Power, Creation and Truth: The Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion, Tom Wright

"In Creation, Power and Truth, Tom Wright invites readers to consider the crucial ways in which the Christian gospel challenges and subverts the intellectual, moral and political values that pervade contemporary culture. In doing so, he asks searching questions about three defining characteristics of our time: neo-gnosticism, neo-imperialism and postmodernity. Employing a robust Trinitarian framework, Wright looks afresh at key elements of the biblical story while drawing out new and unexpected connections between ancient and modern world-views. The result is a vigorous critique of common cultural assumptions and controlling narratives, past and present, and a compelling read for all who want to hear, speak and live the gospel of Christ in a world of cultural confusion."







This was, like everything by Wright, really really good, a three fold exploration of what it means to be a Christian living in modern post-enlightenment society. Between this and his other books there's loads that he's written on the idea, and all of them are well worth reading, but this is probably a good introductory primer to his key views; that post-modernism and enlightenment have left us with key assumptions about the language of science, faith, politics and culture that determine how we think about these ideas and give us an inaccurate and dangerous view of what the early church and scripture means.

There are some bits which are excellent and there is much which he has put better elsewhere. This is a book that specifically addresses post-modernism and the enlightenment in the way it affects our politics and faith, and this is probably the best reason to pick it up, as it's an interesting and stimulating critique of the foundational principles of modern liberalism, conservatism and the philosophical underpinnings of the West.

Also Try:
N. T. Wright, anything else
Faith and Roger Forster, Women and the Kingdom
C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

Excession, Ian M. Banks

"Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe.

It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

Now it is back."

So, when I tell you that I've been reading this since the very start of writing this blog, I want you to understand that I mean that this is a book I have been reading, off and on, for nearly 18 months. It's not overly long, and it's certainly not a bad book, by any means. But it is dense. It's a book with heft, and weight, and it's written in a way that can best be described as unfriendly, especially in terms of ship to ship dialogue, which is largely impersonal and  punctuation free.

This main mind-to-mind conversations which make up so much of the plot drive and significant portions of each section are, it has to be said, confusing, in the same way that half an IM, or an email chain is unlikely to be a great way to understand geopolitics.

With multiple narrative strands taking place at the same time, and various different races and beings involved, it takes a while for anything like a coherent plot to kick in. I actually finished the second half in one sitting, so there's stuff to be waiting for, and once the various strands coalesce it quickly engages, but it can be a slog at first.

I've read a few of the Culture novels that Banks has written and this isn't the best for new reader's although it's certainly got enough there that if you're already a fan you'll enjoy it. Compared to Player of Games it's dry, but it meets the basic requirement of great sci-fi that it's utterly alien - whether in the world of the Affront, or glanding, or drones., or the Excession itself.

Also Try:
Player of Games, Iain M Banks
The Wasp Factory, Ian Banks
Shadow of the Empire, Timothy Zahn

Crucible of Gold, Naomi Novik

"Former Aerial Corps captain Will Laurence and his faithful dragon, Temeraire, have been put out to pasture in Australia – and it seems their part in the war has ended just when they are needed most.

The French have invaded Spain, forged an alliance with Africa’s powerful Tswana empire, and brought revolution to Brazil. With Britain’s last desperate hope of defeating Napoleon in peril, the government that sidelined Laurence swiftly offers to reinstate him, convinced that he’s the best man to enter the fray and negotiate peace. So the pair embark for Brazil, only to meet with a string of unmitigated disasters that forces them to make an unexpected landing in the hostile territory of the Incan empire.

With the success of the mission balanced on a razor’s edge, an old enemy appears and threatens to tip the scales toward ruin. Yet even in the midst of disaster, opportunity may lurk – for one bold enough to grasp it."


Looking back, and rather unexpectedly, I have only written a review of Temeraire, which is weird because I've definitely read two other books since I started blogging these books. Fortunately, the last few weren't all that good by the standards of the series, and the first half of the review can serve to cover them.

For the last few books Temeraire has been in a bit of a slump. As Novik widened the focus of the Napoleonic war away from the European theatre (i.e, the important bit) we've spent a lot of time travelling elsewhere. In some cases that's been good; China and Africa, and when we reach it in Crucible of Gold, South America have all been interesting in showing alternate cultures that developed differently because Dragons exist. But the flipside of that is that Novik is intent on reminding you how big the world is, and how long it would take to travel across it to all these places, meaning that between forty and eighty percent of each book is them flying or sailing to new places.

That was interesting the first time, simply in presenting some of the limitations of Dragons as transport. By the third book? Less so. It all detracts from the bit that IS interesting, which is the actual war with Napoleon. By making the stories, every story for the last few, be about the travel the actual events of the story get pushed to an afterthought. It doesn't help that the reasons for each mission is usually pretty similar. We tour Africa chasing Dragon's who have stolen Lawrence, tour Australia chasing a Dragon who has stolen an egg, and tour South America chasing ... well, actually, slight twist, in this one they're being chased, having stolen a person.

Once we get that out the way, and actually reach the end of the journey however, the story picks up. We finally get back to the war; in this case a new front as France and an African alliance challenges Portugal in Brazil. This is the bit I wanted to be reading about for the last few books. If you're going to set your books during the Napoleonic war with Dragons, please include some Napoleonic war, rather than just some travelling.

Also Try:
Temeraire, Naomi Novik
Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkein
Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret, K. A. Applegate

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

"THE ADDICTIVE No.1 BESTSELLER THAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Who are you?

What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?"

A smash hit literary juggernaut, Gone Girl is the ultra-successful 2012 boook-club thriller that runs 200 pages too long and reads like two separate books unwillingly pounded into one unsatisfyingly predictable zzzz-fest.

If you havem't read Gone Girl (you're lucky), and want to (you're silly), look away now, because there will be spoilers.

The story of the disappearance of Nick Dunne's wife, Amy (the titular 'Gone Girl') and the subsequent investigation into him, framed around his account of the aftermath of Amy vanishing and her diary recounting their relationship, the idea is to create a split narrative in which nobody can be trusted.

Unfortunately it's slightly undermined by two things. Firstly, Nick is initially written to be utterly dreadful; a man who cheats on his perfect, chaste and beautiful wife, can barely be bothered with her or anyone else, and through his generally over-the-top stupidity manages to turn you against him from the start. His main character traits read like the first draft of the worst CV; he lies to stay out of trouble, and overcompensates in awkward situations by acting disinterested and hiding emotion. Two flaws that are fine by themselves but which signal a monstrous lack of cooperation in a murder investigation.

In the postscript, Gillian Flynn, the author, hand-waves away the negatives surrounding the character, suggesting he's not that bad a guy. Unfortunately, having spent the first half of the book doing everything possible to suggest that Nick isn't just a bit inept, but outright capable of murdering his Mary Sue wife, it's kind of hard to row that back round in order to create sympathy for him come the, not at all shocking, third act twist that he didn't kill her.

Not that you'll care. If you've been paying attention you're probably already willing to take a claw hammer to Nick's smug, stupid head whilst society cheers you on and films it on their phones to show their kids that they were there the day this asshole got his, clapping and whooping, and when it comes time to sentence you the Judge just winks and lets you off with a warning because, really, we all wanted to do that, didn't we. It's just that you did it. If this were a choose your own adventure book you would win by cracking Nick open like a pinata; a crappy, loser cheat husband full of sweets and booze and rage.

And here comes the second problem, because having created a character so unloveable that every other person in the book, including his own twin sister, not to mention probably most of the reading audience, accepts could straight up murder his flawless wife, Flynn then has to redeem him. You need to root for him, hope that he'll be cleared and want to continue reading about a man who's main contribution to the plot up to this point has been harassing old friends of Amy's and hiding evidence.

Now, in the hands of a good writer, this could go one of two ways. Nick could continue to be flawed, but could start to show some positive traits; he could cooperate with the police, at the very least. Or, alternatively, you could create a world in which Nick, an asshole, is not the worst person in the relationship.

Guess which one is going to happen.

Because Gone Girl, it turns out, isn't actually a thriller at all. It's a horror. I married a psychopath. Amy, perfect, loveable Amy, turns out to have faked her own death to punish Nick, which I think is supposed to be bad, but by this point I'm quite happy to see Nick get a hard time. Until it turns out that no, Amy is going to go on with enough until Nick is convicted of her murder so she can see him executed, because he cheated on her.

It should be noted that you'll have probably called this sequence of events at about the time it's revealed that Nick has had a mistress for the last year or so. Amy is written, in both narratives, as too perfect, and Nick as too much of a baddy, for the plot not to undo itself by reversing our preconceptions.

Our two protagonists people  Who to root for? Do you cheer on the guy who straight-up drove his wife to the point of supervillainy, or the woman who decides that murdering her irritating husband is less embarassing than filing for divorce.

Trying to reboot Nick's character at this point requires some Lazarusian levels of personality resurrection. He isn't easy to redeem, so Flynn decides to just not bother. Instead, we get in a final sequence in which a full blown psychopath who has spent years setting up the perfect crime comes home, because Nick asks her to and she got kind of bored and made some bad decisions whilst hiding out, or something. Oh, also she killed someone else, but they can't pin that on her because the books finishing now and so he sticks around and she gets pregnant to keep him there.

Jeez, these two deserve one another, if only so that only two people are unhappy instead of four.

Also Try:
The Prince, Machiavelli
A Song of Ice and Fire (but just the Joffrey bits), George R. R. Martin
Silence of the Lambs, Robert Harris
Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl

You Are Awful (But I Like You); Travels Through Unloved Britain, Tim Moore

"Would you cheer if they sent you to Coventry? Could you stick up for Stoke or big-up Bracknell?Can you handle the thrill of Rhyl, the heaven of Hull or the mirth of Tydfil?

In You are Awful, Tim Moore drives his Austin Maestro round all the places on our beloved island that nobody wants to go to - our most miserable towns, shonkiest hotels, scariest pubs, and silliest sea zoos...

But as the soggy, decrepit quest unfolds he finds himself oddly smitten, and the result is a rousing, nostalgic celebration of mad, bad But I Like You Britain."

A sort of 'Playing the Moldovans at Tennis' of Britain, this is a poor-mans version of Bill Bryson's 'Notes From A Small Island'; written as comedy rather than actual travelogue and playing up that uniquely British thing of being all too passionate about something really, really shit.

Basically, this is these book reviews, in the Wonder Twin's style form of a book about Britain.

Comedy books tend to be hit or miss, and comedy travel guides are dime a dozen. I read it. I can't remember much of it. I learnt one or two interesting things, but, really, crappy towns are much the same. One bad hotel, or city centre, or museum isn't that dissimilar to another, and it's hard to sustain jokes or come up with new ones when you've only got one target.

The bit about Hull is excellent though.

Not awful, I liked it, but there's better out there.

Also Try:
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, Tony Hawks
Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson
Watching the English, Kate Fox