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📂 **Category**: Science fiction books,Books,Culture,Neil Jordan
📌 **What You’ll Learn**:
The Library of Painful Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus, £20)
Jordan, best known as a film director, never stopped writing novels. His latest opens in the year 2084 in rural Ireland, where Christian Cartwright works at the Huxley Institute in the titular library, where he has secretly abused his memory storage technology to speak with his deceased lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian’s experiences and similar events that occurred two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for Huxley’s mansion and the local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to be John Dee’s famous screaming glass. Lyrically written, full of ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it is a charming read.
Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (Tor, £22)
This first novel is based on the historical Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like creature that terrorized a region of France between 1764 and 1767. But it’s much more than just another werewolf fantasy. The narrator, Sebastian Greif, seems immortal, writing a 21st-century memoir of his 18th-century adventures. Even then he was old, sharing his mind and body with a demon named Sarmodel, whose mysterious powers helped him destroy a terrible monster. Twenty years later, a bloodthirsty creature has ravaged the same area again: since Sebastian has been sent by the man who was his best companion on the first hunt, and his lover, he hopes this will mean an end to their long-standing estrangement. A wonderful and exciting original novel, combining history and fantasy, with a unique narrative voice and wonderful characters.
Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison (Virago, £10.99)
First published in 1952 by a multi-talented feminist icon, this original fairy tale manages to feel both very old and yet always fresh and new. Orphaned baby princess Hala is rescued from her stepmother’s spite, taken care of by bears, and then adopted by a dragon. She grew up with both bearish and dragonish traits, and learned to hate heroes, because they tend to slay dragons. Despite numerous opportunities, she resists becoming a hero herself, but also rejects the usual female roles, makes friends with Valkyrie and decides to see more of the world; She helps the people she meets along the way, and always travels light. An essential classic in a beautiful new edition.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Pullman (Gollancz, £22)
Set in a Europe ravaged by the Black Death, this brilliant blend of fantasy, horror, and historical fiction tells the story of Thomas, a disgraced knight who finds himself the reluctant protector of Delphine, an orphan girl who can see angels. She tells him that they must travel to Avignon if they want to have a chance of avoiding a disaster greater than the plague: Lucifer and his fallen angels are waging another war against Heaven, and the human world has been drawn into it. With what feels like a truly medieval mindset, this vividly written book depicts a world of monsters and miracles, with scenes that reflect elements from Gawain and the Green Knight to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Despite the constant danger and violence, the story is portrayed with deep, compassionate humanity.
Avery Curran Pampering Milk (Riverrun, £20)
A girls’ boarding school in England in 1928 is the setting for this first horror novel. It begins when 18-year-old Violet falls to her death down a flight of stairs. Narrator Emily can see that an accidental fall over the railing was impossible, so it must have been murder; The only person who was close enough to doing so was the only witness, the French mistress, Mademoiselle. Emily believes that arguments between girls are normal, but not for adult women; The teacher must have been driven to murder by her unnatural desires. She tells her fellow students that they must force Mademoiselle to confess. Then another girl dies horribly during dinner, and as the death toll mounts, it becomes clear that some long-suppressed force, or the school itself, is intent on destroying her. A compulsively readable twist on an old-school story.
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