Reviews and Comments

I'm not ususally impressed by self-help books of any kind. But I had this recommended to me by several people and so decided to give it a go.

It's a fairly slim volume, and easy to read. In it the author (who is a surgeon in the USA) discusses how the simple use of checklists can vastly improve correctness and compensate for human fallibility. Starting with the example of example of aircraft safety, he then moves on to large scale construction projects and then the majority of the book examines his attempts to introduce the idea of checklists to surgical operating theatres worldwide.

In essence his argument is that in many lines of work, people need to become ever more specialised in very specific areas. However complex tasks require many specialisms, and so teams of people (who may never have met before) often need to be able to understand each other's thought processes and concerns, often at quite short notice for very critical - sometimes literally life-or-death - scenarios. And the use of a humble checklist can make an enormous difference as to their success rates.

The evidence he presents seems compelling and it has certainly made me think about the multitude of tasks I do at work. I'd recommend it to anyone who has to manage their way through complicated systems, especially if it involves working with other people.

The Dark Ages in England are called that because there is almost no contemporary written evidence about that era. Between the time the Roman legions left this island to attend to matters closer to home, and the rise of Saxon power a few centuries later, almost everything we know has been gleaned from archeological evidence or much later writing.

So you'd think this would be an ideal period for speculative fiction writers to write about, as you could build a vivid and plausibe world based upon the few known facts. But actually very little fiction is set in that period.

Rebecca Stott's novel is one of those that is. Inspired by the hard real-world archeological evidence of a Saxon brooch found in the depths of unoccupied post-Roman Londinium, she conjures up a tale of what life might have been like for people who lived on the banks of the Thames a couple of generations after the Roman legions had left.

Particularly unusually for historical fiction, it features a main cast consisting entirely of women, with most of the men consigned to supporting roles. This allows the author to move away from the more usual warlords-and-their-battles emphasis of this sort of story, and towards a more character-driven plot. The writing is enjoyable and the story zips along at a reasonable rate, so it doesn't take too long to get through the 300-ish pages of the book.

The world that's conjured up feels believable, and the harsh realities of living in the sixth century are not shied away from, although it never gets too gory. There is enough suspense and unpredictability in the plot to keep things interesting. I came across a couple of sections where I felt 21st-century values and beliefs were being expressed a little bit too freely by the 6th-century characters, but on the whole it's an enjoyable and worthwhile read.