Tags: book

I enjoyed Kim Curran’s debut novel, The Morrigan, so when I saw a copy of her brand new book in the local library, I snapped it up.

Like The Morrigan, Brigid is modern retelling of Irish mythology, but in a very different time period. Whereas The Morrigan was set in a mythical time of the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann, Brigid is set in the relatively recent past of early Christian Ireland.

I was curious to see which Brigid this book would be about: the pagan goddess or the Christian saint?

Both, it turns out. The protagonist is the saint, but the narrator is the goddess. And they interact. It’s a clever framing device and for the most part, it works.

There are cameos a-plenty from the Christian pantheon like Patrick and Brendan the navigator but this is not the hagiography we learned in school. All the usual miracles are present and accounted for, but any supernatural powers aren’t ascribed to a Christian deity.

The world of Brigid isn’t so far removed from the world of The Morrigan after all.

Brigid isn’t a ground-breaking book, and it didn’t grab me as much as The Morrigan but it’s an enjoyable read nonetheless.

Lesbian necromancers in space. That’s the usual pitch for Gideon The Ninth and it’s not wrong. Though there’s a lot more necromancy than space or lesbianism.

The book begins in an environment fairly dripping with death, all bones and darkness. It sounds like it should be grim, but thanks to the sarcastic attitude of the protagonist, the tone is actually quite fun.

Sassy goth; that’s how I would describe the general vibe. Once I settled into it, I found that tone thoroughly enjoyable.

The bulk of the action takes place in the planetary equivalent of a haunted mansion and the various characters are assembled like the cast of an Agatha Christie mystery.

I must admit that I struggled a bit to distinguish one space necromancer from another. I should’ve payed more attention to the dramatis personae at the front of the book.

The plot kept me intrigued and invested throughout, although it did sometimes feel a bit like a video game with puzzles to be solved in order to unlock the next level.

The driving force of Gideon The Ninth is its excellent world-building. Though you’re dropped into things in media res, the foundations of the world you’re in are revealed piece by piece, and it all adds up to a fascinating premise for this book and its sequels.

I’m already looking forward to reading the next book.

After reading The Morrigan I was hungry for more retellings of Irish myths and legends. I tracked down the 1994 novel Finn Mac Cool by Morgan Llywelyn.

When I was devouring modern retellings of Greek myths, I commented on an interesting difference in the tellings:

The biggest difference I’ve noticed is the presence or absence of supernatural intervention. Some of these writers tell their stories with gods and goddesses front and centre. Others tell the very same stories as realistic accounts without any magic.

The Morrigan was dripping in magic. Finn Mac Cool is a more down-to-earth affair.

That’s not to say that magic doesn’t matter. For the characters in this book, their belief in magic is as real as their belief in the weather. But there are no supernatural powers here. If anything, Finn’s superpower is his ability to tell—and believe—tall tales involving supernatural intervention.

All the usual accounts of Finn Mac Cool’s prowess are retold as deeds that may have a basis in reality but then get exaggerated almost immediately.

It’s a framing device that works well. It’s all too easy to believe in the rise to power of a charismatic man skilled in controlling the narrative.

There’s plenty of Machievellian politics at play. There are no outright villains, or even heroes. There’s a pleasing messiness to the forces at work.

Sometimes the author’s research shows a bit too much. There are digressions into explanations of Brehon law that threaten to derail the narrative.

Overall though, this is an engaging and vivid retelling that just makes me want to spend more time in this world.

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I was in the library the weekend before last when I spotted something on the shelf of recently-returned books. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I knew the film adaptation was coming out later that week. Ideally, I’d like to read the book before seeing the film. It would be a race against time! The film would be out in days, and the book is over 450 pages long. Could this nerdy white guy rise to challenge and overcome the odds?

As it turned out, it wasn’t all that arduous. Project Hail Mary is a real page-turner, just like Andy Weir’s previous book, The Martian.

But his books are worryingly regressive. The so-called golden age of science fiction featured plenty of plucky white science guys saving the day with their brainpower in books written by white science guys. Andy Weir’s books have a similar outlook.

On the other hand, they’re undeniably fun. And who knows? Maybe his next book will feature a protaganist that isn’t an aw-shucks white guy.

(Update: multiple people have pointed out that I completely missed that Andy Weir’s other book, Artemis, features a refreshingly different kind of protaganist—phew!)

Project Hail Mary is packed with plenty of plausible-sounding science. Perhaps too much. After a while it felt like elements were being added to the story to showcase the author’s smarts rather than to propel the plot.

Over all, the book is good entertaining fun but a bit baggy and could’ve been edited down somewhat.

I was interested to see how the film would translate the science from the written page to the screen. Very commendably, as it turns out.

The film does a great job of avoiding expositional blackboard sequences or explanatory dialogue. Wherever possible, it shows rather than tells. It helps that it doesn’t underestimate what the audience can handle.

Above all, it’s entertaining. Popcorn was invented for this kind of film. Ryan Gosling does his usual entertaining shtick, though I kept thinking that Sam Rockwell would’ve really delivered the goods.

The film trims the book down to its essentials. I didn’t miss any of the elements they chose to cut. I did spot one glaring mistake, but that was continuity error rather than anything to do with the science.

Project Hail Mary the film is better than Project Hail Mary the book. Go see it. And if it leaves you wishing for more, then you can always read the book.

What we think is a decline in literacy is a design problem | Aeon Essays

The choice isn’t between books and screens. The choice is between intentional design and profitable chaos. Between habitats that cultivate human potential and platforms that extract human attention.

When I was summing up my reading habits in 2022 I said:

I think the lesson this year is: you can’t go wrong with Octavia E. Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin.

I stand by that. But maybe I’d recommend some Ursula K. Le Guin books more than others.

A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea is a good collection of short stories. But it’s not a great collection of short stories. If you’re looking for a great collection of short stories, read The Unreal and the Real.

When it comes to Ursula K. Le Guin, the standard is always going to be high so even when the stories aren’t her best, they’re still better than the output of most other sci-fi writers.

My slight disappointment with A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea isn’t so much with the stories themselves but with the collection.

To begin with, there are four unconnected short stories. That’s fine. It’s a short story collection after all.

But then after that there are three interconnected short stories from the Hainish cycle. They’re the best part of this book. That just makes the preceding stories look like filler.

If those three stories had been released as little collection, it would be a miniature classic. As it stands, you get more of a mixed bag.

But still, it’s worth reading this collection for those three stories alone.

Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This knocked me for six when I read it back in 2022:

It’s like a slow-building sucker punch.

Like my other favourite book of that year—A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa—it’s hard to classify. I think it’s autofiction. Not quite autobiography. Not quite fiction.

Will There Ever Be Another You is also autofiction. I think. It might also be poetry (which shouldn’t be surprising as Patricia Lockwood is a poet after all).

I can’t say that this one had the same emotional impact of No One Is Talking About This for me but then again, very little could.

The writing feels very impressionistic, with each chapter trying on a different mode. It’s kinda Joycean …if James Joyce was stuck indoors during a global pandemic.

The narrative—such as it is—revolves around The Situation from 2020 onwards. That was a surreal bizarre time so it makes sense that this is a surreal bizarre book.

I think I liked it. I can’t quite tell. I just let the language wash over me.

Every culture has its myths and legends. Greece has its gods and warriors. England has its stories of Arthur. Ireland has the Tuatha Dé Danann, The Ulster Cycle, and more.

But while the Arthurian legends and the Greek myths have been retold many times, the stories of ancient Ireland have remained largely untouched.

Kim Curran’s book The Morrigan takes on this challenge.

The blurb for the book compares it Madeline Miller’s Circe, which is a bold comparison. The writing in The Morrigan isn’t in the same league as Circe, but then again, very little is.

Structurally, the comparison makes complete sense.

Circe starts with the titular nymph in the world of the gods of Olympus before moving on to more mortal affairs, coming to a head with the events of The Odyssey, when Odysseus’s story dominates.

The Morrigan starts with the titular goddess in the world of the gods of the Túatha Dé before moving on to more mortal affairs, coming to a head with the events of The Táin, when Cú Chulainn’s story dominates.

I took me a little while to adjust to the tone, but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed this retelling. It manages to simultaneously capture the bloody, over-the-top feeling of The Táin while also having a distinctly modern twist. By the last third, I was completely engrossed.

After finishing Circe I went on a spree of reading many, many modern retellings of Greek myths. Now that I’ve finished The Morrigan I want to do the same for the Irish legends.

But I can’t. Apart from re-reading a translation of The Táin, there’s not much else out there for me.

Kim Curran does have another book that’s just been released; Brigid (the goddess? the saint? both?). If it’s anything like The Morrigan, it’s going to be a must-read.

I hope these books are the first of many.

Towards the end of 2025, I wrote:

I think I might change things up in 2026. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to write all the little reviews at once, I think I should write a review as soon as I finish a book. Instead of holding onto my reckons for months, I can just set them free one at a time.

I’ll get the ball rolling with the first book I read in 2026.

I’ve mentioned before that one interesting lens to apply to modern retellings of the Greek myths is how they treat deities. Are gods and goddesses real in this story? Or is it a non-interventionist tale with a purely human cast? In her book The Shadow Of Perseus, Claire Heywood wrote about Perseus, Medusa, and Andromeda without any supernatural characters. Having been impressed by that, I figured I’d go back to investigate her debut, Daughters Of Sparta.

The framing device is one I hadn’t come across before. It follows the diverging stories of sisters Helen and Clytemnestra, flipping back and forth between the two throughout their lives. I’ve read plenty of takes on the Trojan war, and I’ve read plenty of takes on Clytemnestra’s revenge, but I think this is the first time they’ve been combined like this.

Overall, it works. There are inevitable time jumps. Some time periods are bound to get more attention than others. And at some point, the narrative just has to wrap up, even though we know there’s pleny more that follows afterwards.

All in all, a good addition to the list of modern retellings of classical Greek stories.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Some neat CSS from Tess that’s a great example of progressive enhancement; these book covers look good in all browsers, but they look even better in some.

Accessibility For Everyone by Laura Kalbag

Laura’s classic book is now a web book that you can read for free online.