Some books we read in 2019

At our first literary coffee klatsch of 2020 we listed some of the books we had read towards the end of 2019, and there was quite a variety. I mentioned Die Derde Oorlog teen Mapoch, which Janneke Weidema had mentioned at an earlier meeting, and that had got me interested. She said she had liked the story of Solly Mahlangu using the government’s rand-for-rand scheme to provide better schools in KwaNdebele.

I mentioned some of the other books I had been reading recently, most of which were covered in reviews on my blogs — see here:

• Missiological musings inspired by Die Derde Oorlog teen Mapoch | Khanya
• Another man’s war | Khanya
• From Beats to hippies: the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test | Khanya
• Be born in us today | Notes from underground

The last of these, Be born in us today by Anglican bishop John Davies was designed to be used by parish study groups on the meaning of Christmas, and I had been reading it as a Christmas book. Janneke said she had been reading What Quakers believe, but after reading it she still wasn’t sure that she knew any more about what Quakers believe. She said they might be using it for a study group in their Quaker meeting.

Johnnie Aukamp mentioned and recommended The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman, which deals with Nazi tyranny. He also mentioned a book called The Cheese and the Worms, but I forgot to note the author, so I am not sure if it was this one or this one. He had also read The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein.

On of the first books I have started reading this year is one by Johnnie Aukamp himself, though I’m not sure whether I should mention the title, as he wrote it under a pseudonym. But one of the interesting features of this book is that it mentioned a fictitious ancient manuscript which was an important key to the story.

The fictitious ancient document is quite a common trope in fantasy literature, and one of the ones that springs to mind for me is the De Angelis of Marcellus Victorinus of Bologna, published in the year 1514. at Paris, and dedicated to Leo X. Someone has tagged it in the linked catalogue entry as “practical joke”.

The De Angelis is mentioned in The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams, where it appears to be a commentary on a commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy by Dionysius of the Areopagite. In it, Williams seems to throw considerable light on the role of eagles in the writings of his fellow-Inkling J.R.R. Tolkien, though it was actually first published in 1931, before The Hobbit, so perhaps Tolkien was influenced by Williams in his use of eagles.

Val recalled that our son Simon, like one of the characters in The Place of the Lion, used to work in a bookshop, and one day a man came into the shop and asked for a copy of a book by Professor Robert Langdon. It may have been The Symbology of Secret Sects, or possibly The Art of the Illuminati, which was cited in The da Vinci code by Dan Brown. But whatever the title was, Simon pointed out that it was a fictitious book. The customer got quite angry, and pointed at the mention of it in The da Vinci code. Simon pointed out that The da Vinci code was itself a work of fiction, and just because a book was mentioned there did not mean that the book actually existed.

Something similar happened a few years earlier: Professor Irving Hexham, of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary said something similar had happened in connection with H.P. Lovecraft’s fictitious work, the Necronomicon, and some had even built a new religious movement on it. For more on that see C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft and me | Khanya.

Val and I had both read and enjoyed Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, a science fiction book about a time-travelling history student — more in my review at Time travelling historian gets stuck in the past | Khanya.

We also discussed reading in general, and changes in language and the meaning of words. Most of us had enjoyed books by authors like Enid Blyton as children, and though she was not a brilliant author and her writing had many flaws, her books instilled in us a love of reading, and I recalled a lot of things I had learnt from them that I had not realised I had learnt, like some commonly used idiomatic phrases like “the coast is clear”. For a fuller list of such idioms see The Mountain of Adventure (more Enid Blyton) | Notes from underground.

Best fantasy books

I saw this list of best fantasy books from Reddit.

Top 100 Best Fantasy books:

This is a list of the best fantasy books. If you want to find good fantasy books to read, this list is a safe bet.

The list was created by parsing comments on the r/books subreddit, and takes into account both number of mentions and the comment scores.

The fantasy genre is the most popular genre in the data we have.

Since the list is created by parsing user comments, it represents the most popular fantasy books, or at least which fantasy books most reddit users have been reading.

The data used in this list is from 2018 and 2019. As we get more data the list may change and will hopefully become a list of the best fantasy books of all time.

I don’t frequent Reddit, and don’t agree with the list. I suspect that the list is a bit misleading. It might be more accurate to say that it is a list of the most-discussed books on Reddit, or perhaps the most popular among Reddit readers. I’ll certainly use the list to look for books I haven’t read — I’ve read 20 of the books on the list — and I would also order them differently.

Here’s my list of favourites among the ones I’ve read:

1. That hideous strength Lewis, C.S.
2. The place of the lion Williams, Charles.
3. The weirdstone of Brisingamen Garner, Alan.
4. The greater trumps Williams, Charles.
5. The moon of Gomrath Garner, Alan.
6. War in heaven Williams, Charles.
7. Elidor Garner, Alan.
8. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Carroll, Lewis.
9. Lord of the Rings Tolkien, J.R.R.
10. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe Lewis, C.S.
11. Many dimensions Williams, Charles.
12. Gulliver’s travels Swift, Jonathan.
13. The hobbit Tolkien, J.R.R.
14. The voyage of the Dawn Treader Lewis, C.S.
15. Prince Caspian Lewis, C.S.
16. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets Rowling, J.K.
17. Dracula Stoker, Bram.
18. The trial Kafka, Franz.
19. The silver chair Lewis, C.S.
20. The wine of angels Rickman, Phil.
21. The shadow of the wind Zaf¢n, Carlos Ruiz.
22. Pet sematary King, Stephen.
23. Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone Rowling, J.K.
24. Descent into Hell Williams, Charles.
25. Animal Farm Orwell, George.
26. Watership Down Adams, Richard.
27. The Book of Lost Things Connolly, John.
28. The last battle Lewis, C.S.
29. Candlenight Rickman, Phil.
30. Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban Rowling, J.K.
31. Harry Potter and the half-blood prince Rowling, J.K.
32. All Hallows’ Eve Williams, Charles.
33. The man who was Thursday: a nightmare Chesterton, G.K.
34. The Eyre affair fforde, Jasper.
35. The historian Kostova, Elizabeth.
36. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Rowling, J.K.
37. The chalice Rickman, Phil.
38. The secrets of pain Rickman, Phil.
39. Lost in a good book fforde, Jasper.
40. Needful things King, Stephen.
41. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Rowling, J.K.
42. Midwinter of the Spirit Rickman, Phil.
43. The owl service Garner, Alan.
44. The princess and the goblin MacDonald, George.
45. The subtle knife Pullman, Philip.
46. All of a winter’s night Rickman, Phil.
47. Crybbe Rickman, Phil.
48. A Game of Thrones Martin, George R.R.
49. The man in the moss Crybbe Rickman, Phil.
50. The cure of souls Rickman, Phil.
51. My life in the bush of ghosts Tutuola, Amos.
52. The vision of Stephen Burford, Lola.
53. Heartsease Dickinson, Peter.
54. The well of lost plots Fforde, Jasper.
55. Sophie’s world Gaarder, Jostein.
56. A wrinkle in time l’Engle, Madeleine.
57. Harry Potter and the goblet of fire Rowling, J.K.
58. Shadows of ecstasy Williams, Charles.
59. The talisman King, Stephen Straub, Peter.
60. A wind in the door l’Engle, Madeleine.
61. Duncton Wood Horwood, William.
62. Black House King, Stephen Straub, Peter.
63. The Phoenix and the Carpet Nesbit, E.
64. Northern Lights Pullman, Philip.
65. The devil rides out Wheatley, Dennis.
66. Faerie tale Feist, Raymond E.
67. Finn family Moomintroll Jansson, Tove.
68. Desperation King, Stephen.
69. The horse and his boy Lewis, C.S.
70. Timecatcher Fitzpatrick, Marie-Louise.
71. Neverwhere Gaiman, Neil.
72. Mythago wood Holdstock, Robert.
73. House on Falling Star Hill Molloy, Michael.
74. The Long Price: Book One — Shadow and Betrayal Abraham, Daniel.
75. The hunger games Collins, Suzanne.
76. Lord Foul’s bane Donaldson, Stephen.
77. The giant under the snow Gordon, John.
78. The fetch Holdstock, Robert.
79. Firestarter King, Stephen.
80. The wood beyond the world Morris, William.
81. Good Omens Pratchett, Terry and Gaiman, Neil.
82. Mr X Straub, Peter.
83. The shadow guests Aiken, Joan.
84. The Earthsea Trilogy le Guin, Ursula.
85. American gods Gaiman, Neil.
86. Salem’s Lot King, Stephen.
87. Her fearful symmetry Niffenegger, Audrey.
88. Mockingjay Collins, Suzanne.
89. First among sequels fforde, Jasper.
90. Duncton quest Horwood, William.
91. The wounded land Donaldson, Stephen.
92. The astonishing stereoscope Langton, Jane.
93. The Earthsea quartet le Guin, Ursula.
94. The End of the World Murakami, Haruki.
95. The family tree Tepper, Sheri S.
96. The King of Elfland’s daughter Dunsany, Lord.
97. The Wrath of Angels Connolly, John.
98. The One Tree Donaldson, Stephen.
99. The dark half King, Stephen.
100. Macabre Laws, Stephen.

I’m sure most of those reading this will disagree with my ordering, but I’d be interested in recommendations of books not on either or both lists.

There’s also the problem of which books belong to which genre. C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy, for example, straddles the border between science fiction and fantasy. There are some published as combined volumes that could be listed separately, for example Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy. I also found it difficult to rate them. On the first reading I liked the second book, The Tombs of Atuan the best, but on the third reading it was the one I liked least of the three, and my rating of each had probably dropped about 10 points (out of 100). By then the trilogy had become a quartet, and the fourth book, Tehanu was the worst of the lot.

I’m prejudiced, of course. My favourite fantasy authors are the Inklings, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roger Lancelyn Green, et al, who generally had the presuppositions of a Christian worldview, and I think they write better fantasy than most. But so did Alan Garner, whose work does not have such presuppositions, and some Christian fantasy authors, like Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead, wrote rather bad fantasy, at least in my view.

Literary Coffee Klatsch: Books Mentioned

Here are some of the books mentioned at our literary coffee klatsch in April 2019:

David Levey said he enjoyed poems by Theodore Roethke, who writes poetry about ordinary things, but very good poems.

At a book club he belonged to they had been reading Educated, by Tara Westover, a memoir about growing up up a survivalist family with parents who did not believe in education, especially for daughters. This was also linked to works by Octavia Butler.

I have been reading books by John Connolly, and a memoir of Zakes Mda, in a strange order, described here. The John Connolly books I have finished reading and reviewed are The Wrath of Angels and Dark Hollow. These both feature private detective Charlie “Bird” Parker, but if you are going to read any of that series I strongly recommend beginning with the first one, Every Dead Thing, which I am reading now. There is so much in the later books in the series that refers back to events in this one that it really is important to begin at the beginning.

Also, to get a different idea of John Connolly I read The Book of Lost Things, which is a stand alone fantasy book that does not feature detective Charlie Parker. This one belongs to a sub-genre, which one could call “the boy with sick mother who finds himself in another world” genre. Other books in this genre are The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub, and The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis.In my view The Book of Lost Things is better than the former but not as good as the latter.

I mentioned in one of my earlier reviews that I thought that John Connolly had seemed to be developing in the opposite direction to Phil Rickman, whose books started off spooky, like The Wine of Angels and Candlenight and gradually seem to be becoming mundane whodunits in the vein of Miss Marple. Connolly seemed to be going the other way, from mundane whodunits to spooky, but in reading Every Dead Thing I see that the spooky stuff was there from the start.

Another thing about Phil Rickman’s books is that they say quite a lot about the current ethos of the Church of England and the Church of Wales, and we mentioned other authors who had written in a similar vein — the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope, some novels by Ernest Raymond in the early to mid-20th century such as The Chalice and the Sword, novels of Susan Howatch such as Glittering Images, and, for a South African flavour, Expiring Frog by Elizabeth Webster.

For the most horrific and horrible horror novel we voted for The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams. And for books that would have been better off without sequels, Duncton Wood by William Horwood (in the same genre as Watership Bown by Richard Adams), To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.

That’s about it for April 2019.

 

 

Bleak House

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought I had read this book a long time ago, and had even marked it as “read” in GoodReads, but I think that was because it was shown to me in one of those book compatibility tests, now hidden behind a “More” button. I soon realised that I hadn’t read it before, and I was probably thinking of Dombey and Son.

I was moved to read Bleak House because I had just read Black House, in which the characters read it, and I’m glad I did, because I think it is one of Charles Dickens‘s best novels. As it was published over 160 years ago there have been countless reviews of it, and so I won’t try to review it, but rather comment on a few themes.

I found it rather difficult to get into, because Dickens has a large cast of characters, introduced piecemeal, so that the connections between them only become apparent much later. It also seems to cover several different genres. Quite a number of Dickens’s novels have a storyline that is entwined with a moral crusade. In this case there are at least two moral crusades, one against rapacious lawyers, and another against people whose obsession with abstract causes leads them to neglect ordinary human relationships and become increasingly selfish and self-centred. So the heroes of the story are those who embody unselfish love. In a sub-plot it is also a crime novel, and from another point of view it can be seen as a love story.

One thing that strikes me about this is how it contrasts with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who detests altruism and propounds the virtue of selfishness. She claims, in a rather contradictory way, that altruists are all self-centred, and that altruism is at its core selfish, therefore altruism is bad and selfishness is good. And she gets pretty preachy about it in her novels.

While Dickens appears to be making a similar point about the self-centredness of altruists like Mrs Jellyby in the novel, he ascribes it to a somewhat different cause. Those who are addicted to the Cause, whether it’s development in Africa, winning a law suit or fashion (Deportment with a capital D) manage to persuade themselves that they are being unselfish when at their most selfish.

But Dickens comes to a different conclusion. The characters who are so wrapped up in the Cause that they have no time for people lack love. People like Mrs Jellyby might gladly give their bodies to be burned, as St Paul says in I Cor 13:3, but if they have not love, it is worthless.

In this sense, Bleak House pleads for Christian values as strongly as Atlas Shrugged pleads for capitalist ones.

Another thing that struck me about it was the language, which seemed surprisingly up to date. I had no difficulty in understanding it, which shows, perhaps that in many ways English has changed remarkably little since Dickens’s day. But I suspect that while we may have little difficulty in understanding Dickens’s language, he might have considerably more difficulty in understanding ours. It is not that words have changed, but things have changed.

And perhaps for that reason I would not recommend that most of Dickens be read by anyone under 40. I think if I had read this in my teens, as a school set work, say, a lot of it would have gone right over my head. Or even in my early twenties, at university. For a start, I wasn’t aware of the difference between Common Law and Equity until I was in my 30s and researching genealogy. There are some books that people can enjoy at different levels at different ages, Gulliver’s Travels for example. Quite young people can enjoy the stories as adventure stories in strange place. As they grow older, they can appreciate other aspects, like satire. But in Dickens, with a few exceptions like A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities, the ground floor and first floor are not there. Bleak House starts on the third floor, and though it may sometimes go higher, it rarely goes lower.

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The Reader’s Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel (review)

The Reader’s Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel by Peter Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this book quite useful to pick up at odd moments when there was nothing else to do, when Eskom was doing its load-shedding and the electricity was off, for example.

The plot summaries and comments on the selected novels were generally quite good, and served to remind me of books I had read and half forgotten, or to note ones that I had not read but might be worth reading.

One of the weak points, however, was the novels selected for inclusion. Of course one cannot include everything worth reading in the period in a single volume, but one of the first things I noticed about it was that it made no mention of the novels of Charles Williams. It dis seem to include almost every published novel by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. They are both authors I quite like, and I think their best work ought to have been included, but Waugh, in particular wrote some quite mediocre stuff, and they could easily have been dropped in favour of Williams.

There were several books by Somerset Maugham, who described himself, quite accurately, I think, as being in the very first rank of the second raters. There was a rather patronising article on C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, with no mention of his science fiction.

The book was also published in 1993, when there were still seven years of the twentieth century to run — did they think that nobody would write anything worth reading in what was left of it?

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The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A picaresque novel about Allan Karlsson, who decided that he did not want to attend his hundredth birthday party at the old-age home where he was staying so he decided to leave, with no particular plan for what he was going to do.

He has various improbable adventures, and the story is told with a series of flashbacks to his life story. He was a self-taught explosives expert, and as such had played a minor but significant part in various world events, learning several languages along the way and earning the gratitude of several powerful politicians.

I read it mainly because I had seen a film based on the book which I had enjoyed, and from what I could remember of it the film seemed to adhere quite closely to the book.

While it is primarily a picaresque novel, the story seems to overlap several other genres. On one level it is a crime novel, a police procedural, though also with a lot of incompetent bumbling — in the film version it is more like The Lavender Hill Mob than a serious whodunit. But perhaps these are all part of the picaresque genre anyway.

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Death of the Mantis, a whodunit set in southern Africa

Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A whodunit set locally in Southern Africa.

Detective Inspector David “Kubu” Bengu of the Botswana CID is asked to help with the investigation into the murder of a game ranger in the remote south-western part of the country. When a Namibian geologist discovers the corpse of another Namibian visitor Detective Kubu suspects that the murders are linked, and goes to Windhoek to follow up. There are tales of an old treasure map, purported to show the inland source of the alluvial diamonds on Namibia’s coast. After checking other earlier mysterious deaths that had originally been thought to be accidental it seems that the Botswana police are looking for a serial killer who must be caught before he kills again.

I found it an enthralling story, perhaps because of the “local” angle. Most of the crime novels we get to read here are set far away on other continents. This one is relatively close, being set in neighbouring countries which we have visited.

Kang in Botswana, through which Inspector Kubu travels on his way to Windhoek, is 773 km from our house. For a whodunit fan in London reading about the exploits of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander by Henning Mankell, Ystad, where Inspector Wallander is based is 1343 km from London. I did read a South African whodunit a few years ago, What Hidden Lies (see my review here). But that was set in Cape Town, more than twice as far away as Kang in Botswana, and also further away than Ystad is from London.

The detective stories from Botswana that are likely to be most familiar to readers outside that country are the series that begin with The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Be warned that this is nothing like that. These are not private investigators looking for lost pets and errant husbands. These are cops trying to catch a serial killer. I suppose one thing they do have in common, however, are that the scenes are well set, and the characters are well described.

As with some of the Inspector Wallander books, one of the factors in the killings is a cultural clash, in this case between Batswana cops and Bushmen. The first body is discovered by Bushmen, and they immediately become suspects. The only question I have about the authenticity of the setting is why so many of the character seem to have Zulu names. It’s not impossible, of course, but it does seem a bit disproportionate.

You can get an idea of what the countryside in the story looks like from our journey through the same country a few years ago — from Kang to Windhoek..

Anyway, I recommend it to whodunit fans in southern Africa, and perhaps those further afield might enjoy it too.

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The Big Six (review)

The Big Six by Arthur Ransome

When I was a child, books by Arthur Ransome were the kind of children’s books that adults thought that children ought to read, but which I found rather boring. Our school library was well stocked with them, so I read a few, but if I’d been on Good Reads back then I’d have given them two stars, three at the most.

I can remember little of what I read, and perhaps I read Coot Club, of which this is a kind of sequel, and I suppose my main memory is knowing what the Norfolk Broads were — the kind of knowledge that comes in useful when watching TV quiz shoes like Pointless, until you’ve seen them so many times that you stop trying to work out the answers, and rather try to remember which question is going to come up next and which of the very familiar contestants gets the right answer. But yes, reading about that di help to me form some kind of picture of the place, which recurs in other books, such as The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers.

I also read Missee Lee, from which I learned that typhus was a serious disease, but when I grew up I found that its cousin typhoid was more common.

Arthur Ransome’s books were great for children who liked messing about in boats, but the closest thing we got to that was paying an exorbitant fee for half an hour rowing round the island in Joburg’s Zoo Lake, or the slightly less crowded Germiston Lake.

The Big Six has boats, lots of them. But it is also a whodunit, and that adds to the interest. I don’t remember reading it as a child. I do remember reading a couple of Enid Blyton‘s Secret Seven series, where a group of children outwit the criminals that have the local police foxed.

In this one it is not difficult to guess the culprit, but the child detectives are themselves accused of the crime, and so in order to exonerate themselves they have to find the real culprits. The crime is casting off moored boats, and stealing some equipment — not major crimes worthy of Interpol, but serious enough in a small village where the children’s fathers are boatbuilders, and a bad reputation could harm their livelihood.

Though it takes a long time for the children to identify the suspects, that is not the main problem. The main problem is to collect evidence that points unambiguously to the perpetrator, because so much of the evidence they do manage to collect is open to different interpretations. So as a children’s whodunit, this one is quite sophisticated. Finding a suspect is one problem, getting enough evidence to convict is another.

In addition to being a whodunit, there is an undercurrent of environmental concern, perhaps of wider concern now than when Ransome wrote it in the 1930s. One is conscious of such concerns throughout the book, that, and the price of things. The idea of a lawyer’s fee being 66c makes the mind boggle.

I don’t think I read this one as a child, but if I had, I wonder if I would have been able to grasp that point at the age of 9 or 10. But as an adult, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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The house on Falling Star Hill

The House On Falling Star Hill by Michael Molloy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read an earlier book by Michael Molloy, The witch trade, and was not at all impressed. The blurb made this one sound a bit more interesting, and as I had nothing to lose I took it out of the library anyway. I could alwasys dump it after a couple of chapters if it didn’t look interesting.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised tom find that it was a considerable improvement on The witch trade. The characters are more interesting, if somewhat stereotyped.

A boy, Tim Swift, meets a girl, Sarre, from another world, called Tallis. According to the Chronology of the story they are both about 11 years old, Tim and his dog Josh get unexpectedly dragged into Tallis where Tim discovers that Sarra is a Chanter, with special powers. Tallis has some similarities with Earth, and some differences. Jewels are plentiful but flowers are scarce, which makes a lucrative trade for some. There are also power struggles between the king and a would-be usurper., which makes for interesting adventures and excitement, in which Tim and Sarre, as somewhat precocious brats, play a significant part.

There are also hints of a romantic interest, especially on the part of Sarre, which at some points looked as though it might turn it into a rerun of His Dark Materials , but fortunately it didn’t. But while His Dark Materials appeals to adults as much as to children, I think The house on Falling Star Hill will appeal mainly to children, and rather younger ones at that.

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Harry Potter meets Terry Pratchett

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second dragon book I’ve read this month. The first was The dragons of Ordinary Farm).

Both books are about the last dragons on earth, and both of them feature an older girl and a younger boy, so they invite comparison. Both satirise commerce and corporate greed. Of the two, I think this one was better. The plot was less repetitious, it had more humour, and the dialogue was a lot less stilted.

But the biggest difference for me was that while in both books the children (a girl in her early teens and a pre-teen boy) had to outwit adult authority, in The Last Dragonslayer the reason and need for doing so was clear, whereas in The Dragons of Ordinary Farm it wasn’t.

Having said that, however, I also don’t think that this is one of Jasper Fforde’s best books. Jennifer Strange and her sidekick Tiger Prawns are running a dying business of managing magic. The owner of the business is missing, and they find themselves looking after a bunch of retired and semi-retired wizards in the Kingdom of Hereford which is about to go to war with the Duchy of Brecon over who gets to control the Dragonlands when the last Dragon dies. In addition to the political aspect, there are commercial interests at stake, with commercial firms vying with individual speculators to grab the biggest and best bits of real estate. The satire on this it a bit heavy-handed in a Mad magazine kind of way.

I found Jasper fforde’s earlier books much better, and this one seems a bit slapstick: Harry Potter meets Terry Pratchett, if you like that kind of thing, but not really as good as either.

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