Reviews and Comments

(The version I read was called Pathfinders, but I believe it's the same book, just has a different title in the UK) Second book I've read on this topic this year, but this is the more interesting one. It focuses more on the story of how Arabic science developed, especially how Baghdad became a centre of learning and discovery first through the translation movement processing Greek and Roman texts, then moving into their own age of discovery. There's a series of interesting profiles of key figures in different fields, looking at how they moved things forward, but the book also looks at the wider history going on, and how this happened within the development and expansion of the Islamic world. Only at the end does he move on to how this influenced later Western science, so it's not the focus of the book but an interesting addition. Could have been longer and gone into more detail, especially about the wider society around these discoveries and how it changed with them, but still a fascinating read.

I enjoyed the first part of this, when things that had been set up in the previous books were finally paying off and there was a sense of things coming to a crisis point out of anyone's control. Then the plot skipped forwards a few years and we had to focus on Raul's whining for far too long. The main revelations all come about through someone infodumping them because we can't reveal them through plot when all that space is being taken up by Raul having a crisis because while he's having wonderful, amazing, sex with the girl he's known since she was 11 (and yes, ewww to that whole thing) she might have had a relationship with someone else, and we can't have her having her own agency. Then we might have to treat her as a character, not a plot function, and that won't do. Add in a few descriptions that come close to "she breasted boobily into the room" and it's yet another SF "classic" that shows just how little the male domination of the field was questioned.

I've seen a lot of people raving about this and I was curious to try it, so was glad when it came up as a text for a book club I'm in. Having now finished it, I can see why some people really love it, but it's not really for me. It plunges you straight into the universe and it's overwhelming and bewildering for a long time as there's nothing too familiar to ground yourself on and work out what's going on. It's very stylised, with a strong authorial voice, which I don't mind, but information is doled out very slowly, both to the characters and the reader, so it does feel like wandering around in the dark a lot. The ending does reveal a lot of things that help to make sense of what's gone on before, but you need to cling on in faith that it's going to be revealed when the time goes along, and I'm still not sure the rest of the universe here makes too much sense. I may read the rest of the series, but I'm not urgently arranging to get hold of them.

This was an interesting memoir, and one that really resonated for me because, like Wix, I've lost relatives to dementia and brain tumours, so I could strongly relate both to her stories of losing them and how to deal with the grief that comes over you after that. It covers a lot of ground other than that, though, and structuring it around memories of cake is an interesting way to frame a life, but it brings in her other themes of body image and mental health. It's easy for a story like this to sprawl into lots of different parts that don't cohere or just become a series of anecdotes, but there's a strong shape to this even if it only comes together towards the end as she begins to understand and process everything that's happened to her. One thing worth noting is that yes, this is Katy Wix the actor (from Ghosts, Not Going Out, Stath Lets Flats etc) but no, this isn't a typical celebrity memoir or autobiography, and if you come here looking for amusing insights into life behind the scenes on that show you like, you're not going to find it. Acting and writing, are her job, not her entire life, and where they do intrude on this story it's because they connect to her wider life, not as a focus in themselves.

(Disclaimer: I've known the author through blogs and social media for a long time, though I got this book from the library) I wouldn't normally expect to find myself laughing out loud while reading about complex financial matters, but I did several times during this book. It would be very easy for this to be quite a leaden and dry tome, a financial expert explaining frauds and financial crimes to us plebs in a vaguely patronising manner. Despite a long career as a financial analyst though, Davies has kept his sense of perspective as well as his sense of humour and gives us a tour of some massive frauds to explain to us just what was going on that made them criminal as well as what tempts someone into attempting fraud. He's also refreshingly honest at talking about how analysts like him have missed frauds that were obvious in retrospect and how fraudsters attack the cracks in the system. Most importantly for a book like this, he's a good storyteller, taking us through complicated tales with a style and wit that makes them both entertaining and understandable. If you want to know what's going on when the media are reporting on "complex fraud trials" without any detail about what happened, this is the book for you.