Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 29

“Fox” by Anthony Gardner (2016)

[image error] “As dawn broke over London, the sound of a horse’s hoofs echoed along Oxford Street.”

As the world continued to fall apart last week in a somewhat concerning landslide election victory here in the UK, I vowed that I’d give up on reading dystopian fiction until things had righted themselves again. I thought Fox might be a welcome distraction, realising only too late that it was just another dystopia. Nevertheless, I was committed and thus began one of the silliest adventures of modern times.

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“The Murder At The Vicarage” by Agatha Christie (1930)

[image error] “It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage.”

With absolutely no surprise, here comes the twelfth Agatha Christie of the year to round off the twelfth month. That’s made a dent, but it’ll still be 2025 before I’ve finished the whole re-read at this rate. Plenty of time to savour them. Anyway, we end the year with the introduction of one of her most famous characters – please take to the stage, Miss...

“Trouble On Titan” by Alan. E Nourse (1954)

[image error] “Telegram! Telegram for Tucker Benedict!”

I picked up this book in one of my favourite London bookshops, Skoob. A paradise of second-hand books, the place is heaving with titles you’d never know about otherwise, and this was one of them. I’ve read very little science fiction of this sort, where it’s all rockets and moon colonies and the like, so adopting their spirit of adventure, I went for this one because of its slightly silly title and decided to expand my horizons.

The novel begins...

“The Rise And The Fall Of The Dinosaurs” by Steve Brusatte (2018)

[image error] “A few hours before light broke on a cold November morning in 2014, I got out of a taxi and pushed my way into Beijing’s central railway station.”

Like many kids, I spent much of my youth with a fascination for dinosaurs. Children of all stripes seem to become obsessed by them, the real monsters and dragons of myths and legends, separated from us by millions of years. Because of the inherent awesomeness of them, children are able to trot out words like Brachiosaurus, Coelophysis and ...

“In The Miso Soup” by Ryu Murakami (1997)

[image error] “My name is Kenji.”

I’m always a little bit sad that I never had to write a dissertation at university. Having done a degree in Creative Writing, my final project was instead to write 15,000 words of a novel. I still wonder to this day what subject I would have written it on. I wasn’t yet a Christie lover, so she’s out, meaning I probably would have written something about the Mr Men’s approach to cultural norms. Because I don’t have my own, I’m always fascinated by what other people wrote...

“Death Of A Dreamer” by M. C. Beaton (2006)

[image error] “It had been a particularly savage winter in the county of Sutherland at the very north of Scotland.”

For the fourth time this year, I return to the village of Lochdubh. In the real world, life in small villages in remote corners of the country is quiet and peaceful, where the most exciting thing to happen is the annual village fete. Fiction, however, has a different idea about villages and, like St Mary Mead and Midsomer before it, Lochdubh turns out to be quite a haven for murderers.

Artist...

“Skin” by Liam Brown (2019)

[image error]“It’s hard to think of you as anything other than an egg.”

I’m quite a tactile person. There’s something pleasant about being close to the people you love, and while these days many of my communications with my friends take place via screens, I’m always keen to be able to see them in the flesh again. There is often talk that people are retreating behind their devices, hiding themselves away privately and not wanting to interact with one another in “the real world”. This is nonsense. People, as a g...

“The Long Earth” by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter (2013)

[image error] “In a forest glade: Private Percy woke up to birdsong.”

The multiverse theory has always been an interesting one. It suggests that our universe is not the only one in existence, but that there are other options out there, perhaps an infinite number. It is popularly assumed that they also represent alternate timelines and possibilities for the Earth and its occupants, and if only we could tap into them, we could see how things might have turned out. Because of this, alternate history stories are commonplace an...

“Bonjour Tristesse” and “A Certain Smile” by Françoise Sagan (1954)

[image error]“This strange new feeling of mine, obsessing me by its sweet languor, is such that I am reluctant to dignify it with the fine, solemn name of ‘sadness’.”

Despite it only being a short boat ride away, I’ve never been to France. It’s not somewhere that holds a great deal of appeal for me, despite the wine flowing like water through the countryside. Besides, it’s much cheaper to travel by book. I’ve just paid two visits with this collection by one of France’s finest young writers.

In the first story, Bonjour Tristesse, we m...

“Thunderhead” by Neal Shusterman (2018)

[image error] “Peach velvet with embroidered baby-blue trim.”

Last year, fiction conquered death. I’m now back with the sequel. As ever when reviewing a sequel, spoilers are abound so if you haven’t read Scythe or don’t want to know what happens next, look away now. We’re about to dive in. For those who need a refresher, however, recall that this series is set several centuries into the future where natural death has been eradicated, everyone only dies when chosen by a scythe, and the otherwise fairly utopian world is gover...