’ online project “An Unauthorised Fan Treatise,” a fan blog about a fictional TV series and two of its lead actors. When one of the actors is reported to have killed the other, Gottie’s fan blog comes under scrutiny. Is it a useful source of information, a tissue of lies, or perhaps she had something to do with the murder?
Now years later, the son of the actor convicted of the murder meets a teenage actress at an audition. They begin an unlikely search for the truth. I’ll review the book in greater detail closer to its publication, but I very much enjoyed it. I loved the formatting and the slightly alternative way to tell a story, and the plot is good too. It manages to thrill and entertain while serving as a reminder of the pitfalls of social media, 24-hour communication, and always-accessible celebrity.
The Book With the Short Stories
I’m not a massive fan of short stories. I appreciate them as an art form, but I tend to prefer more fleshed-out narratives. In April, I read and loved The Three-Body Problem, so I was keen to try out the latest Cixin Liu collection, A View from the Stars. I say “new” collection but there was nothing here that was written recently, and I believe many of the stories and essays have been collected and published elsewhere.
There are flashes of the brilliance that we saw in The Three-Body Problem and a couple of excellent hi-concept stories, but overall I found the collection a little underweight. One for the real fans, I imagine. Instead, I wished I’d opted to read the recently purchased follow-up to The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, so look out for that in July. (My June list is already full!)
The Book That Everyone Has Read
The biggest surprise for me this month was Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. This has sold countless copies and held TikTok in thrall for months. It’s a “romantasy” novel, predicated on the vague premise of forbidden love. The tagline on the back “Hunger Games meet Fifty Shades” did not fill me with confidence, but 2 million readers can’t be wrong, right? (For those who aren’t regular readers of my book round-ups, I’m aiming to read each of the Waterstones SFF “book of the month” picks, which is why I was reluctantly reading Fourth Wing.)
I enjoyed the book a lot more than I thought I might. From a fantasy perspective, it’s hard to see what sets the book apart from the many other excellent fantasy novels available that have sold far fewer copies. It’s a solid, deadly training ground academy elimination story. With dragons.
The dragons are cool, the story is fairly derivative, but there are enough elements to make it interesting, especially toward the end. It was probably 100 pages too long; I felt it sagged in the middle. The characterization was surprisingly strong, if occasionally overwrought. The romance never outstayed its welcome, even if, as I enter my prudish 6th decade, I could have done with slightly less steam.
I was almost certainly looking for things to find wrong with Fourth Wing, and while there were a few bits that jarred, I’d have barely noticed them if the book had arrived without a reputation. Anything that allows more writers to break into writing fantasy novels and helps bring people to a genre that I have loved for most of my prudish five decades can only be a good thing.
The Book About Our Robot Overlords
New month, new book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Service Model is out June 4th, so expect a full review soon. Once again we are treated to a richly worded treatise on man’s fallibility. This time we meet Charles, a service robot who appears to have killed his master. When the “police” arrive we learn that something is very wrong with the world. Charles finds himself outside, searching for meaning and motive for his actions.
The novel is an examination of the limitations of robots and AI, and the perils of such things being created in man’s image. Once again Tchaikovsky demonstrates he is an extremely thoughtful author with an acute eye for how society works—or more accurately, fails to work. Service Model manages to be both gloomy and comic, often in the same paragraph. People who are concerned about AI should read Service Model, and fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky will love it.
The Children’s Book About Our Robot Overlords
Similar, but not the same as Service Model, is Alastair Chisholm’s novel for middle-grade readers, I Am Wolf. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, semi-sentient mecha roam the world, jealously guarding their territories. Coll finds himself without a tribe, searching for somewhere to belong in this excellent novel that sensitively portrays a hero with limb differences. A book about acceptance and found family, I highly recommend I am Wolf. You can find out why here.
The Book With the Boat
A great book for younger readers was The Royal Jewel Affair, sequel to the excellent Peril on the Atlantic. These are children’s adventure stories that bring to mind The Famous Five and The Secret Seven; a more contemporary comparison would be the Adventures on Trains series.
In this book, Alice and Sonny move to their newly inherited boat that is sailing in the Adriatic Sea. The “Royal” in the title is none other than the soon-to-abdicate Edward VIII, who is on board with Mrs. Simpson. In and around this, a jewel goes missing and the children must uncover the truth, even when the King of England is under suspicion. The books are perhaps innocent tales of simpler times, but the author A.M. Howell spins a compelling yarn, with the ominous threat of world war lurking in the background. Another volume is promised, and I can’t wait to find out what the children get up to next.
The Book About Lying
Another children’s book I read during May was The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie by Radhika Sanghani. It’s a moral tale about the truth, being true to yourself, true to your friends, and recognizing the importance of showing people the real you. I very much enjoyed this one. It’s an entertaining story wrapped around some important truths. Read my full review here.
The Book Club Pick About WWII
My book club pick for May was The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. This is a debut novel that has been very popular in the UK. The action opens in a British country house just after World War I, but most of the novel’s action takes place in 1939-1945. I haven’t quite finished it yet (my book group meeting was pushed back to June 3rd), and I have found it a little slow in places. Nevertheless, with World War II in full swing, the groundwork laid is paying off—I’m hooked going into the final third.
It focuses on three sort of siblings—two share the same father, two the same mother, and the two with no parent in common are first cousins—and their unruly life in rural England. The children, more or less left to their own devices, start staging plays on the grounds of the house, aided and abetted by a Russian surrealist artist who has attached himself to the family. As they grow up they are thrown like the rest of the country into the maw of World War II. How things will play out, I have yet to discover!
So there we have it, another bumper month of reading. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you found something in there of interest. Look out for my June preview very soon!
Disclosure: I was sent copies of all the books in this piece to review, except for The Whalebone Theatre, Fourth Wing, and The Ministry of Time.
