The Ballad of the Five Marys - Donald Smith

Sometimes when you’re an intern at a publishing house you get questions that you really don’t know how to answer.  These are questions like: “How are you finding your time here?”, “Would it be okay if I asked you to do...” and “Isn’t this cover that I designed fabulous?” which all have very nice and easy answers.  You say: “It’s great, I’m having an amazing time”, “Of course, nothing would please me more” and “It’s beautiful!” and to be honest most of the time you are being truthful because every person that I have worked with so far in this industry has been incredibly friendly and talented.  On occasion, however, the tricky questions come up., the most difficult of which is: “What do you think of this book?” Now this is more than a question of sucking up to the powers that be. You can’t of course be wholly negative, but a sycophantic response praising the book to the rafters is not always appropriate either. You’re trying to show off judgement, taste and maybe a bit of a discerning sense of where the market is.  This means that the normal response is to praise the book but offer reservations. 

Where am I going with all of this?  Well near the end of my first placement with Luath I was given Donald Smith’s The Ballad of the Five Marys to proof-read.  This is a historical-fiction novel set during the life of Mary I of Scotland (the inner historian in me hates calling her Mary Queen of Scots for boring reasons that I will not get into here).  I read through much of the book in one day and was asked how I was finding it.  I, truthfully (often a mistake in work and in love), said that I was really enjoying it and thought it could be, if marketed right, a big seller.  Apparently this was the correct answer (phew!) as the book was quite popular in the office.  However, on describing the novel to some of my friends I have found that people have been quite sceptical about it.  Therefore the purpose of this review really is going to be me attempting to persuade you that this book is, in fact, a really rather excellent historical novel set in a period saturated with a lot of very average works.

The main reason for why I like this book is the style.  Unlike other genres of fiction, I find that historical fiction tends to be a little stuck in its ways. Most books tend to be written in a fairly standard first-person style, focussing on one or two characters’ journey or in a narrative third-person style. This book is nothing like that at all.  It is set throughout most of the life of Mary Stewart, first crowned regnant-Queen of Scots from the time of her birth to her incarceration by Elizabeth I of England.  The story is told through a number of POV accounts, set through a combination of diary/diary-like accounts, personal correspondence and other similar methods.  The idea essentially is to get a widow on the minds of each individual.  The ‘Five Marys’ (four companions of Mary I along with the queen herself) have their own shared diary, form around half of this, the rest being various people from like Darnley and Bothwell.  The author has a strong didactic purpose (something that I will come back to later) and this means that he attempts to get as many different perspectives in as possible, but this does not distract from the story-telling – in fact I believe it enhances it greatly.  As a historian with an interest in the period I am perhaps not the best person to talk about with regard to how the characters come across, but in my view they are differentiated well without becoming generic and all bring their own distinctive flavours to the story.  Equally, one would expect a story that covers such a significant amount of time to rather flounder as time passes, but quite the contrary, I find it picks up pace as the story progresses.

This story’s main weakness, however, lies in its didactic purpose.  The author professes himself to be a big fan of Mary Stewart and intends for the novel to redress the balance of some professional historiography that, in Donald Smith’s view, unfairly maligns her.   For me this is a rather troubling stance to take.  It is true that modern historiography has often shown Mary to be a rather naive queen, whose poor choices in husband led Scotland to a very bloody period of civil strife that dogged not only her reign but also the minority of her son James.  Furthermore, there is a very valid argument that perhaps this line of enquiry can be overplayed; Mary ruled at a very difficult time thanks to the emerging power of England and the turmoil of the Reformation.  Having said all of that, however, for a fictional account to be attempting to pass itself off as some sort of amateur history strikes me as being a little troubling.  It strikes me as being a bit like films such as BRaveheart that have very little grounding in actual history, but pass themselves off as fact.  Now this book has far more accuracy than Mel Gibson’s mauling of history, but it must always be remembered that this is fiction.  Leave history to the pros!  The worst example of this is the final page which lists a group of ‘Discussion Questions’ which seems to suggest that Smith intends for this book to be taught to children in school as History.  I really hope that is not the case as it would mark a remarkable dilution of the subject for a fiction book to be passed off as fact!

Despite this reservation, I would strongly recommend this book to fans of historical-fiction, if nothing else than because stylistically it is so different from anything I have read before in adult fiction.  Ignore the pretentions of historical scholarship and you will find a very pleasing read!

7/10

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Animal Lover - Raymond Friel

My reading choices in the last few weeks may seem a little eclectic, they certainly have seemed that way to me!  The reason for this mix of different book styles is that I am currently doing a lot of internships at various different publishing houses and a large part of most of these is reading.  A LOT of reading!  Some of what I have read has been good, some not so but that I suppose is the nature of the beast. 

The latest book that has crossed my path was a very unusual offering by a first-time author called Raymond Friel whose debut novel Animal Lover has recently been published by Luath Press.  This curious book was given to me on my first day at Luath to proof-read and I was informed by the boss that it was one of her favourites from this year.  Eager to impress her with my knowledge and to misguide her with spurious statements about by skill in the task set before me, I set about proofing this manuscript.  Animal Lover is a story about a lovable animal rights activist named Danny.  Danny’s life is a bit of a mess, but he does have his little gang of freedom fighters who seek to liberate animals from man’s oppression.  Sadly, an operation to free some dogs from a laboratory goes badly wrong and for complex reasons, the dogs have to be thrown off the roof.  This rather tears apart his group, especially a girl that has recently caught his eye who goes off to join some more hardcore, more terroristy groups.  Things don't really go much right for Danny from there-on-in

The book is written in a narrative style with a very unusual method of writing direct speech which, once you get your head around it, is perfectly understandable but I wish he wouldn’t do it - it seems rather pretentious and unnecessary to me to mess with grammatical rules for no real purpose.  The style is very informal and quite irreverent which fits the narrative well and allows for the absurdities of the plot to come through.  These absurdities make this novel a real hoot to read – I provided some great amusement for many of my colleagues as I occasionally burst out laughing at random points – and it is clear that Friel has a real aptitude for this kind of writing.  The characters are engaging and occasionally surprise you with little gems of conversation that bring the story alive and the book is short enough that the whole thing rollicks nicely.

Having said that, however, the length is this novel’s most significant problem (other than the stupid method of writing direct speech). Well, more specifically, it’s the ending that bothers me. The story builds up to a rather terrific climax, but it all ends rather too quickly. It’s not that there’s no closure, no pay-off as such for completing the book. It’s just that, considering the book has been building up to this big ending at ‘The Circus’, you’d have expected this to last more than just a few pages. It’s all rather frustrating really because it almost spoils the book. I have always said that the mark of a good writer is being able to get the reader/viewer to the end of the story and for them to care for the characters; the mark of a great writer is being able to bring together all the strands of the story and bring them to a pleasing conclusion.  Friel so so nearly does that, but he bottles it with an ending that had promise, but was just not nearly long enough. It’s almost like it was an exam essay and he found that, after spending his first hour and a half writing the first half of the book, he only had 30 minutes to write the rest.

Having said all of that, there is no doubt that this is a very fun read, something that I would recommend to anyone wanting to read something quite different and that will make them laugh.  There is definitely something Douglas Adams-y about Friel and that, in my book, is high praise indeed.

7/10

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'S' - JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst

We are always told not to judge a book by its cover.  This is sometimes given as a fairly broad piece of advice telling us not to judge things upon face value or on a purely aesthetic level, and on other occasions it is much more simply that, just because a publisher hired a talented cover artist, it does not necessarily follow that the author has actual talent and/or readability.  This advice is genuinely good and I wish that more people would take notice of it; to judge to quality of a person’s character on the attractiveness of their face/size of various body parts is patently ridiculous and I like to think that most of us realise this.  There is a sizeable problem with it sadly – I like pretty things.  I like to be able to look at my book shelf and be filled with that wonderful sense of wonder and superiority when I acknowledge that I am a proud owner of many beautiful books.  Recently, however, the bar was raised in this field with quite possibly the most stunning book that I have ever held: the rather unassumingly named S.

S is a collaborative work written by J.J. Abrams (yes the guy that is in charge of Stars Wars and Trek) and Doug Dorst (not really famous at all).  Attempting to explain this book is really a rather complicated task as it is really two books within one single tome.  The backbone of the story is a story called ‘The Ship of Theseus’ supposedly written by a mysterious author called V.M. Straka.  This is the story in the traditional sense in that it is written in chapters in the place where you would expect the story to lie.  Yet in reality this is not where the true narrative lies: it exists in the annotations and messages shared between two people in the margins of the story.  It is their story that is most interesting, and it is this that makes this story truly special.

So this is a standard page in the book. As you can see there is the traditional text in a standard typed form and the annotations in the margins. The sections in cursive are written by the girl, Jen, and the ones in capitals are by the guy, Eric. The colours are also significant the notes were not all written in one sitting or one read-through. So the bits in blue/black are the first chronologically with the orange/green coming next and so on. 

Now this makes this story a rather complicated one to read.  Do you read the main story first? Do you read them together?  Do you ignore the main story and just focus on the annotations? Personally I just focussed on the annotations.  Initially I tried to read both at the same time but I quickly worked out that the main story was really just a vehicle, a taxi really that provides a launch-pad for the story of Jen and Eric.  Their story is also two-fold.  The first is academic, to find out who V.M. Straka was. Straka seems to be a figure who makes Salinger look like David Beckham and there is apparently considerable debate as to who he was.  The elusive Straka also was involved in some distinctly shady events during his life and he left a dark legacy that places both Eric and Jen in considerable danger.  Added to this, perhaps predictably for something written by Abrams, there is a love story as Jen and Eric gradually fall for each other.

In addtition to this are the inserts. Every now and again you will find a little something place between the pages of the book.  Sometimes its a letter written between Eric and Jen, something too long and personal to put in an annotation.  Othertimes its a newspaper cutting or a postcard.  One time it is a not written on a napkin.  These are my personal favourite things; they are what makes this book so beautiful and special.  These inserts turn the book into a little treasure chest and add a sense of wonder to the joy of reading.  It reminds me of reading those little pop-up books as a kid, when the story would come alive in a very visual and tactile way.  Except now I'm old - but it's still awesome!

The production quality of this book is sensational - it truly is a beautiful thing to behold.  The effort that the publishers have gone to produce everything to do with it is remarkable.  The story of Jen, Eric and the pursuit of Straka is told in a wonderful drip-drip manner, keeping most of the information back while hinting at it through the mixed-up chronology.  It is a truly unique reading experience, and one that I am sure I will revisit very soon

9/10

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13 Little Blue Envelopes - Maureen Johnson

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I am not a picture of heroic masculinity.  Put me in any situation that involves typically manly pursuits (jar opening, Nazi fighting, press-upping, not crying at musicals) and I will fail faster than Starbuck in a sanity contest (kudos to all that get the reference).  My taste in literature has often been criticised for its girliness not to mention my taste in music, interior decoration and alcoholic beverages, yet even with this propensity, I found my latest book a little challenging.

13 Little Blue Envelopes is a book written by Maureen Johnson and actually by now it is pretty old.  Well actually that isn’t really fair but it was published in 2005 which is, for me, a long time ago – especially given the fact that I usually review books written within the last few years.  Maureen Johnson is famous(ish) to those of you of an American persuasion but I had not heard of her at all until very recently.  My introduction into the world of American Young Adult fiction (largely avoiding stories involving teen vampires) first took me to the world of John Green and through his books I discovered his amazing Youtube channel that he runs with his brother Hank called the ‘Vlogbrothers’.  Now many of you will be intimately familiar with it and will be screaming at me HOW DID IT TAKE YOU THIS LONG TO FIND OUT ABOUT IT??? Well to those people I can only say, I was probably busy playing Football Manager, because that is probably an accurate summary of most of my free time as a teenager.  Anyway (this post is taking even longer than usual to get to the point), through them I was introduced to Maureen Johnson’s books and after some brief Amazoning (surprised that isn’t a verb yet) I decided to start with 13 Little Blue Envelopes.

This is a story about an American girl called Ginny who receives in the mail 13 envelopes, from her recently deceased aunt.  Her aunt is a classic bohemian arty type who has eschewed the rather conservative nature of her family to go gallivanting around Europe.  The first of these letters gives Ginny a credit card with some money and tells her to book a flight to London, leaving all electronic devices behind.  She can only bring one rucksack and can’t bring any maps/guidebooks etc with her and has to open each envelope only after accomplishing each task contained in the previous one.  This leads her on a crazy trip around Europe, seeing her visit, amongst other places: London, Edinburgh and Paris.  The trip itself is a journey of discovery for Ginny in two ways: learning about the life of her aunt and also finding out more of who she is and what she can do whatever misgivings that she may have.

Now, this book is very clearly not marketed at me – I mean it is more closely marketed to me than say a 70 year old ex-navy veteran with a penchant only for whisky and stories involving hard-core nudity – but even so I am clearly not the intended audience here.  My first clue really should have come from the cover.  Generally books aimed at boys are a little less pink (though to be fair she is grasping her thighs in a rather suggestive manner...) The point is that this book is meant to be read by girls like Ginny Blackstone: nervous, timid 14 year old American girls who are trying to find out who they are and want nice boys to like them.  I can’t blame Maureen Johnson for this, those people make up about 80% of the standard readership of YA books.  Normally this is not much of a problem.   I mean I was never an American girl but I can at least identify with the nervous timid bits and even if I could not, the human imagination is a wonderful thing.  Good books manage to appeal to a wide readership, giving everyone no matter who they are a little thing to grab hold of and identify with and the problem with this book is that it doesn’t quite manage that.  The major problem is found in the middle of this book where Ginny falls rather hopelessly for a university drama boy called Keith.  She falls in love in much the same way that Juliet falls for Romeo – hopelessly without much regard for finding out anything about him – and it is at this point the book starts to develop some severe angst, which, in my view, came dangerously close to ruining it.  A little romantic tension is fine, but this was very stereotypical girl-angst, familiar to anyone who has ever been on Myspace (a reference that anyone who wasn’t born between about 1987-1993 is unlikely to get).  This got in the way of what was a rather interesting story and threatened to turn it into something that more closely resembled Twilight fan fiction.

Luckily, this was only a part of this story and it did have many other excellent features.  My personal favourite was the description of Ginny’s time in London – and this is where this book not being aimed at me actually comes full circle and becomes an advantage.  Any Londoner will be familiar with the hilarity that is American tourists.  You can spot them a mile off normally as they are invariably 1) Lost, 2) Wearing shorts in inappropriate weather, 3) Wearing walking-trainers, 4) Loud.  Now Ginny is not all of these things but she rather superbly acts the part of tourist in my city.  She gets baffled by Tube ticket machines (seriously I see this all the time and I have no idea why it is so hard to understand), confused by Harrods (I’m actually with her on this one) and confused by how Ribena works (I had no idea that squash could confused people but apparently this is a real confusion for some non-Brits).  Her experience as a tourist in all these cities, not just mine, made me laugh a lot and in general this was a very funny book, mostly intentionally.

I find that Young Adult books normally – more than other genres – tend to contain significant life lessons; something edifying for its predominantly teenage audience to ponder over after finishing.  This story is mostly about self-belief and finding that there is much more to yourself than you may give credit for.  Ginny spends most of the book saying how she wishes how she was ‘more interesting’, that she had more ‘stories’.  Now this is despite the fact that she followed her aunt’s instructions throughout the book without question, some of which were really quite dangerous in retrospect.  While the teen girl-angst was present, that was not the dominant force of the narrative (thankfully) and it is this part of the story that I most enjoyed.  This was not a moral that was stuffed down your throat.

6.5/10

Favourite Quotes

“She was standing in the airport of Copenhagen, staring at a doorway, trying to figure out if it was (a) a bathroom and (b) what kind of bathroom it was. The door merely said H.
Was she an H? Was H "hers"? It could just as easily be "his". Or "Helicopter Room: Not a Bathroom at All”

“I like you because you were mad. And you're pretty. And pretty sane for a mad person.”

"No shoe should be judged by its footprint, for the foot has a print of its own."

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A Captain's Duty - Richard Philips and Stephen Talty

I have a longstanding distrust of memoirs. I generally feel that they are rather clever ways that people find to make money off bragging about themselves.  I also find that they are frequently heavily ghost written, especially if they appear to have been written within a couple of months after the author achieved something of great note.  A classic example of this is Bradley Wiggins’s autobiography which came out *cue shock and astonishment* a few months after he won the Tour de France and Olympic gold and just in time for Christmas.  Reading it was akin really to listening to a publicist with a few more swear words, it was dreadful.  Exceptions to this rule tend to come from people who have a background in media or in writing in general.  These include the autobiographies of Stephen Fry and Tina Fey both of which are full of home-truths, self-reflection and are genuinely interesting reads.

A Captain’s Duty therefore should have set off all of the alarm bells. This is a memoir written by a man with no background in writing, which was originally published a year after the hijacking which provides the backbone of the story and it even credits the ghost writer, Stephan Talty.  The only time that a ghost writer gets such a prominent credit is when he essentially wrote the entire thing.  Nonetheless I thought that I’d give it a go.  Afterall it has pirates, a thrilling rescue and Barack Obama – what more could one want in a book?

For those who are not familiar with the background to this book I shall provide a short synopsis.  In April 2009 a cargo ship captained by Richard Philips was captured by Somali pirates.  The ship’s crew and its captain managed to engineer the situation so that the pirates only escaped with the captain himself aboard the ship’s lifeboat.  Therein occurred a stand-off between these pirates and the US navy which was ended when navy SEALs stormed the boat, killing the captors and rescuing Captain Philips. Hooray!

Now for the sake of argument I am going to assume, with a pinch of salt, that what the books says is broadly true.  There have been numerous suits by members of Philips’s crew that the book contains not so much facts as a huge tin of whitewash, acquitting Philips of charges of incompetence and even collusion with the pirates.  It is not for me to make a judgement on that, I shall let the great legal minds of the US deal with that.  However, I will say that this book very quickly irritated me as very quickly the author started bragging.  He presents himself as this macho authority figure who rose from the wrong side of the track to become the ideal family man as well as leader of men.  His wife loves him, his children worship him, and his men respect and fear him. His account of what happened on the boat reads very much like a film script (shockingly it has now been turned into a film starring Tom Hanks) and really it seems to be an exercise in the author crawling up his own backside and giving it a good licking.  It does all seem too good to be true.  There is very little introspection and what self-admonishment there is is severely played down.

That is not to say that it is not a well-written book.  It paced very well and contains plenty of action.  There are parts of it that really do seem like they come from a film script and the scenes are easy to imagine and relate to.  It’s odd because this seems like a really negative review when actually I did quite enjoy much of the book.  The issue I have with the book is, however, extremely pervasive and gets in the way of me being able to, in good conscience, recommend that you buy it.  If, having read this, you feel that you can get past the issues I describe then by-all-means give it a go.  You’ll probably like it.

5/10

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A Pleasure and a Calling - Phil Hogan

There are many authors for whom I would move heaven and earth to meet.  If, for example, I heard that Jo Rowling, John Green or Bernard Cornwall were speaking at an event near me, wild horses could not keep me from rushing there like the deluded fanboy that I am.  For the great majority of other authors whose books I like, I’d also love to meet them, but I wouldn’t be super disappointed if I missed out.  For the most part when I meet an author I’m intrigued to find out their inspiration, to find out what motivated them to create the characters/setting/story and generally soak up their reflected awesome.  There are some authors, however, that I have no desire to meet.  This may be because their books are terrible, or that they themselves may be terrible people.  Some, however, I am reluctant to meet because, frankly, their books make me scared to meet them.  I worry about what goes through their minds, the imagination that allowed them to create scenes/characters/plots that just completely freaked me out.  This is not necessarily a comment on their writing or on the quality of their work.  It’s just that they creep me out.  There are very few authors in this select list of mine, mainly because I avoid horror stories.  Recently a new author has been added: Phil Hogan.

I have never read a book of his before and to be honest his is not the normal sort of book that I would pick up.  A Pleasure and a Calling came highly recommended from its publicist.  Elizabeth talked this book up as one of the best books that she’s ever read.  With an endorsement (albeit I guess a fairly biased one) I thought that I’d have to give it a try.  She did give me a warning before I started it though, and I shall pass this on to you before I begin this review.  Do not, under any circumstances, read this book if you are moving house.  Seriously.  Don’t  be a hero on this, it’s not worth it.

The first thing to say about this book is that this is not a horror book.  Indeed I would not really call it a scary book as such.  The word that I would use to characterise this book is ‘creepy’.  This book is really creepy.  Super creepy.  It is told in the first person through a guy called Mr Heming.  A beyond creepy guy.  He is owns an estate agency in a town in Middle England and charming and disarming, much like you’d expect a salesman to be.  He’ll find you the perfect house, or will sell your beloved place for a good price.  Great.  The problem is, he’ll keep the key.  He may follow you home.  He isn’t going to hurt you if you don’t notice him.  He’s not that kind of guy.  He is a stalker, he gets his kicks from immersing himself in your life.  This may manifest itself by him sitting in your house while you’re at work, or it may go that extra step further and involve him sleeping in your attic while you are still there...  Yeah I told you it was creepy.

What elevates the creep-level is the way the story is told.  The narrator tells everything in such a matter-of-fact manner.  He is aware that his behaviour is not normal, yet he sees nothing wrong with his actions.  He embraces his life choices, there is no guilt.  He is, for lack of a better word, a sociopath yet the image that he presents to the world is of an eminently trustworthy and likeable man.  He has relationships and is a successful businessman.  His past is a little sketchy – actually it’s a lot sketchy – but people in his town don’t know about that, and mostly he’s fairly good at covering for himself.  This carefully cultivated image that others cannot penetrate is another aspect of what makes this story so disturbing.  Mr Heming seems like any other salesman, like any estate agent that you could ever meet.  It makes me wonder if we changed the locks when we moved into our current house... Do our estate agents have keys?  Do the previous owners? Actually the previous owner passed away... what about her relatives?  This book really opens up a pandora’s box of paranoia that I never knew I had.

You may notice that so far this isn’t a hugely cogent review.  It’s full of short sentences and poorly expressed phrases that really don’t get across why I like this book so much.  Oh, I just realised I hadn’t told you that yet.  I love this book.  It is one of the best books that I have read this year.  The story is beautifully paced, building at first slowly then gathering pace rapidly.  The main character, a quasi-antihero, quasi-villain is a character who is strangely relatable and despite his completely disturbing behaviour I weirdly found myself rooting for him.  Then I stop.  Because that’s weird.  The other characters support the narrative well, but the story really puts Mr Heming centre stage and that is perfect, because he is a perfect storm of creepy.

I really hope that this review does not scare you off A Pleasure and a Calling.  Trust me when I say that this book is an excellent read. It is one of those stories that stays with you; that makes you see the world around you differently.  It packs a significant amount of punch into a relatively small number of pages with a pacing that will leave you gasping for breath by the end.  I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is settled in their home and not planning on... you know... meeting an estate agent for real any time soon.

8.5/10

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Unholy Night - Seth Grahame-Smith

‘Akin to fusing Game of Thrones with the Gospel of St Luke’.

It is this quote that persuaded me to pick Unholy Night off the shelf.  Now there are two problems right from the get-go here:

1. Game of Thrones is the book, not the series.
2. This book depicts the Flight to Egypt, something only included in the Gospel of Mathew

But these are perhaps picky details because the quote at the top certainly portends a fun, if probably silly romp through biblical history (not a sentence I would have imagined writing a few weeks ago...)

The story follows a criminal by the name of Balthazar whose life basically revolves around stealing things from rich Romans and killing those that get in his way. In many ways he is your classic anti-hero with a sob-story background and an angry ex-girlfriend who punches him in the face.  When his latest heist goes wrong, he finds himself the target of the Roman establishment in Judea but he keeps slipping through their fingers.  Whilst on the run, he runs into Mary and Joseph just as they are welcoming their child into the world. His scepticism of God’s paternity and exasperation in the religious fundamentalism of Mary does not prevent them from teaming up to try to escape the armies of Herod and of Pontius Pilate (who makes a dashing supporting appearance).  Their adventures on the way borrow many aspects from other biblical stories including a plague of locusts and betrayal on the part of a companion.

The author of this is Seth Grahame-Smith who you may remember from such other famous works such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Like in these other stories, he loves twisting popular tales by throwing in a rather ridiculous premise and seeing how the pieces fall into place.  What gave these other stories their success was their ability to be utterly and entirely ridiculous, not allowing you to take any of it particularly seriously and enjoying them as a bit of light entertainment. The problem with Unholy Night for me is that I think it takes itself a little bit too seriously.  Take the main villain.  King Herod is, along with Nazis and Rupert Murdoch, a classic villain.  Everyone can get behind hating Herod.  The style of the book would suggest that we get a rather pantomime villain and too an extent we do.  Herod is a girl-defiling, murderous lunatic whose actions are only matched in their revoltingness by his leprous and disease complexion but his evilness is not pantomime, it’s rather too real.  He is genuinely disturbing and some of his parts of the book are quite hard to read.  This jars rather spectacularly with some of the swash-buckling action that occurs later which marks the book out as something far lighter.

One of the most interesting themes in the book is the strife between the religious devotions of Mary and Joseph, the strident atheism of Bathazar and Herod, and the ‘magic’ of the mysterious wizard employed by the Emperor Augustus.  We see examples of all three of these having an effect on the narrative, with the travellers seemingly protected with divine help, but they were equally saved frequently solely by the actions of their atheist protector from attacks planned through magical knowledge.  This presence of ‘magic’ also rather spoiled the book for me.  When this was just a alternate telling of the Nativity story with a little murder and rape thrown in to give it a twist (not that the Bible is free of murder and rape) I could see the story’s raison-d’être (yes I used the French accent for added pretension, get over it) but with it the whole thing gets a little muddled and loses focus a little.

Overall I have to say that while I did quite enjoy reading this book, I wouldn’t really recommend it. It is fundamentally flawed and falls into that awkward middle-ground of too silly to be taken seriously, too serious to be enjoyed as a bit of silly escapism.

5/10

Favourite Quotes

“Prolonging death was akin to prolonging an orgasm. The closer you could bring the victim to the finish line without crossing it, the better it” 

“Hug your children...Kiss your mothers and fathers, your brothers and sisters. Tell them how much you love them, every day. Because every day is the last day. Every light casts a shadow. And only the gods know when the darkness will find us.”

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