Book reviews 2023

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

I think I’ve devoured more books in 2023 than in any other year. Almost all queer YA: a genre that didn’t even come close to existing when I most needed it.

With two hours until 2024 smacks us in the chops, I know I won’t finish reading my current book so it’s time to post my 2023 reviews.

If you just want the extremes:

  • Favourite: No contest. Books 37/38, Like Real People Do and Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove. I’m still thinking about the characters. I want more.
  • Least favourite: On balance book 20, Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out. Marketed at adults, but seemingly written for young teens.
  • Best surprise: book 15, Gwen and Art Are Not in Love. I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as it is.
  • Worst surprise: I can’t get past book 1, Timberdark. Such a disappointing ending.
  • Greatest eye roll: book 39, Never Been Kissed. The word “ovular”.
  • Most frustrating: book 13, Straight Expectations, which takes 5 chapters to start.
  • Most in need of another proofread: book 46, Donick Walsh and the Reset-Button. Would’ve been a 5 without the problems.

These reviews were all originally written to fit into a single tweet, with the exception of book 46, where I detail some of the irritating editorial problems in the text I read.

1 Timberdark 3½/5

The sequel to Wranglestone was going so well – interesting mystery, character development, new scenery – and then we got to the ending. I… I hated the ending. Desperately disappointing, preachy nonsense. What a shame.

2 Less 4/5

Won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Engaging, funny, gaily melancholic, bursting with a thousand tiny details and dry little asides. Rattled through it quicker than I expected – always a good sign.

3 This Much is True 5/5

Miriam Margolyes’ autobiography. It’s all there. All the stories the lawyers let her publish. Honest, forthright, revealing. Several pauses to pick my jaw off the floor. National treasure.

4 A Boy Worth Knowing 4/5

Boy meets boy, boy falls for boy, boy’s dead grandmother and sundry other ghosts offer sage advice/get in the way. It’s a tale as old as time. Sweetly predictable with a paranormal twist. Needed a bit more oooooomph.

5 Project Hail Mary 4/5

Weir tells these stories well, spraying buckets of accurate/plausible science at high-stakes problems. The before, told in flashback, reveals the present in satisfying chunks. The star of the show is… not the narrator. ♫♬♩

6 Husband Material 5/5

Sequel to Boyfriend Material and as good if not better. Effortlessly funny, distinctive characters, full of truths. Could and should be adapted for TV (maybe after book 3?).

7 Boy Like Me 5/5

The latest from @simonjamesgreen – one of my favourite queer authors – is quirky, personal, relevant and important. Everything I felt as a teen is here. Everything I feared. Wanted. A vital history lesson. All hail librarians.

8 Afterglow 4/5

Sequel to Golden Boys, here the boys navigate their final school year. Great character development. Stamper does well with four narratives but each boy sounds the same, making character switches sometimes a struggle.

9 The King is Dead 4/5

Unlikely, enjoyable mystery surrounding Britain’s first black king – a gay teen. Lovely twirly-moustachioed villain, a gentleman of His Majesty’s Press. Twist upon twist until the end. Plus a bit of romance.

10 The First to Die at the End 4½/5

Silvera’s prequel to “They Both Die at the End” doesn’t disappoint. Multiple narratives, converging and diverging, covering the End Day of – someone. Or someones? The message: life is short. Make the most of it.

11 The New Life 4/5

Crewe’s first, beautifully written novel looks at life for “inverts” amid faltering steps towards equality in 1890s London. Inspired by real people and against the backdrop of Wilde’s trial, don’t expect a happy ending.

12 Amongst Our Weapons 4½/5

Rivers of London #9: as enjoyable and readable as its predecessors, continuing to broaden and deepen the mythos of the series in satisfying ways. Bonus points this time for extra queerness.

13 Straight Expectations 3½/5

A Tale of Two Timelines (sorry). Enjoyable, after a 5-chapter setup. Pet hate: people constantly using others’ names in speech. Amusingly honest about teenage life, games, and obsessions. Diverse, camp, sweet, predictable.

14 Lose You to Find Me 5/5

@WriterikJB’s second novel doesn’t disappoint. The usual tropes – but also surprises, tenderness, and genuinely heartfelt moments. Plus complex, 3D characters navigating life’s troubles in believable ways.

15 Gwen and Art Are Not in Love 4½/5

Camelot, but not as we know it. Terrifically funny medieval/modern fantasy romp. (Can I say armour-amour? Can I? No. OK. Sorry.) More blood and less magic than I expected. Art is Hemsworth C in my head.

16 Broken Hearts & Zombie Parts 3½/5

Unsure at first: title and cover didn’t work for me. Enjoyed the story, predictable as it was. One eye-rollingly implausible scene. One procedure… glossed over, somewhat, reasonably.

17 Boy Meets Ghoul 3½/5

The trouble with romance sequels is: where does the couple go next? Ghoul’s attempt to solve this dilemma falls short. Plenty of junior humour, but likely too junior, and not enough romance.

18 Fake Dates and Mooncakes 4/5

Enjoyable queer teen romance with a sideline in history and cookery. Unexpectedly not so much about fake dates and mooncakes as about the haves vs the have-nots. Needed a few more surprises.

19 Young Mungo 4½/5

Writer’s hat on: a powerful, devastating coming-of-age story in 1980s Glasgow that pulls no punches

Reader’s hat on: blimey, it’s grim. Violence, alcoholism, abuse. Glad when it was over.

20 Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out 3/5

Disappointing. Good premise, poorly executed: unrealistic dialogue, telegraphed plot development, pedestrian writing. Reads like a very young YA retargeted older with a bit of swearing.

21 Something Fabulous 4/5

I’ll probably work my way steadily though all of Alexis Hall’s books. This is a splendid, witty Regency historical, the full-on queer counterpoint to the parade of Bridgerton corsets.

22 Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language 4/5

Non-fiction for a change. Fascinating, well-written history of the usage and evolution of the slang/cant that gave the English language words such as butch, camp, mince, ogle, and scarper.

23 The Darkness Outside Us 4½/5

Difficult to say much about this book without spoiling it. High concept, high stakes, surprising. Skilfully avoids [spoiler spoiler spoiler] and manages to keep the pace up throughout.

24 Unexpecting 3½/5

Great premise, frustrating and unsatisfying execution. Protagonist is not that likeable. The question that would’ve been asked on day 1 isn’t asked for approx forever. Rampant plot telegraphy.

25 Sea of Tranquility 4/5

Immensely readable and satisfying story of the past, present, and future of one man’s life, how his timeline intersects with others’, and the consequences. Unexpected Covid parallels, queerness.

26 If You Change Your Mind 4/5

Alternating story with superhero screenplay is original if ultimately ho-hum. Enjoyably pink-tinted view of a Florida coastal town, barely a straight boy in sight. Everyone’s ador[k]able. Surprises, tension. Great.

27 Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It 4/5

Bryant’s an expert on Westminster process and chicanery, and describes well how broken the system is. Perhaps a little too calmly and soberly.

28 Overemotional 4/5

The blurb put me off. Didn’t want to read it. But it grew on me, and went to some interesting places – darker than I was expecting. Many narrators: fun characters who I expect we’ll see more of.

29 We Could Be So Good 5/5

New York, 1959: more queer than you might think. Beautiful, sensitive slow-burner of a romance told from alternating perspectives. Complex characters, simple story. Takes its time, and all the better for it.

30 Ryan and Avery 4/5

The always-reliable Levithan delivers a burgeoning queer teen relationship shown over ten dates, out of sequence. Sweet and ultimately hopeful, if slight. Marred by many formatting snafus on my Kindle copy.

31 A Little Bit Country 4/5

Ostensibly about country music and two teens finding each other in not-Dollywood, in truth this is a story about families, choices, truths, and consequences. Enjoyable, sometimes surprising, bit over-angsty in parts.

32 Snow Boys 5/5

Not without faults: scenes too often start then jump into flashback, which can confuse. The Irish setting is refreshing and real, and the story doesn’t flinch from the bad times of family life. Love a geek/jock story. Great cover.

33 Something Spectacular 4/5

The sequel to Something Fabulous shifts focus to a minor character from that book. Funny, sexy, surprisingly touching. The implausibly queer Regency setting is terrific: I’d love a TV adaptation.

34 Café Con Lychee 3½/5

Core idea: sound. Execution: not great. One protag is unlikeable for almost half the book. References to “scrimmages” in soccer suggest insufficent research. So much just… fizzles out. Some surprises would’ve helped.

[Editor’s note: I’ve since discovered that scrimmage is actually used, although I’ve never heard it in the UK. The insufficient research was therefore mine, not the author’s.]

35 Sprout 5/5

From the first chapter I knew I’d love this book. It has a VOICE. Funny, sad, tender, honest, playful, complex, knowing. It does things differently: this ain’t your standard high school boy-meets-boy troperama.

36 The Magnificent Sons 4/5

Two brothers: one very out, one very not. A story about the dysfunction that can paralyse relationships with friends and family when you spend too much time in your head. A lot to like here. Some uncomfortable familiarities.

37/38 Like Real People Do/Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove 5/5

[Two books, reviewed as one]

Bam. Chapter 1, I’m totally invested in these characters. Thinking about them when I’m not reading. Forcing myself to read more slowly. Emotionally frazzled and wet-eyed in coffee shops.

You know how dreams can infect the day with intangible, lingering emotions? That’s how I felt with this story. Washing up, and there’s a faraway ache slipping between memories, resolving at last to a scene. Ugh. Bereft now.

39 Never Been Kissed 3/5

Too many eye rolls in this one. Interruptions at crucial moments. Clunky writing, with an overuse of adjectives telling not showing. The word “ovular” (no, it’s not a synonym for “oval”). Characters mostly unburdened by depth.

40 Whatever. 4/5

A story about the (mostly internal) struggle for acceptance. A complex, rounded protagonist – among a rich mix of secondaries – who isn’t a high flyer, and isn’t happy. Lots to like. Needed a touch less angst, a touch more progression.

41 I Like Me Better 4/5

Pleasant enough, but follows a very predictable course and lacks the spark necessary to elevate the story. A couple of sweet scenes offsetting some odd ones. Throwaway characters that could’ve done more.

42 Peter Cabot Gets Lost 4½/5

A delightful slice of 1960 queer USA. Almost entirely a two-hander, alternating focus, for a cross-country road trip. Lovely character piece and homage to lost times. A little short, a lot sexy.

43 Icebreaker 5/5

Looks like I have a thing for romance novels about closeted queer ice hockey players. 15yo me would be astonished. I wish he could’ve read them. This one tackles mental health sensitively and honestly.

44 Charming Young Man 3½/5

Based on a true story, this is evocative and full of detail but ultimately unsatisfying. I think I’d have quickened the pace and expanded the epilogue into the third act, or maybe even the second half.

45 All the Right Notes 4/5

Frustrating. Alternating past/present means today’s characters can’t reveal yesterday’s plot. Protagonist plagued with interruptitis (in and out), a pet hate of mine. Saved by a deeply moving ending.

46 Donick Walsh and the Reset-Button 4/5

Loved the story: Nick tries to change his life and make amends for his bullying past, while his former best friend Michael is suspicious. Needs a light trim, and a heavy proof: many errors in basic grammar.

Some problems I spotted:

  • Wrongly hyphenating compound nouns like “reset-button” – should be “reset button”
  • Using “councilor” when “counselor” is more appropriate
  • Mixing up “you’re” and “your”, and possibly “their”/”there”/”they’re”
  • Using “breath” instead of “breathe”
  • Using “blonde” instead of “blond” (common, probably becoming OK)

47 Ten Things That Never Happened 4/5

Another Alexis Hall romcom, this time a contemporary story involving a bed/bathroom superstore, amnesia, jobs on the line, Christmas, and infinite family members. An easy read, effortlessly funny, but it didn’t grab me.

48 Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue 4/5

1953, and two baseball players staying in an isolated house realise they have feelings for each other. Cat Sebastian writes lovely character pieces like this: but it was over far too quickly.

Book reviews 2022

~ Anthony Camber

I’ve been reading a lot in the last few years. Since the start of 2022 I’ve been posting potted reviews of each book on Twitter and giving it an unreliable and inconsistent rating out of 5. Now that Twitter is even more of a raging bin fire than it ever was, I’m going to move these posts to Threads from the start of 2024. And I’ll also put the 2022 and 2023 lists here on my blog.

Here are my 2022 reviews…

1 The Order of Time 3/5

Why do we have past and future? Time is weird. Everything is weird. Poetic and philosophical, Rovelli lays it out well yet never compellingly enough for me to lose myself in the narrative. Enriching but oddly disappointing.

2 Will Grayson, Will Grayson 5/5

Yeah, late to this one. Entirely not what I expected and better for it. Alternating narratives, strong characters, funny, true, plus twists and a deeply implausible and fabulously over-the-top musical.

3 The Long Game 5/5

Engrossing, definitive story of how Doctor Who regenerated from 90s disappointment to 2005 triumph. First-person accounts of the stars aligning. False starts, chancers, and a core who always believed – plus RTD, ready and waiting.

4 Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun 4½/5

Terrific debut from @JONNYescribe. Believable characters. Authentically chicanx/latinx, fresh air in a genre painfully white. Sprinkles Spanish liberally. Tackles homophobia and long-distance sensitively.

5 Here’s to Us 5/5

Albertalli/Silvera successfully revisit the characters of “What if it’s Us” two years later. Didn’t want it to end. It did. I cried. Happy, bittersweet tears, lamenting the life I never had.

6 Jay’s Gay Agenda 3½/5

Sex-positive, with a genderqueer character and an inclusive, open, modern setting. Lots to enjoy, and I did, but a little by-the-numbers. Needed more focus on secondary characters – some interesting stories untold.

7 Golden Boys 3½/5

Enjoyed this more than Stamper’s others. Four narrators – took a while to sort them out in my head. I liked the concept: interlinked stories of friends spending a summer apart but connected. Missing a spark to lift it.

8 Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts) 4/5

Sex-positive. Genuinely good advice. Unashamedly femme protagonist. Believable relationships. A plot I didn’t expect that felt very real, especially the protagonist’s reaction to it. Well written, enjoyable.

9 Out of Time, Into You 3½/5

You had me at inter-racial sex-positive time-travelling same-sex romance. Interesting premise, explored well. Faltered slightly near the end. Always worry about resolution of these stories: fine, and it fit.

10 Wranglestone, 4/5

Zombies, gays and romance – sound familiar? Terrific post-apocalyptic setup, and more twisty-mystery than I was expecting. Sweet central characters. Great chapter cliffhangers. Ending fine but felt a little abrupt.

11 You Asked for Perfect 3/5

I wanted to like this more than I did. The protagonist struggles to balance his school and personal lives – fine, but that’s about as far as it goes. Needed less focus on minutiae and more plot/character development.

12 Red, White & Royal Blue 5/5

Not flawless but an easy 5. Leaving aside the bittersweet alt US history of 2016+ and idealised politics, it teeters on the right edge of plausibility. Well researched. Not embarrassingly wrong about the UK. Expect an awful movie adaptation.

13 The Prophets 4½/5

A difficult, necessary read. Raw, bleak, devastating at times. And still beneath it all an undercurrent of joy and love that can’t be quenched. Beautifully written, but hard-going.

14 Gay Club! 4½/5

The always-reliable Simon James Green delivers again. Part love letter to LGBTQ+ school societies, part polemic, full awkward. With an unexpected turn near the end, and a barnstorming finish. Perfect for a TV adaptation IYAM.

15 In Deeper Waters 3½/5

Sweet fantasy M-M romance where *spoiler* meets *spoiler*, with pirates and ramshackle ports and draughty royal castles adding to the atmosphere. Rather heavy-handed on the “not like other boys” metaphors.

16 Yesterday is History 4½/5

Another time-travelling same-sex romance (they seem popular right now). Likeable, complex main characters; underused BFF. An unexplored backstory intrigues, helping to build a deeper world. Well-written, no padding.

17 All That’s Left in the World 4½/5

Great debut from @WriterikJB. Alternating narration by two companions (tricky) in a fractured post-apocalyptic USA. Rising tension, genuine peril, vivid and memorable scenes. Hate, hope and love.

18 Memorial 3/5

Took a while to finish this. Well-written, tender, but I struggled to get into it. An awful lot of not very much happens; that’s fine, it’s about character and feelings and all that good stuff. Not, though, a page-turner.

19 This Winter 4/5

Heartstopper novella #1. As you’d expect, effortlessly blends joy and love and sadness. Great to get inside the heads of Tori and Oliver as well as Charlie. And Nick and Charlie are wonderfully Nick and Charlie. Too short.

20 Boyfriend Material 5/5

Full of wit, realness and madness. Characters that pop. Dialogue that fizzes. Awkwardness that bites. Loved it.

21 Nate Plus One 3½/5

Disappointing after the sweet, warm wish-fulfilment of van Whye’s earlier Date Me Bryson Keller. Decent premise. OK but barely 2½D characters. Felt padded with travelogues. Lacked surprises.

22 Boy Meets Hamster 4/5

Aimed at the younger teen, a fast-paced and chaste junior romance with warm, likeable central characters. Comedy ranges from gentle to farce, never getting silly. Unexpectedly touching in parts.

23 Tiepolo Blue 3½/5

Great writing, some lovely touches and a recognisable slice of 90s Cambridge. But I struggled. An ever-present hum of bleakness, the volume slowly rising, was not a good incentive to keep reading.

24 The Glamour Boys 4½/5

Non-fiction: how secretly queer and queer-adjacent MPs in the 1930s knew what Hitler was doing and tried to convince the establishment. A fascinating history, all new to me, from one of today’s openly queer MPs.

25 Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble 4½/5

Alexis Hall is fast becoming a favourite author. This Bake Off take-off is full of laughs even as it reveals the painful, dominating, sabotaging inner thoughts of its narrator.

26 The Language of Seabirds 4/5

A sweet and slight almost-teen first love story. Nicely written and evocative of those unsure, what-am-I-and-what-is-he times. But the main character tends to react rather than act.

27 Solitaire 4/5

Alice Oseman’s first novel (written aged 18) focuses on Tori – the sister of Charlie from Heartstopper. Its implausible plot sits uneasily alongside Tori’s all-too-believable teenage life. Dark, angry, sometimes despairing. I enjoyed it.

Another gay footballer at last?

~ Anthony Camber

The older I get, the closer I come to losing it entirely at Pride — in a good way. I marched again this year, and the waters rose first somewhere along Regent Street, when the shockwave of joy and smiles and rainbows and goddamn whistles and acceptance and unrelenting positivity finally buffeted my inner Eeyore into submission. And second, on the train home a few hours later, opposite a glittery baby gay all arms and legs at his first Pride: with his family, so happy, so free.

I blinked away the tears. I stared at the watery suburbs sloshing by.

I’ve been out almost twenty years now — plus a decade of silence. In that time I’ve seen once unthinkable changes, like rainbow flags on government buildings, serving uniforms marching at Pride, and equal marriage. And the pendulum has inevitably swung the other way, too — anti-trans bigotry, and Trump.

And still the forever war of toxic masculinity, pervading and devouring, the black mould in the grouting of life. It’s the source of that voice in my head that forces me always to be careful, to not let down my guard, to behave, to be closed and not open.

It’s that toxicity in wider society, that lingering stench, which has ensured top-flight male football in the UK is still ostensibly exclusively straight. It’s thirty years since Justin Fashanu. It’s five years since I wrote Disunited, convinced a player was sure to come out prepublication to steal my thunder. Robbie Rogers came out soon after — but never played in the UK again.

And now this:

https://twitter.com/FootballerGay/status/1147259434319654912

It might be fake — but it might be real. The last taboo, as Disunited’s blurb put it, might finally break. It’s an exciting prospect. The thought triggers those emotions again. The joy, the freedom, the ability of this player to finally be himself.

The time is right. Half a century since Stonewall, and another giant leap in the news, we might finally see an out gay male footballer take one small step onto an English professional pitch.

Coming out is a political act. Being visible is a political act. They polarise: but at least you know who’s not on your side. If we’ve learned anything in the UK from the three years since the EU referendum, it’s that many thousands of people remain obtusely blinkered to the modern world, unwilling to adapt to society’s changes. The only constants in life are change, and the existence of a chunk of the populace in denial about it.

Let’s assume it’s true, and our player comes out before the start of the next football season. What happens? We’ll be able to divide the reactions into three: true friends, false friends, and enemies.

First, the true friends. His own real-life friends, no doubt: he’s a player in his early 20s, according to his Twitter feed (not too distant in age from Danny Prince in Disunited) and he’ll have friends for whom his sexuality is irrelevant. He may have LGBT friends, and a partner. The club officials and his fellow players will support him, as will the LGBT supporters groups that have flowered at all levels of the footballing pyramid over the last few years. The FA and EFL will say positive things — more positive than a few years ago. FA president and aspiring baldie the Duke of Cambridge will be supportive too. Other out sporting stars will stand with him, like Robbie Rogers, Tom Daley, and the mass of LGBT women in sport already such as the amazing Megan Rapinoe. Whichever incompetent is running the government will undoubtedly bleat words of encouragement while briefly surfaced for air in the Brexit cesspool.

The enemies will make themselves rapidly known. It’s funny how the era of Trump and Farage et al has allowed closeted fascists to themselves come out, to reveal their true natures — a political act indeed.

The false friends cause me most alarm. The player will need to rely on a close, trusted group to guide him along these twisty passages. I can only draw on history, which may be an unreliable indicator, but I have two main concerns.

First, the spectators: the crowd, the mob. In the away end, even the largest LGBT supporters group, even with allies, can’t outshout a stadium baying at full voice. When it happens — it will happen — the authorities must act swiftly and harshly. And I fear they won’t: players of colour are still racially abused today, and bananas still fly from the stands in games in Europe. I have no confidence that the dodgy combovers haunting the FA and the EFL will do more than waft press releases and inconsequential fines in the general direction of offenders. (And here’s a thought: our newly out player might not be white.)

A quick point 1.5: other players. Sooner or later someone will say something homophobic on the pitch to try to intimidate him. I don’t expect this to be a common problem, but neither do I trust the authorities to do anything significant about it.

Secondly, and more importantly, the fourth estate: Her Majesty’s Press, and to a lesser extent the TV companies. Certain things just seem inevitable. Hold on to your pyjamas, here comes a bulleted list. They will:

  • Praise him for coming out, and compete for the first gushing interview.
  • Hunt down and throw money at his friends, especially ex-girlfriends, if any exist.
  • Out (or nudge-nudge the sexuality of) anyone he knows, especially close footballers, if they think they can get away with it.
  • Speculate about boyfriends past and present and future.
  • Dig into his history on social media for anything remotely controversial, especially related to sexuality.
  • Clutch their pearls at everything they deem to be the slightest deviation from the straight (sic) and narrow.
  • Assume he’s a bottom.
  • Build him up, and knock him down.

There’ll be intense interest in the first match he plays after coming out. His every move will be scrutinised. Every stereotype will be overlaid like tracing paper on his actions. Every poor choice will trigger the question, either spoken or unspoken: Does this mean gays can’t play football? It doesn’t matter that it’s nonsense. If it sells papers or clicks, they’ll write it.

And we’ll hear every joke. Kissing on the pitch. Showering together. Euphemisms regarding tackles. “He’s not used to that position.” “Drama queen.” When he moves clubs, he’ll have “played for both sides”.

And there will be Piers Morgan. I’m sorry, but it’s some kind of law, apparently.

I’m sure our player knows to expect all this — I’m sure it’s why he and other players haven’t already come out. I can only imagine the stress, the second-guessing, the tumble of consequences in his mind right now as the time nears. That milestone dividing the before and the after, the unknown-and-known times from the known-and-unknown.

I hope he sees the opportunities. I hope he sees the amazing, positive, empowering message he can send. I hope it triggers more players, present and past, to come out.

I can’t wait for Pride next year.

Anthony vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

I turned seventeen in the spring of 1986. Days later Chernobyl’s nuclear power station huffed radiation across northern Europe, causing sheep to glow in the Scottish Highlands (subs: please check). At the time, the Soviet Union’s fresh, thrusting, young fifty-something leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was shouldering the tiller in an attempt to turn the supertanker USSR ninety degrees to starboard. Words like glasnost and perestroika were becoming commonplace on news bulletins.

Glasnost: openness

Perestroika: restructuring

Despite the pre-roasted lamb courtesy of an over-sugared Ukrainian microwave, it was an optimistic time in geopolitics (strokes beard). Like most of my generation, I’d assumed I would perish in a nuclear fireball, ash on the wind, not least because in those days we lived twenty minutes from a US air base housing several of “our” ICBMs. Gorbachev seemed to be leading us onto a different path.

And so it proved: for a while.

Aged seventeen, my own personal glasnost was stalled awaiting some cerebral perestroika. I was as closeted as a partially melted fuel rod under a hasty sarcophagus. And around us on the analogue eighties airwaves swirled HIV and AIDS, a geiger counter that ticked more urgently each week. Adverts, posters, leaflets, even school assemblies. Condoms on TV!

I honestly don’t know how my friends and family would’ve reacted had I come out then, all pimply and non-bald. I was in suffocating denial, even as I knew. Such is the plastic teen brain, such is the ability of humans to hold contradictory notions simultaneously. Crushes were crushed, neatly compartmentalised, boxed and ribboned and jettisoned and retrieved and reopened.

I’m sure one of my friends knew, or suspected. She wasn’t daft. I remember we skirted the subject once, a few years later at college. An idle have you ever wondered question, over student crumpets. Even then, I wasn’t ready. It would’ve been so easy, a couple of words. It would’ve changed nothing, and everything.

In 1986, there were no role models for a seventeen-year-old boy in my position. On TV, beyond the tumbling AIDS icebergs and red-faced ministers stammering through discussions of sexual practices, we had only high camp, sexless figures, and the inevitable haunted queer who coughs at the end of act one. Channel 4 showed the occasional late-night movie of a pink persuasion, barely audible above the braying and honking of faux-scandalised MPs and Mary Whitehouse. This was hardly a rainbow-rimmed invitation to come out over the Sunday beef (the lamb was off).

Newspapers? “EastBenders”. Say no more.

Movies? I wasn’t 18. And I’d never have had the courage.

Books? I remember looking. I’d never have bought anything: that would’ve collapsed the quantum unicorn wave function, Schrödinger’s Teen forced out of his box. Sometimes I’d stand in a bookshop, heart thumping, and read a page or two from something — I remember A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White.

Today’s seventeen year olds — in many countries, at least — inhabit a better world, if their parents and grandparents will let them keep it and survive it. This is a world of Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, God’s Own Country. Of Drag Race, of the gender-blind First Dates. Of Noah Can’t Even, of Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda (Love, Simon in movie form). Even Trump’s America can’t stuff these back in the closet. The major corporations seem to have jumped on board the rainbow train, albeit with occasional jitters. That particular skirmish, though not the war, might be almost won.

IMG_1508

I wonder how the seventeen-year-old me would’ve reacted to Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda. Perhaps it would’ve given me the courage to come out, to take that risk even amongst the shoulder pads and approaching menace of Thatcher’s Section 28. The current me would disappear in a glittery pop, of course. Things would’ve progressed differently: other choices made, other universes forked. Even so.

Reading Simon now, aged approximately 104, the book filled me with joy. Sure, I’m a soppy middle-aged bloke wishing he could have his time again (minus: exams, three-eyed sheep; plus: self-confidence). Sure, there’s a heaped tablespoon of optimism and pink-washing of what it must actually be like as a closeted teen in the American South.

But the message of hope. The non-noxious radiation of love and warmth. Wonder, discovery, dreams, redemption. The relentless positivity and promise of Obama’s path to the future, rather than Trump’s crazy paving.

I could’ve read it in one sitting — if I were actually seventeen and could survive on no sleep. Rationed to a few chapters a night, the book kept worming into my thoughts during the day. I couldn’t wait to pick it up again. It made me grin, and gasp, and weep (see: soppy old man).

I wasn’t expecting this. I suspect I needed it.

One brief moment in a glorious exile from Trump/Brexit lunacy, spending time in the world I never dreamed could exist when Chernobyl melted into our vocabularies, but which now feels no more than a fingertip out of reach.

My fear is that it has begun to recede.

Review: Armada

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

I confess I’ve struggled to articulate my thoughts on Ernest Cline’s Armada. As the tricky second book following a blockbuster like Ready Player One, the temptation for this reviewer is to throw down comparisons in an endless series of bullets: Ready Player One was like this, but Armada‘s like this, which means XYZ.

That’s unfair. But not entirely. Armada isn’t related story-wise to RPO, and yet the two books overlap in many ways. Both have a teen male protagonist whose expertise in video games is the spine of the story. Both are rich with pop-culture references anchoring the story firmly in our world. It almost feels as if both books have a common ancestor, an ur-plot in Cline’s head. More likely Cline’s simply projecting his own experiences, as all authors do to some extent, and these two lenses have much the same prescription.

If I try to forget RPO exists, how do I feel about Armada?

The plot is captivating and straightforward: on page one our hero, Zack, looks out of his classroom window to see a UFO darting across the sky. What’s more, it’s a craft identical to the ones he sees and battles in a video game – called Armada. How is that possible? Is it real, or is he hallucinating? Either answer signals trouble, which subsequently arrives at a pace speedy enough to keep me turning the 350 pages. It’s exciting, thrilling and eventful. It feels almost like the novelisation of a screenplay (which is handy, as the movie rights were sold for seven figures).

It also feels aimed at a specific audience: teenage boys who might see themselves in Zack’s place. It’s a classic coming-of-age story, complete with absent father and a school bully.

In that sense it’s a disappointment. I have nothing against these sorts of stories at all. I suppose I was hoping for something a little different, in the way that Ready Player One felt different. But ignoring RPO, as I claimed I was: it’s a great story and it’ll make a watchable brain-off blockbuster movie. It has its faults, though: not least the massive implausibility of <spoiler>.

Aside from that, some lesser but important characters lack any depth: you can’t make an emotional connection to someone who’s little more than a checkbox. “Oh, we need one of them, and one of them…”

Also, the pop-culture references tend on occasion towards the gratuitous. The bickering is real enough: characters bitch and joke about real-world fictional characters just as we would. Sometimes it feels shoe-horned in, possibly disguising the lack of character depth. I have fewer reservations about the unlikeliness of the characters having sufficient composure under extreme stress to wisecrack quite as coherently as they do: hey, that’s fiction for you. Gibbering and damp trousers would not be the average teen boy’s idea of wish fulfilment.

There is one particular scene late in the book in which certain real-world people “guest star” as characters. I am not a huge fan in general and in this case I was overwhelmed by the aroma of cheese. For me, this device bumps up against a line: I understand it, and it makes sense in context, but… just no. I sincerely hope it doesn’t appear in the film, as all tension in that scene will evaporate in laughter (at least in UK cinemas).

These criticisms are niggles rather than chuck-the-book-across-the-room-isms, and possibly amplified by my own expectations after Ready Player One. This was always going to be Cline’s problem: follow that. People of a certain age (hello!) who enjoyed revisiting the minutiae of 80s video games and films in Ready Player One, who can nod sagely at discussions of Pac-Man tactics and mullets, might have anticipated and wanted another spin around the Pole Position track.

Armada is not that, and yet it’s too similar to Ready Player One to escape comparison, and that might ultimately be its biggest problem. JK Rowling wisely keeps well away from magic with her non-Hogwarts books, and in Armada Ernest Cline perhaps drifts too close to Ready Player One for safety.

Still, I’m sure he’s worrying all the way to the bank.

Review: Whispers Under Ground

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

And so to book three of Ben Aaronovitch‘s Peter Grant series: see my reviews of book one and book two to catch up with the meta-story so far.

Whispers Under Ground is not the book I was expecting. I’m not sure what my expectations were, precisely: perhaps something focusing more on what seems to be the arc of the series. I should have known better. To reach the end-of-level baddie you must fight several skirmishes, and this is merely book three of n where n ≥ 6 (I’m three books behind the curve).

The arc features in Whispers, of course, as a subplot. Our protagonist Peter makes progress on the hunt for the big bad, with his mentor Nightingale and colleague Lesley.

The main plot is a murder-mystery, with a suitably magical twist. The son of an American senator is killed in a manner curious enough for the Met to call in their experts on the peculiar: Grant and chums. This is one of the things I love about the series. Magic and its attending weirdness is known within the Met, to those in the higher echelons at least. It’s not something they especially want civilians to catch on to, and Peter Grant’s adventures in previous books have become a little too high profile for those with the peakiest of caps.

Nevertheless they need him. And he needs them, for they can bring the corporeal might of the force into play when some old-fashioned coppering is required. In this case, some below-ground sniffing around in the sewers and amongst the tube mice after the middle rail has been unplugged for the night.

The looming question for me – and whether this is tackled by later books I have yet to learn – is for how long the public can remain unaware of the Met’s mini-Hogwarts. Given the number of goings on, and the constabular tonnage that must surely by now be starting to twig, it’s becoming ever more implausible that the secret remains a secret. But then, in Grant’s universe, the secret has already been successfully kept for several generations, and deployed in two world wars. (I’d like to learn more about this back story. I suspect I won’t: clunking out a full chronology causes all mystery to waft up the chimney. Plus it commits the writer, leaving no room for manoeuvre should better ideas spring to mind. Tolkien is the exception, mainly because he knew what everyone in Middle Earth had for breakfast every day of their lives and wrote it all down in elvish poetry.)

I didn’t feel as much tension in Whispers as in previous: the climax is not as jangly. Not a bad thing – too many TV shows, for example, believe that each season’s finale must outdo last season’s by a factor of 2.718, proceeding rapidly to exploding universes resolved by honking red reset buttons, hand-waving, love, dreams, etc. Here it’s a calmer outcome, and I wonder if book four in the series, already on my pile, will include a major revelation or two to make up for it.

The last few pages of Whispers Under Ground indicate Aaronovitch knows where he’s going, back in the past present when this book came out. Pieces on the board shuffling into position. Characters I’m sure we’ll see again In my case, in a couple of months, I expect.

In summary: I’m still amazed this isn’t on TV yet.

Review: More Happy Than Not

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

More Happy Than Not – cover image
Please excuse the colour cast and the delicately distributed muck on top of my fridge.

It’s been a while since I’ve read an LGBT-themed book. Having finished Exo I saw the next few on my official to-read pile weren’t going to change that, so as a Christmas treat I decided to sneak in something new. Amazon opened its unwashed mac to show me a barely distinguishable selection of beefcake covers, and if you’ve read any of my books you’ll understand that’s not the sort of thing I write and it’s not my preferred reading material either.

I scrolled down, and saw a cover lacking both beef and cake. More Happy Than Not, by Adam Silvera. One blurb-skim later it plonked into my basket. It proved a fine choice.

I don’t remember reading anything like it before. A Bronx teen, Aaron Soto, struggles to figure himself out, torn between his girlfriend and a new, male best buddy, Thomas. Aaron’s father killed himself; his mother barely manages; his other friends run hot and cold, often violently. To Aaron, Thomas represents hope – and more? And threaded through the story, talk of a near-miraculous process offered by the Leteo Institute: the selective rewriting and deletion of memories.

A coming-of-age story, then, lifted by the generous peppering of a gritty setting and a dollop of SF mustard. In More Happy Than Not, no holds are barred, and teenage activities occur. This is not the (perfectly reasonable but) pastel, idealised world of some books. There are choices, and there are consequences. And the genre-mashing keeps you guessing, and keeps you reading, all the way.

Aaron is utterly believable: his thoughts, his feelings, his worries, all resonated to various degrees. The first-person present-tense style, not to everyone’s taste, brings an immediacy to a story focusing often on Aaron’s past and his future. I genuinely muttered “oh, god, don’t do that,” on at least one occasion, though I can neither confirm nor deny I was in a public place at the time and anyway it was noisy and nobody looked at me apart from that one lady.

I suppose if I were forced at knifepoint to find fault, I’d say I’d have liked the story to continue a little longer. That’s the reviewing equivalent to “my biggest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist,” I know. I guess some of the supporting characters feel a little interchangeable (not a great sin here). I can’t say whether the Bronx scenes are truthful in any way – my reality involves regular sightings of students in three-piece tweed, and consequently I’m an unreliable judge. It feels real enough, as does Aaron’s family and its fractured lives.

This is a book I rattled quickly through (always a good sign) and I wish I’d been able to read it as a teenager. The SF angle would’ve given me the excuse I’d have been looking for and it would have helped me, I’m sure. Oh, to be a teenager again (modulo school, acne, exams, climate change, Brexit, Trump… hmm, on second thoughts).

More Happy Than Not is Adam Silvera’s debut novel, which makes me both happy and envious. I look forward to his next dropping onto my pile soon.

Review: Exo

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

Jumper series

Last year I reviewed Impulse, the third book in the Jumper series by Steven Gould. I’ve just finished Exo, the fourth. Yes, I’m still a way behind in my reading.

As in Impulse, Exo follows the activities of the Rice family: parents Davy and Millie, written in third person, and their 17-year-old daughter Cent, in first person. All three have the ability to jump – teleport – from place to place, subject to some plot-enabling constraints. In my review of Impulse I suggested Gould seemed to be moving pieces around in preparation for something bigger, and Exo is definitely that. I wasn’t expecting quite how big.

Impulse was Buffyesque: teenage girl with powers has to deal with school, boys, villains, etc. Exo has more ambition. The scope is not local, but global. Exo is about a young woman taking control: knowing (mostly) what she wants, and setting out to get it. Emerging from the shadow of her parents, from the shadow of their necessarily secret lives – they have enemies, trailing them through the books, who’d rather see them dead than jumping.

What does Cent want? Consider this: she can jump to places she can see or has visited. She can also jump “in place” adding velocity. So she can jump up, and keep going, adding bursts of speed to counter gravity, and then she can jump instantly back to where she started – and then instantly back to where she ended up. With the necessary equipment, how far up could she go? And what could she do when she got there?

And of course: what happens when, inevitably, she’s tracked?

Cent is a convincing protagonist, albeit implausibly bright. She still has to endure late-stage teenagerism with its embarrassing parents and boy-related awkwardness, even as she steps and/or jumps towards adulthood and the accompanying Stuff. I’m pleased she’s not the only focus: the many chapters following Millie and Davy broaden and support the story, linking it to the previous books and showing more of that Stuff. For example, Millie’s mother is very ill in hospital – and they suspect their enemies know, which brings obvious and non-obvious complications.

Gould doesn’t skimp on the technicals. Exo is a little heftier than its predecessors, and much of that seems down to the fine detail, the research brain-dumps he scatters throughout the story. Perhaps these are intended to appeal more to the teenage boy audience, to balance the female protagonist viewpoint. I know my proto-nerd self would’ve lapped up every nut and volt. It doesn’t feel like padding, slowing the story down. Instead it grounds the story in the real world: despite all the jumping you still need X and Y, and you still can’t do without Z.

What’s missing, curiously, is any great sense of threat beyond the dangers Cent experiences as a natural result of her ambition. The Rice family’s enemies are always in their thoughts, and Davy especially is constantly on his guard fretting about attack vectors, and that’s mostly as far as it goes. Not entirely. Perhaps that’s a more realistic approach than an attack-of-the-chapter style, which would only submerge the main plot in treacle. The reader wants to know what Cent does next, and that’s enough to keep the pages turning.

Exo marks a change in the Jumper series. The previous books were about dealing, struggling, adjusting, fighting. Exo is about owning and achieving. It’s positive, it’s progressive, and you’ll wish it were true. On the flip side, I’m not sure where the series goes after this. At least if it ends here, Exo is a fine conclusion.

 

Review: Moon Over Soho

~ Anthony Camber ~ Leave a comment

Now that A Room Full of Elephants is out, I’m planning to read more. Top of the pile: Moon Over Soho, the second book in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. If you remember, I enjoyed the first tremendously.

Although not a sequel, Moon dovetails nicely with the end of the first book. Rivers had consequences, and they’re not funnelled into the Thames to dilute to nothing. Rather, they form an underlying thread at which Aaronovitch occasionally tugs, with the promise of more in subsequent books. I’m glad he didn’t wave the big red magical-realism reset wand: I’m now two books into a series, and I’m certainly here for the duration. (The third book’s already lower down the pile.)

Where Moon isn’t quite as successful, for me, is in the main plot. It feels a little disjointed, less coherent, than Rivers. Some of the plot developments aren’t as surprising as it appears they’re supposed to be. Without spoiling anything, our protagonist displays a certain… lack of due diligence in one particular area. I know from experience that it’s tricky to keep revelations revelatory: as the author, you know whose fingers are in which pies and it’s often hard to judge the correct balance between sprinkling a few crumbs and chucking buckets of pastry at the reader. Here it doesn’t distract greatly from the fun of the book, merely triggering the occasional arctic eye-roll. (I’m sorry.)

One criticism I’ve heard – entirely fairly – about my own Till Undeath Do Us Part regards its detailed geographical references: the “he turned left onto King’s Parade and waved at Charlie the bin-busker” sort of thing. Moon has these too. Not everyone likes them but I think they’re fine here: London’s a minor character, and the details help ground the reader in reality as a counterpoint to the magic. Knowing the locations – through personal experience or by reputation – heightens the fantastical elements.

I do like how Moon ends: both the end of the plot, and the winding up that takes place in the closing pages. Full of bittery sweetness, regrets and promise. The spark of magic glinting at the edges of the grey hardness of police life.

Overall: not quite as enjoyable as Rivers, but a solid, fun read that sets things up nicely for book three.

Elephants for everyone

~ Anthony Camber

arfoe-post-releasedA Room Full of Elephants is released today. I’m so glad that after a year of effort my deranged wittering is finally in people’s hands, and the feedback so far is tremendously pleasing.

Release day is an odd one for an author. The excitement of sales, the checking of charts. Most of all, the feeling that it’s done, at last. I can’t tweak that paragraph any more. I can’t punch up that dialogue.

There’s plenty left for me to do, of course: marketing, for instance. Giveaways. Shouting into the wind, hoping for reviews. That’s the business side of the book business.

The book itself is no longer mine: it’s yours.

My head is still full of the quantum blur of superimposed drafts and dangling, discarded threads. Every line surrounded by ghosts. You, instead, get the focused view: the paved path from start to finish, a view I’ll never have.

I envy you that.

And yet every one of us, me included, experiences the book in our heads unlike everyone else. You see Keith one way, I see him another. And everyone is right. If it’s not stated explicitly in the words (and even if it is), the interpretation is entirely up to you. So you, collectively, see a cloud far fuzzier than the one I see.

The difference is that for me, the hallucinations triggered the words, and for you it’s the other way around.

Writing is weird.