Book Post: Karunatilaka, Bujold, Prince Harry, Aaronovitch
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, 388pp [Booker Prize].
For the last few years I made a point to reading Booker Prize winners and sometimes it is hit and miss. But I really enjoyed this one. It is set in Sri Lanka in the 80s, Maali Almeida, a photographer in life who specialized in taking pictures for all the sides of the civil war, finds himself dead in a very bureaucratic afterlife and has seven days until he can cross over into something. He doesn't remember how he died and there are loose ends to tie related to his photographs and relationships, so he learns the rules of being a ghost and how to navigate to learn what happened to him.
I knew very little about Sri Lanka and the Civil War there, so before I read the book I did browse through the Wikipedia article to understand the conflict, various sides and forces. But the book actually does a very good job explaining the different sides and how they are all pretty shitty. No character is perfect and all feel very real.
I felt like the author really made you understand the soul of Sri Lanka and the general feeling of living during the Civil War. It is a very well done and well written book and I am happy I read it.
Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold, 448pp [Hugo book].
Three years after the events of "The Curse of Challion", Ista, the mother of the Queen, finds herself restless after the death of her mother. The curse might have been lifted three years earlier but Ista is still having realistic prophetic dreams and she finds the idea of staying in her castle or with her brother intolerable. She tries to walk, runs into a pilgrimage and decides that going on a pilgrimage would give her a good excuse to leave and to figure out her life. She travels with the Learned of the Bastard's order, who is very jolly and fun, and also the Foix brothers that we met in the previous book. And also Liss, a young girl who works as a courier who is asked to be Ista's handmaiden for the journey. The journey starts of normally but then there is peril from the neighboring kingdom, chaises, captivity, a dashing rescue and a border castle with something very strange going on. And also there are demons everywhere, a bit more that normal. The whole journey might have been more manipulated by one of the gods than Ista would have liked. And she has to sort out the mess and save the kingdom and the world.
I still liked "The Curse of Challion" more but I did enjoy this book very much as well. I liked that the protagonist was a 40 year old woman who raised her children and is now starting over and does not just give up on her life. And she is allowed a new romance and various kisses. I liked that we really get to know the Foix brothers a lot more and I can actually separate them much better. I liked Liss a lot and the Learned of the Bastard too. It helps when you like the characters. The main dilemma of three connected people with one of them being technically dead but walking around was also quite good and it was resolved nicely at least for two of the three participants. More mythology of the world is also explained in order to explain the demons. And this book does tie in the ending of the last one - breaking of the curse had many consequences, not all positive. But most importantly it gave a much better ending to Ista, who was quite a sad character in the previous book and she could forgive herself and actually live. Bujold continues to impress me. I'm looking forward for more in this world. One more novel this year and a novel and novellas next year.
Spare by Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, 407pp
Because I studied history of England in graduate school and have always had an interest in its ruling family (I can probably still name all the kings and queens for the last 1,000 years) I was curious about this book, even though I knew that reading it would be like reading about a car crash. Sort of can't look away, why are you writing this when your family is still alive thing. It is not like it had too much of new information about the family but he does talk a fair amount about his trips to Africa, his time at school and in the army and meeting Meghan and also how the press drove them crazy. This book is not the book the media wants this book to be - it is an interesting account of someone growing up in very unusual celebrity circumstances.
It was written by a ghost writer and it feels so because the sentences feel like speech. It probably works better as an audiobook. And of course the press surrounding its release focuses on very minor silly things, the book does read better as a whole. Harry doesn't talk much actually about this family - some little tidbits about the Queen and Prince Philip, some about his Dad, much more about his brother but it is so clear just how focused he is on a specific way he sees his family. He starts this book with his mother's death and that event so clearly defined him that it just makes me sad for him, since he never moved on.
He grew up in such a different world that it is hard for him to see it - he acknowledged that is should be ridiculous to be upset that his father cut him off when he left the family as he was a grown man but he puts it down to never been allowed to live without it. never being without a bodyguard or been allowed to carry money. But he has been in the army, had his mother's inheritance and it is not his wife didn't have any money. He talks about living in small rooms in his father's estates to show he lived humbly but then talks how at any moment he can fly to Africa to find his happy place. He doesn't see any discontinuity with that. And he is doing the Netflix shows and writing his book to "tell his truth" of how he was wronged and how his wife was wronged and he certainly has a big, and most likely fair complaint about the press, and he needs money to be able to live in a big California mansion but at the same time South Park's mockery rings there, they keep bringing more attention to themselves with every book/series.
He just seems like a very sad and upset and angry at his situation person. He talks about therapy but I am not sure that it helped as much as he needs it. Also Meghan's claims that she knew nothing about Harry or the royal family, or what she was walking into, rings so false. Really, you didn't Google him at all. Also your friends warned you many times. Anyway, I hope writing this book with his ghost writer helped him sort things at least a bit. And I hope he can find some common ground with his family - he really doesn't see their perspective at all and is upset that they don't understand him. He thinks his perspective is obvious. I hope he can move on and actually find a purpose for his life that is not about how life was unfair to him. He has a wife he loves and two kids and I hope he can center himself on that.
As a book and as an autobiography, I didn't like the choppy writing style but it was worth checking out.
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch, 118pp [Rivers of London novella]
I really liked this novella. There are ghost activity on the underground and Peter, Jaget, Abby and Nightingale investigate. The ghosts lead Peter on a missing person case and tracking that missing person out. Logically it doesn't exactly make sense since who was to say the ghosts would be able to find help but maybe the main ghost was counting on the Folly. As usual I enjoyed the process of investigation. And I enjoyed Abby a lot more in this book when we she her from Peter's perspective - mostly because the story doesn't get boggled down in the second half unlike Abby's novella.
The part with Abby's video editing made me laugh out loud and I like that she side hassles in tech assists. There is a small subplot with the foxes but that seemed like a very random interlude that didn't really go anywhere. Maybe it will be relevant later. There is also more relevant point to Peter finding a baby river god, that was very cute as was setting up the adoptive parents with Bev as a consultant. And there is the underlying question of teaching Abby magic, which I'm sure will be relevant later. Book 6 is next, sometime this year.