[books 2016] Another Shardlake mystery

14. Sovereign by CJ Sansom

I loved the first two books in this series, and part 3 did not disappoint.

It is several years since the last story took place. Shardlake and his clerk/tough guy Barak are sent on a mission by Archbishop Cranmer to accompany the King's Progress in the North in 1641 (an even largely sidelined by history because of what happened next). On their first day in York, a local guildsman is murdered practically in front of them, and it all snowballs from there. Several attempts are made on Shardlake's life, and he even ends up a prisoner in the Tower at one point. Shardlake has a run-in with Henry VIII. It does not go well.

Couldn't put it down. The plot is excellent and I love the characters. I put it on my kindle when I was unwell a few weeks ago & I nearly downloaded the other three books and kept going. But my project for the Easter weekend is to finish all the half-finished books lying around, so I resisted.

I said this with the first two books - this series brings home the reality of the level of paranoia and terror that characterised Henry VIII's reign in a way that no history book ever could. In the first book, Shardlake was an ardent Reformer, in the second somewhat disillusioned, in this one he has come to hate the King and sympathises very much with the rebellious northerners. I love Falco too, but he can be an annoying pain in the arse. I love Shardlake much more - it's painful to watch him lose his idealism and get messed around and abused on account of what idealism he has left (with regard to law and fairness, not religion) and his disability.

[books 2016] The Horse, the Wheel and Language

15 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W Anthony

In which Anthony puts forth his theory that Proto-Indo-European was spoken by nomads on the Pontic-Caspian steppes between roughly 4500 and 2500 BCE, and that they were the first people to domesticate horses (not the ancient Near East city states) and this is reflected in the way Indo-European languages developed. Very long, but he makes compelling archaeological and linguistic points.

The linguistics was a lot easier to follow than I expected. About 2/3 of the way in it gets bogged down in the archaeology & way too much description of pottery with not enough explanation of why it matters. However, still worth while - I think I took more notes from this than any other book I've read in recent years, I found his arguments made sense, and there are a lot of fascinating facts.

[books 2016] Jasper Fforde

16. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

A future where people are socially stratified by how much colour they can see. That's the tag line but it's a lot more nasty and dystopian than that. I can't believe I once thought that Fforde would be too twee for my tastes.

The worlds of his Last Dragonslayer and Tuesday Next books are pretty dark, this is far worse. Repression, institutionalised bullying at every level

And it's still a marvellous page-turner. It's really funny, and while you'll probably figure out part of the twist less than 1/4 of the way through the book, I just wanted to know what would happen next. The ending, though - ouch.

There are supposed to be more in the series, but he's since put out the entire Last Dragonslayer series and last time I caught up with him at a con he was working on something else, so it doesn't look good.