The unexamined life is not worth living, and I am too frightened to examine my life.

I barely live it, drifting day to day in a haze, numbing myself with alcohol and porn and pointless online arguments.

I feel utterly paralysed, unable to move because I cannot see more than a few millimetres in any direction. I had dreams of writing but am afraid to find out that I have nothing to say, afraid to to try an fail and, although I know that not trying is a greater failure still, I seem to prefer the certainty of that than the unknown failure beyond.

This is depression, of course. I recognise that I have sunk into its coldly comforting embrace again, although I have never truly been free of it. I know this is not the worst I have been - I am not lying vacantly on the floor for hours or making complicated plans to end myself (in retrospect the complexity being something a a survival strategy, part of me knowing that I just needed to survive long enough for the urge to pass).

But I feel I am fighting terror. No, not fighting - holding it at bay, covering my eyes so as not to recognise it like the monster in the closet.

Not fighting. Letting myself sink.

Small random acts of sensible mercy

 I killed a rabbit last night.

I was cycling home from my girlfriend's flat, in the dark, in the rain. Going up Langsett Road toward Hillsborough, very little traffic although it was only around 9 pm. A car flashed past in the opposite direction, white headlights then red tail lights reflecting on the wet tarmac and the tram tracks, and suddenly there was this long furry shape twitching in the road.

It must have chosen that moment to run across the road, just in time to be hit by that random car. Behind the shops and flats on that side are allotments and there's a stretch of woodland on this side so, even though we're barely a mile from the city centre, there's a good bit of wildlife.

The rabbit seemed huge, stretched out perhaps two feet I reckon, fur slick and seeming golden in the streetlights. It must've been still trying to run but every time it tried it would just twitch with enough force to spring into the air before landing, broken backed, on its side again. I stopped my bike and watched for long seconds, but it wasn't ready to die yet. Another car or bus or tram might be along any time to finish the job, or maybe not, and who knew what pain and terror the rabbit was going through.

So, leaving my bike on the wet pavement I walked across the road. "Hello, rabbit. I'm sorry." It seemed only polite to say something, to acknowledge the creature. The heel of my shoe came down twice on the delicate skull and it stopped twitching forever. I stood for a few moments wondering whether to just leave it there, but moved it to the undergrowth beneath the copse of trees; I wouldn't want any foxes or crows feeding on the carrion to meet the same fate, the rabbit become grisly cheese in a weird mousetrap.

I can't help wonder if anyone was watching from one of the windows of the low-rise flats to see me, a figure in the rain-drenched dark stamping on some helpless furry creature, how such a tableau may have looked, my small act of mercy some random horror.

Perhaps there's a lesson in there about perspective and needing the full facts, or perhaps I'm overthinking things.

Book review: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker: Grimdark with jokes

I’ve been reading Tom Holt since Expecting Someone Taller in the early 90s, and KJ Parker since stumbling across the Shadow trilogy in the 2000s, and wasn’t aware for a long time that the latter was a pseudonym for the former - or, to be more contemporaneous, that many people suspected KJ Parker was a pseudonym for a well-known writer, and there was quite heated discussion within the community as to their identity.




Not that I’d have been that interested - I’ve always been more interested in the work than the personalities behind it - but I don’t think I’d ever have linked the authors. Holt’s funny, frenetic, while learned and very English style seemed (to me) to bear very little relation to Parker’s dark, foreboding, intricately-plotted tales of individuals fighting fate and obsession to a level that changed the course of nations. Indeed, it didn’t even occur to me to compare the two until a friend mentioned the potential connection.




I mention this because this is the first KJ Parker book I’ve read that has been written since the connection has been acknowledged, and I don’t think it can be coincidental that, in many places, this seems like a blending of the two styles. Mixed in with the story of the military engineer colonel, a former slave and displaced person who has risen through the ranks of an imperial army due to his skill and knowledge but is no soldier, much of the tone is comic; Orhan ( the protagonist in question ) from the start feels out of his depth, apparently muddling through a situation where disasters seem to be multiplying exponentially. The difference in tone to the Scavenger and Engineer books, with their pace driven by the protagonists’ obsession and friction between destiny and self-determinism, could hardly be more marked.




Early on, I confess that this tone kept my opinion lower than it might have been - I’m certainly not against levity in grimdark fantasy ( the master of this is Joe Abercrombie who can take you from belly laughs to stark horror and back again in the space of a few pages ), so perhaps the fault was in my own comparing of the evident clash of styles.



Soon enough, however, I found myself entirely carried forward with the story. Orhan and his regiment of engineers find themselves at the capital city of the mighty Robur empire ( there are many references to classical Greece, Imperial Rome, Constantinople - and I’m sure others I missed ) just as things seem to be falling apart, and Orhan may be the only hope of saving it. Or at least saving the city. Or at least saving his friends. Or at least saving himself.




The tale is pure KJ Parker - overwhelming odds, intricate and surprising plotting, moral ambiguity, incredible detail on technologies of carpentry and metallurgy and siege-craft without detracting from the story - shot through with humour, almost entirely based on the fact that we see it all from the point of view of a character with both too little belief in his own brilliance and the knowledge - or arrogance - that only he can save the day.




On top of which, because Parker/Holt is a very good writer, we have multiple themes of privilege - sexism and racism, especially based around the fact that Orhan is a “milk-face” northerner, facing prejudice and legal restrictions amongst the dark-skinned Robur ( especially due to a scene at a drinking fountain, I’m confident that this is purely an artistic choice and definitely not some “whites are the real oppressed people!” shtick. This shouldn’t even need saying, but have you seen the world? ) and, especially, the meaning of loyalty and friendship and belonging.




Perhaps secondary characters are well-sketched rather than fully formed, although this can be excused as the whole book is from Orhan’s first-person viewpoint - and the author cleverly plays with our expectations when we find he has, indeed, been dictating the story to a scribe - but this is a fine example of modern fantasy, exciting and referential and thought-provoking. I reckon any expectation of style is entirely on me and, frankly, it must be pretty bloody difficult to keep up the level of grimness from the earlier KJ Parker trilogies.

Book review: The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane: poetry of the outer and inner landscape

In The Wild Places, Robert MacFarlane sets out to find if there are any such environments left within the British Isles. The book begins contemplatively, with the author journeying to one of his favourite local places, a beech wood outside the city of Cambridge where he lives, climbing a tree as is his wont, so he can sit and observe, and be part of, this sylvan idyll.



This sets the tone wonderfully. From the very first sentence, you realise that you are in for a special experience; the quality of MacFarlane’s prose is quietly spectacular, largely understated but with the rhythms of good poetry and this, combined with his eye for detail and a mind that connects the landscape and the animals and our inhabitation along with more personal experiences, make the book extraordinary.



Over fifteen chapters MacFarlane travels across Britain, and to Ireland, to experience the places he considers most “wild” and natural, initially using as a guide the travels of the legendary Irish King Sweeney, who was made to wander the wild places as a beast following an act of betrayal.



From the island of Ynys Enlii, off the Lleyn Peninsula, where Wales reaches it most Western point toward Ireland, on to Scotland - to Coriusk on Skye, Rannoch Moor, Coille Dubh ( The Black Wood ), Strathnaver and Ben Klibreck, Cape Wrath and Ben Hope before crossing the Irish Sea to the desolation of the Burren. MacFarlane finds even more poetry in these places than their evocative names suggest - along with the rest of his journey, to the high ridges of the Lakeland fells, the Kentish Holloways, the storm-lashed beaches of Norfolk, Essex saltmarshes and, finally, my own back yard, the moors above Hope Valley in the High Peak. His writing conjures the landscape like nobody I’ve read, the individual feel and sense and rhythm of each place, drawing the reader to it - even when, as in attempting to spend the night on the frozen Ben Hope in Northern Scotland, for the first time he feels how truly hostile a place can be and is genuinely afraid.



Each section of travelogue is also woven through with skeins of history - both of the regions, and more personal history. This becomes more pointed when MacFarlane’s friend Roger, with whom he has discussed many of his trips, have shared ideas and thoughts like the oldest of friends, who has accompanied him on several excursions, falls suddenly ill.



The final trip to the Peak District brings the book full circle, as he is shown where to find snow hares by John, who had piloted the boat out to Ynys Enlii, and then a final coda where MacFarlane returns once more to the beech wood. He may have found that there is, perhaps, no true wilderness in the British Isles, in that there is no land that has not been shaped by humanity and our works, but that the wild is still there to be appreciated and respected, should we wish to look for it, that we need to protect it for our own health and benefit, but it the wild places will be there long after we have gone.




5/5, and an instant addition to the Favourites shelf

Book Review: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

When I read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, I immediately fell in love with Claire North's writing, and her books I have read since have done nothing to cool my ardour. As well as her beautiful prose, she builds fascinating characters and wonderfully intriguing ideas. Her novels are thought experiments, what-ifs of the highest order, using the interface of a single fantastical idea set in the mundane world to examine what it is to be human.



In this novel, we meet Hope Arden. When she was a teenager people began to forget her - teachers, school friends, family. When out of sight for more than a few moments, the concept of "Hope Arden" leaks from their minds and then they are meeting her for the first time.



Grown up, Hope has come to terms with this ability, this existence outside of people's perception - outside of society, because how can someone be part of a society that has no knowledge of them from one moment to the next. She has found, by necessity, a use for her peculiar talents; she has become the world's greatest thief. It isn't just that she can't be picked out of a line-up; if someone is chasing her and she ducks out of sight, her her pursuer will suddenly not recognise her as the woman they were chasing - or remember they were chasing anyone at all. How useful to be able to case a location again and again and again, with nobody able to spot the repetition.



And it is pursuing this calling, at a high class party in Dubai, that she finds herself in the presence of Perfection. It is not just an app, it is not just a life-coach, it is not just a lifestyle; it is a way of life that enables and encourages - even requires - its adherents to seek to perfect themselves. the perfect look, the perfect job, the perfect gym, the perfect partner, the perfect life.



Hope's investigation into Perfection is the perfect setting for North to examine society and belonging, social media and self image, status and identity.


Of course, the real take away message:


Read Claire North.

Book Review: Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

For me, Dennis Lehane is one of the top-tier thriller writers. This second instalment in his Kenzie & Gennaro series builds slowly, relying entirely on character and mood - built from the first-person observations of Boston PI Patrick Kenzie as he describes the crazily changeable weather of a Massachusetts autumn, violence in the news, and hints at the events of the past season that have left him untethered.



This prologue sets a dark, foreboding mood, before the story starts in classic detective story style with a friend calling to recommend a prospective client, and setting up the meeting, all set against the easy back and forth banter between Kenzie and his partner in investigation and friend since childhood, Angie Gennaro. Although we are a hundred pages in before the first crime occurs, the book is never less than gripping as Lehane builds the characters, their world and relationships and history. The investigation lead the pair into situations smouldering with the threats of sudden and fatal violence. Once the first body turns up, the author begins the steadily crank the already building tension, and this doesn't let up for the rest of the book.




This first body seems separate to the pair's investigation but, of course, it is no spoiler to say that everything is connected, or ( if you've read the cover blurb, or the signs in the writing ) that this is a serial killer book. And, fair warning, steer clear if you don't like graphic violence. I'd forgotten how disturbing Lehane can get in his writing, but the most uncomfortable scenes are not those of actual violence but those where some of the worst characters in the book talk. One conversation in particular, with Kevin Hurlihy - a contemporary of the leads who is now a mob enforcer - still stains my thoughts.




Kenzie seems to surround himself with damaged, dangerous people - as well as Kevin, the mobsters, and the killers he investigates, there is Bubba, another childhood friend of himself and Gennaro who is a "good guy" only inasmuch as he deeply loves them both and will do anythings for them - however, Kenzie points out that the two are literally the only things in the universe he cares about and anything, or any body, else is utterly disposable.




The serial killer story has shades of The Silence of the Lambs ( and, Darkness was published in 1996, probably a deliberate nod to it ), but a huge difference with many other serial killer books is not only a complete refusal to lionise the killers - they are not geniuses, they are not extraordinary, they are not even inhuman ( they are, as he point out, very human even though they are the worst of us; they are Auschwitz and Belsen and Bosnia ) - they are, to quote Michael Marshall at the end of a page-long rant on this very subject "just fucking monsters that destroy" - but Lehane is a master at showing the effects: the utter devastation of loss and violence and cruelty visited upon the innocent without logic or reason or cause. The effects of just moving in that world, with Patrick Kenzie as the prime example.




Darkness, Take My Hand is not a flawless book; there are some moments when hints are dropped a little heavily, others where equally weighty red herrings proffered, and a couple of character moments that raise eyebrows but this can easily be forgiven in this superbly written, completely gripping, and hugely effective and affecting thriller.




I'll definitely be continuing with the series however, as I think I may have said after reading A Drink Before the War, I feel I will have to walk around in the sunlight for some time before I feel strong enough to re-enter the Boston of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

My plan had been to start my barrage of politics when I returned from my holiday, but I can't hold it in.

I know I'm in something of a bubble, but overlap with people of differing views on here. So, I'm going to be trying to put forth reasonable, polite and - hopefully - persuasive arguments over the next few weeks. You have been warned.

We have a UK General Election on 12th December. This is a great chance to do something wonderful; get the Tories out. This Conservative government has been one of the most destructive forces to this country ever. The implementation of austerity has harmed almost every aspect of society, and harmed most those who are most at risk; the poor, the elderly, the sick - with mental health provision being especially heavily affected. With the increased stress and worry, social divisions have become heightened.



Of course, neither of these things are accidental. There is no perceived crack that the Tories aren't happy to drive a wedge into for their own political gain. And the austerity programme itself was launched into with a barely suppressed glee that would have made Norman Tebbitt swoon. Because that is what the Conservative programme is all about, taking away the protections of the state - in either the mistaken belief that this is necessary hardship that will eventually prove a benefit, or a complete lack of concern over who is harmed and killed, depending on how charitable you're feeling.



Now, this Tory government is headed by a man who has been fired from several jobs for lying so blatantly it couldn't be ignored, who is so obviously self-serving that, on the eve of the Brexit referendum, he wrote newspaper articles arguing both for and against Brexit because he was undecided on which side would be most in his self interest.



I will have a great deal more to say in the coming weeks, but please register to vote if you aren't already, please actually cast your ballot. Please, please vote in a way that unseats a Tory MP or prevents one being elected.