captainfez's reviews
1052 reviews

Tarot by Johannes Fiebig, Jessica Hundley, Marcella Kroll

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informative inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

5.0

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Medieval Military Medicine: From the Vikings to the High Middle Ages by Brian Burfield

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dark informative sad slow-paced

2.0

The Middle Ages, early surgery and military wounds are three topics that probably have a bit of a niche audience, and Brian Burfield’s text – a pandemic-written work with its roots in his parents’ twin interests of history and medicine – provides plenty of gross tidbits for those staunch enough to profess a yen for leeches. 

Over eight chapters, the author examines different types of injuries – fear not, there’s plenty of detail about skulls, teeth and STDs! – and the way they were treated. Noted healers, the transmission of texts and the role of both the Church and blacksmiths (!) in the treatment of injury are discussed, as are the mental effects of battle. 

There’s a selection of full-colour images, and plenty of supplementary material towards the end of the text, should you wish to examine sources more fully. 

I’m conflicted about this text, though. Burfield’s work certainly made me aware of a lot of things I didn’t know – or half knew – and it does provide some real nuggets of interest. But something about it didn’t grab me, and the unevenness of tone (admittedly worked out as the book continues) gave me reason to pause. The writing seems clunkier when it is more personal, and better when the author is at a remove from the text: some chapters talk a bit much about what will be discussed in the chapter rather than, y’know, getting on and discussing it. I wasn’t entirely convinced with some of the bows drawn (see what I did there?) in the final chapter on mental struggles resulting from wars, and it seemed a weaker note on which to end the work. 

It’s difficult to see who this book is for: it’s not snappy enough to be pop-history, but it’s also perhaps not specific enough for serious medievalists. There’s some good stuff here, I just couldn’t picture an ideal reader. Again, it’s probably not me, no matter how much I enjoyed seeing images of fake shrine limbs.
The Symphonies by Andrei Bely

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challenging mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Andrei Bely was a noted Russian symbolist, so it’s probably unsurprising, given that movement’s penchant for mysticism and reexamining the everyday that The Symphonies is a dense, often cryptic work. It’s also probably unsurprising that – even though there’s a lot of very helpful footnotes throughout the text – this book is best consumed by people with a decent grasp of Russian culture and history from the time when Bely was writing. 

The work is musical, as you would expect from the title. It collects four novellas – or Symphonies – and presents them, occasionally with prefaces, though these do not provide much of a guide to the terrain. The stories slide between the everyday and a sort of fairytale land, suggesting a semipermeable membrane between realities, with transitions between the two a distinct possibility. But nothing is certain: the giants galumphing about the place could be metaphors, or they could just be really fucking big dudes. 

It’s easy to latch on to the musical nature of the work: lines are numbered, as in a score, and figures and images run throughout the stories, though their repetition is often more graspable than is their meaning. 

Look. I’m a literature grad. I’m someone who has read my share of Russian literature, including some of the other entries in this brilliant series, released by Columbia University Press. I like odd fiction. But for almost the entirety of this work, I wore a rather confused face.

The notes I took as I read began to take more cryptic forms as I continued. “Someone fucks a nun and then there’s diamond snow (again)!” was a typical line. I probably should’ve just let go and enjoyed the book as a flow of imagery, but the belief that it would all make sense at some pointgoaded me into looking for a through-line, which was probably my downfall. I mean, this is one of the more comprehensible passages in the work: 

The mad abbot carried his avenging sword over the buildings and his mouth gaped with a dark opening–a dark wail.
“I’ll smother them with snow–shred them with wind.”
He lowered his sword. He tore at his robes. He brimmed with tears of rage. 
And the tears fell, fell like diamonds, pelting the windows. 
He flew up. 
And from the heights he fell like a horse: pissing a stream of snow over the city.

Not for me, sadly. I made it through but spent a lot of time wondering why.

The Quareia Apprentice Study Guide by Josephine McCarthy

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inspiring mysterious medium-paced

4.0

I’ve been interested in the esoteric for most of my life, and most of that interest has been from the armchair. The practicalities of working in that kind of sphere – something of a strange concept for one as agnostic as myself – have been something I’ve not really pursued. It’s been more of an armchair interest than anything else. 

Enter Quareia. It’s a form of training that aims to provide the sort of information normally found either in expensive courses or dense grimoires. It’s put together by Josephine McCarthy, author of a variety of texts, and is all available for free. More importantly for me, a natural curmudgeon, it is designed around the idea of lone study – there is no requirement to find another collection of babygoths or mystically-inclined swingers to undertake the work. 

While the Quareia course – essentially an esoteric course aiming to provide the tools with which one can work on oneself – exists in a series of beefy tomes (if you go the physical route), this slim book is perhaps best viewed as the patch notes for the endeavour. It contains things McCarthy has figured out post-publication, and offers helpful advice to the newbie. 

Much of what’s included within is applicable to anything requiring dedication and practice: meditation, music, or sport, which ensures it’s potentially of interest to anyone with an interest in any of those fields. (And not just mystical wonks like myself.) McCarthy has a background in ballet training, and her approach is rigorous and brooks no bullshit. She makes it clear that doing the work – and not skipping ahead to the cool bits before you’ve mastered the pieces you don’t like – is crucial to the endeavour. 

The author comes across as a bit of a hard taskmaster, but really it’s just the northern bluntness of shit-or-get-off-the-pot: either do the work or don’t, but don’t waste anybody’s time. It’s a reasonable stance, and I feel a bit more confident and informed after finishing the text. 

Is there a chance it could all be a big wank? Sure. But I guess I’m only going to find out by diving in, so let’s see what happens. 

(If you are interested in reading this book there is a copy available for free online.)

The Terror by Dan Simmons

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adventurous dark hopeful informative mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

The novel uses a lost expedition as its basis. In 1845, the HMS Erebusand the HMS Terror left England in order to navigate the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. Which would’ve been a sweet trip – higher-ups had polar experience – had they not become icebound, with the crews trapped in their ships until they were finally abandoned in 1848. 

Here’s where things become interesting. Simmons relates the historically-verified parts of the story faithfully, but uses the strangeness and mystery of the white expanse to consider what mayhave happened to those on board, both during their icy imprisonment and following their foray across the frozen expanse. 

Hint: it’s nothing good. 

The novel is lengthy – almost a thousand pages – but it doesn’t feel overlong. Each chapter is headed (in the same way some of George R.R. Martin’s books are) with the name of its key character, which provides an easy way to orient the reader, given the multitude of people on and below decks. Simmons has obviously done his research, as the ships become more than just wooden rooms tacked together: the vessels and their daily cycles are an integral part of the story, and enough knowledge is imparted to provide period-accurate detail without incurring academic stultification. 

It’s difficult to discuss the way the story progresses following the abandoning of the two ships, because it’s where the more fantastic part of Simmons’ creation takes over. I’ve seen some people suggest that the author didn’t quite stick the landing, but I didn’t have those qualms: I thought the way things shook out was perfectly in keeping with the book. Surprising, sure, but satisfyingly appropriate. There’s never a sense that what happens to the characters is beyond the realm of possibility, and that provides a feeling of security: it feels as if you’re reading something historically verifiable rather than a work of fiction, which is a nicely strange feeling. 

I think this is the sort of thing I would – in a couple of years – enjoy rereading. It’s beefy and full of enough well-researched detail to ensure the fantastic elements of the story don’t break the reader’s trust. I dug it. 

The problem I have at the end of this book is the fact that I really want to read some more of Dan Simmons’ work. I know he’s better known for science fiction, but he also has a fair whack of literary- and history-inspired works as well. He’s written a lot. But you see, the problem is that he appears to be a bit of a dick. And by ‘bit’ I mean ‘fucken enormous’. I know that there’s the whole art vs artist thing, but it’s a bummer to find out that the person behind something I’ve really goddamn enjoyed is such a knob-end. 

Boo. Still, The Terror was bloody great, and I’ll be very interested to see how the Ridley Scott adaptation turned out.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

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challenging dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I’ve travelled to Japan a couple of times, and on almost all of those trips I’ve ended up at Kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion found in a temple at Kyoto. It’s something you see in pictures but appears so different in real life: it’s a bit of an architectural confection, this golden structure from another time sitting above a mirror image of itself. 

It’s also a fake, a replacement. While the building was originally erected in the late 1300s, it’s been burned down and rebuilt. Twice. Most recently, this occurred in the 1950s, after a disturbed novice monk incinerated the building. 

Mishima’s story – a central part of Paul Schrader’s excellent Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters – is loosely based on the ’50s immolation, though as usual the author weaves obsession and death through its pages. We’re let in on the inner life of Mizoguchi, the stuttering son of a consumptive Buddhist priest.

His father plants the image of the Golden Pavilion as a singularly perfect entity in the young boy’s mind, and instils in Mizoguchi the idea that one day, the boy will become the temple’s priest. This pressure, coupled with the imagined perfection of the described temple, becomes part of the youngster’s life.

Mishima’s text is very much about the difficulties one faces when the perfection of the mind’s eye collides with the unavoidable flaws of the real. In Mizoguchi’s case, the inability to reconcile the two – the much-lauded image always wins, even when sex is involved – leads to the conclusion that only by corrupting or destroying this carried perfection can he be freed from its reach.

The novel very clearly develops a sense of odiousness as the novice’s life continues. Transgressions begin mildly but become more and more destructive. There’s a distinct sense that Mishima is presenting ugliness and evil as a necessity, as something to work through to master the world – though whether Mizoguchi is successful at becoming the ruler of his own existence is never specifically described. 

Still, it’s probably the Mishima novel that sticks with me the most. The imagery is outstanding, and knowing it is rooted in the real – the author went as far as to interview the real-life arsonist during his research for the text – gives it some oomph I find missing from his other works, somehow.

The Berlin Novels by Christopher Isherwood

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dark emotional funny informative sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

While they’re generally published as The Berlin Stories, Vintage decided to upgrade the billing in this reprint. It brings together Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Farewell to Berlin, two novels-that-aren’t in which Isherwood discusses his time in the German capital during the declining days of the Weimar Republic. 

I must admit that my reading of Isherwood’s work was coloured by the film Cabaret. How could it not be? But I caught only glimpses of that film in the text: while Sally Bowles is present, she is most distinctly non-Liza, even if she does wear scandalous nail colours. The film certainly mines the spirit of the work – a sort of dancing on the edge of the precipice, skirting Otto Dix tableaux wherever possible – but it is its own thing. Thankfully, the novels are more than capable of keeping one’s interest. (I demand there be a film of the Norris/Bradshaw story! Admittedly there’s maybe not room for an impish Joel Grey, but it cries out for an adaptation.)

Written in 1933 and 1939 respectively, the books still seem impossibly modern. There’s a real sense of impending doom – which of course was reality for those whose lives were grist for Isherwood’s mill – but the characters, as humans throughout time have done, seem more interested in avoiding trouble, sinking some piss and getting up to arty shenanigans. Reading the travails of the crooks, the drunks and the flaneurs within, it’s difficult to believe that they were in the path of the Nazi juggernaut. I suppose that’s the banality of evil, isn’t it? The restrictions through the works ratchet up, even as people become more accommodating of the regime’s demands because for most, I guess, it’s easier. You get the sense that yep, it could happen here because if the clubs are open, who gives a fuck?

There’s a definite love for Berlin in the text – fitting given that Isherwood lived there from 1929–1933, more or less, and it’s there that he discovered “his tribe” in love – but it’s the author’s still at portraiture that really makes the novels work. Really, “being in Berlin” is most of the narrative of the books – the gold is in the descriptions of the characters attempting to eke out a life in the face of the oncoming horrors. There’s stuff in here that will break your heart… and it’ll immediately be followed by hilarity. Astounding.

I feel really dumb that I left it this long to read these: they’re bloody great. And of course, it means I need to watch Cabaret again.
The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

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dark funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0