Hello friends ヾ(•ω•`)o I feel like it's been a while! Today I finished Glorious Exploits by Irish author Ferdia Lennon. It turned out to be the perfect book to read after finishing my lectures on the Greek and Persian wars, because it takes place in Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War (I caught that reference to the Athenian silver mines!)

The book is written in a contemporary Irish dialect, which put a lot of reviewers off. However, I think it works well for making the language accessible and readable to a modern audience in the sense that reading it, we can immediately tell who is likely educated, who is not, who is being casual, who is being disingenuous, etc. As long as you're prepared for it, I don't think it causes much disruption.

The audiobook is narrated by the author himself, which was fun. It's always great to hear an author's own take on their work. For instance, the way Lampo says "good morning," both to the Spartan guards and the Athenian prisoners of war at the start of the book. This could have been a nothing exchange, but the obnoxious way Lennon says that "good morning" tells us almost right away that Lampo is a guy who delights in being a thorn in others' sides and a guy who thinks he's hilarious. 

The plot of the story is simple: Gelon, Lampo's childhood best friend, decides they're going to put on a Euripides play with the Athenian prisoners, because the Athenians are the only ones who know enough of the script to pull it off. 

That's all. The story moves at a leisurely pace, with Lampo and Gelon working through various technical snags in this plan and trying to garner support in Syracuse for the idea (there's not much). 

I think Lennon excels at showing characters who are sometimes disappointingly realistic. Gelon and Lampo are not heroes. They are not conscientious objectors to the war. They are not activists against the obvious abuse the Athenian prisoners of war are going through. They're just two poor dudes put out of work by the war, who sort of maybe kind of thing it's not the greatest thing in the world for the Athenians to be tortured or starved to death and possibly someone might want to do something about that, at some point. 

Similarly, the Athenians were undoubtedly the aggressors in the war. They invaded Sicily, they burned other villages on the island to the ground, they fully intended to conquer Syracuse. They allegedly killed Syracusans who had already surrendered. But the book asks, when is enough enough? When have they been punished enough? When have the Syracusans gone from victims seeking justice to perpetrators seeking vengeance? 

Lampo himself, the main protagonist, is a prime mixed bag. His humorous nature makes him come off a bit harmless, but he can be wildly insensitive, even mean, even to people he likes. He can swing rapidly from mood to mood. He's often focused on himself and his insecurities can make him lash out or give up too easily. And yet, it's Lampo, not Gelon, who has the first confrontation with Bitton, a man who roams the quarries beating Athenian prisoners of war to death at random to soothe his grief for his son who died in the war. It's Lampo who inserts himself between Bitton and some Athenian strangers to try to talk the man down. And it's Lampo who urges action at the secondary climax, Lampo who sets that entire plot point in motion when no one else in Syracuse seems to give a shit.

In a way that feels characteristic of Irish tales, Glorious Exploits does not shy away from the gross, unglamorous reality of its story and its characters. It doesn't try to dress anyone up in shining armor or sacrifice the dull reality for a romantic sheen. Yet in the muck and the mire, a shocking gleam of poetry emerges. The play starts off as a lark for Lampo, a silly, ridiculous thing he's doing to humor his melancholy friend, but gradually, it becomes important. And as it becomes important to him, it becomes important to the reader. The plot is slow, and a reader may find themselves wondering why they're bothering with all this--but for me, the later two climaxes of the book hit like gut punches.

I'm still chewing this one over, but I enjoyed it and I would read more from this author. It's not a story that will shock and wow you upfront, but the heart of it really hits if you stick with it.

Last night I wrapped up Solo Dance by Kotomi Li, translated from Japanese by Arthur Morris. This short book is about a young gay Taiwanese woman who struggles with both internal and external homophobia, and eventually moves to Japan looking for understanding.

Queer stories from other countries are always interesting to me and it’s a good reminder that progress has not been even all over the world. Much of the book is pretty depressing, because the protagonist struggled with fitting in even before she realized she was gay, and she has some real struggles. She is battling severe depression for much of the book and at several points, suicidality.

The book is touching in that the protagonist’s struggles feel real and she’s someone who is so close to having positive experience that could change her life for the better, but her luck keeps dropping on the other side each time.

I don’t want to spoil too much about the end, but while I was grateful for the overall tone of the it, it is contrived and not very believable. But I did enjoy the protagonist’s travels leading up to that point. It’s not at all subtle, and it packs a lot more plot into the final handful of chapters than the rest of the book, but it was still sweet to see the protagonist’s perspective shift a little through her engagements with other people.

I’m not sure if it’s the translation or the original prose, but the language is stilted and very emotionally distant. The reader is kept at arm’s length from the protagonist virtually the whole novel, and while we’re often told she’s feeling these intense feelings, I never felt it. It was like reading a clinical report of her feelings, which was disappointing.

This is Li’s first novel, and it reads that way. There’s a lot of heart in it, and I appreciate it for that, but it lacks a lot in technical skill. I would be interested to see more of Li’s future work, when she’s had more time to polish her ability, but I don’t regret taking the time with this one.

I have a job again! \^o^/ This means I am back on the audiobook train and today I wrapped up Road to Ruin by Hana Lee, book 1 of the Magebike Courier duology. This is a low fantasy dystopian novel located in a place called the Mana Wastes, where protagonist Jin works as a courier transporting goods between protected cities. Jin runs a lot of odd jobs for various clients, but her most lucrative by far are Prince Kadrin and Princess Yi-Nereen. Jin has been ferrying love letters between them for three years--while hiding the fact that she's fallen in love with both of them. But everything changes when Yi-Nereen decides to run away and asks Jin to help her.

First, don't let the hokey title put you off. I started this one a bit warily, but it turned out to be quite a lot of fun! The worldbuilding is pretty light, but the novel seems aware of that and doesn't overpromise on that front. What is there serves its purpose well. It's not anything particularly novel, but not every book needs to be.

Jin, Yi-Nereen, and Kadrin are all wonderful protagonists; each of them has a distinct personality, perspective, and motivations, and I really enjoyed all of them. I was rooting for them the whole book and it was great to watch their various interpersonal dynamics unfold. If you're a fan of stories about mutual pining, this one is definitely worth checking out. However, if that's not really your speed, I didn't feel like the book spent too much time harping on about feelings we all suspect or know are requited. The romance element is definitely there, and it's a significant motivator for all three of them, but there's plenty else going on in the book too. 

The book avoids falling prey either to the Charybdis of black-and-white morality where everyone who stands in the way of the protagonists is evil, or to the Scylla of "everyone is friends if we just talk things out," which is a relief after some recent reads. There's definitely a sliding scale of antagonism here, with some characters who are obstacles but not necessarily bad people, and others who run much darker. 

I also enjoyed the presence of the "Road Builders." Jin and her peers inhabit the Mana Wastes, a treacherous desert wasteland where little survives and almost none of it without human intervention. They sustain themselves with "talent"--magical abilities common among humans, but becoming less common by the day--and travel along ravaged roads built by some culture who came before, about which Jin and her peers know very little. These are the "Road Builders" and are, I believe, strongly hinted at to be us. Lee keeps them a pleasant mystery humming in the background of everything else going on.

There were a couple contrivances near the end to aid a dramatic conclusion, but nothing so egregious I wasn't willing to continue to play ball with the book. Similarly, I'm on the fence about where this book leaves the relationship between the main trio, because it feels a little too much like Lee felt it was a necessary hook into book 2, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually read book 2. And perhaps it's better that everything doesn't wrap up too neatly here. 

On the whole, I had a lot of fun with this book and I will definitely read the next one. 

from amazon;

In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder.

With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.

the problem with this book is that the two stories are barely connected. the inventor who's invention changed communication & the first fugitive that was caught using the invention.

i think this format of different stories that share a connection worked better in larson's the devil in the white city, because it all related to the chicago world's fair in 1893. and in isaac's storm, where it all connected to the galveston hurricane of 1900.

i think this book would've been better if it was just about the crippen murder or marconi's life and work on his wireless telegraph system.

BTW the name crippen sounded familiar. i remembered this show i watched (back when we had netflix) called murder maps. i looked it up & they did an episode on that case.