novels

Poster.

This was given to me as a present, purchased as a “blind date with a book,” wrapped in parcel paper with just the first line of story adoring the cover.

A large, 24/7, unethical supermarket, late on Friday night.

Enticing. In what way is this supermarket unethical? Is there something sinister going on here? Is the meat at the butcher’s counter not what it seems? Probably not, we never really learn anything much about the supermarket. It seems to be unethical merely in the way most businesses are. Every chapter in the book, and they are 124 of them and most of them are about three pages long, starts with a similar bit of scene-setting that is utterly irrelevant to anything that actually happens. And in the end what happens is not terribly a lot to a protagonist that I never really found myself caring about.



Poster.

I picked this book up on a whim in a bookshop when I realised that I had forgotten to bring anything else to read during a trip I was taking.

It is prefaced by the worst map I have ever seen in a fantasy novel and it sets the tone for the rest of it. A bunch of fantasy and romance tropes ground down into an easy to swallow slop.

It seemed like it might have been going in interesting directions early on, with the fairies (I do not respect anyone using the term “faerie” or “fae” because they’re afraid of being silly by just saying fairy) being depicted as these ancient, horrible, shapeshifting beings who cannot lie and whose food you must not eat. Still drawing from standard tropes but ones had me second guessing them and the story constantly. But no, it turns out that all the stories humans have about fairies in this setting are just wrong and they’re really just standard fantasy elves.

Our protagonist’s point of view often doesn’t feel informed by the world and her life in it and just based on fantasy tropes. The assumptions she makes, the things she takes as facts or how she understands the things around her often seem out of nowhere. She is barely literate but can somehow infer a detailed history of the world from a mural. She seems to just intuitively understand so much about magic and fairies as the plot goes on despite having previously established basically everything she was raised to think about them is wrong. When she is trying to practise reading she makes note of words to look up the pronunciations of later. How is she going to do that, exactly? Does the fairy library have Google? Nothing seems at all thought through.

Some of the later revelations and resolutions seem like something that everyone involved should have some extremely complicated feelings about at the very least but these characters have no emotional depth at all so I am not going to waste time trying to unpack them myself when no one else involved is bothering to.

I don’t respect it at all but I can’t say that I had a bad time reading it either. It did get a bit tedious when the romance completely took over for a few chapter but thankfully the plot did pick up again after that. It filled time.



Poster.

This novel consistently delivers on providing truly baffling adaptational choices. From a ghost story about Franz Ferdinand’s car, to daring the reader to find and visit its fictional locations, to Kayako keeping her diary updated after her death or her hatred being compared directly to 9/11 this book had me shouting utterly incredulously at its pages at least once a chapter.



Poster.

Strange to read at the same time as A Closed and Common Orbit. It takes a few notes from towards the end of A Closed and Common Orbit and builds a smaller, neater narrative to lead up to specifically them. On its own it might have felt more interesting, coming off the back of the larger book it ended up feeling a little empty. And the fantasy of Panga as the world that successfully pulled back from collapse didn’t feel hopeful to me, it just made me feel bitter about the world. A miracle happened and it made everyone realise that rampant, endless, consumption and destruction was bad. How convenient.







Clashmore

This work is in the public domain.

A novel by Irish author Edmund Downey, a.k.a. “F. M. Allen”, originally published in 1903 that I transcribed and compiled digitally over the course of 2021 and 2022.

Clashmore concerns the journeys of a man named named Francis Aylward as he travels from London to Tramore in search of his uncle, Henry Aylward (Viscount Clashmore), who has suddenly vanished, which leads Frank to learn about his family history and its relationship with Ireland.

I used a from a copy from the Westmeath County Library and archive scans of The Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper, which the novel was serialised in, hosted by Duquesne University.

It can downloaded in EPUB or PDF format.


Clais Ṁór

Tá an saoṫar seo san fhearann poiblí.

Is úrscéal le Euḋmon Ó Dúnaḋaiġ (ainm cleite “F. M. Allen”) é Clashmore. Foilsíoḋ ar dtús é sa ḃliain 1903 agus tras-scríóḃ mé é i riṫ 2021 agus 2022.

Sa scéál téann Francis Aylward ó Londain go dtí Trá Ṁór ċun a uncail, Henry Aylward (Tiġearna na Ċlaise Móire), a ċuardaċ mar a d’imiġ Henry as raḋarc. In Éirinn foġlaimíonn Francis stair a ṫeaġlaiġ.

D’úsáid mé cóip as ab Leaḃarlann Ċontae na hIarṁí agus scanaḋ cartlainne nuaċtán The Pittsburgh Catholic, a an úrscéal a foilsiú mar ṡraith. Óstáil Duquesne University an ċartlann seo.

Tá sé ar fáil mar formáidí EPUBPDF.