problems with the the printing

Following on from my complaints (reasonable I think) about printing and/or binding errors in previous books on this list - Bluesman, Lolita and The Lay Of The Land, and related complaints about the frequency of typos in The Falls and Eternity, here's a little oddity in A Question Of Upbringing, prominent and worthy of note mainly because it's literally in the first line of the first chapter of the book. Have a look:

If you're struggling to see it, here's a similar screenshot from this video, of a version of the book that doesn't have the error:

If you still can't see it (there are two successive a's in the first sentence), that will be for the same reason that people sometimes struggle to see the deliberate error here:

I would assume that's the reason why it slipped through the proof-reading process for my 1980s Flamingo paperback. 

The linked video above, which I will confess to not having sat through the full hour of, also touches on a subject that, for instance, Powell's Wikipedia page is a bit silent on, but seems like an obvious question that one would want to ask: did he know before writing A Question Of Upbringing that he was embarking on a 12-novel cycle, or even a multi-novel cycle, or did it evolve as he went along? It's surprisingly difficult to find any related information, but this page has an explanatory paragraph:

Powell started writing the first novel, A Question of Upbringing, in 1948. At that stage it was intended, according to Spurling, to become the first part of “at least a trilogy”. By 1956, when Powell was writing the fourth novel, “what was originally planned as three volumes or a little over had grown to eight or nine.” In early 1962, when Powell was beginning the seventh novel, “he finally made up his mind to allocate three books to the Second World War, and complete the entire sequence in twelve volumes.” Apart from mentions of two scrap-books of scribbles and ideas, these scattered references are the only information Spurling imparts of how Dance was conceived and planned. This is a huge disappointment.

The references to "Spurling" there are to Hilary Spurling who wrote a biography of Powell in 2017, to generally more complimentary reviews than the implicit one in the quoted paragraph above. Note that the Guardian review I linked to there is written by Claire Messud, who also features on this blog. 

the last book I read

A Question Of Upbringing by Anthony Powell.

Ah, schooldays. It doesn't take much for one's mind to be cast back there: the endless Latin verbs, trying to find one's best tails for evening prep, fagging for Blenkinsop major and getting a good thrashing if his crumpets weren't toasted to perfection, trying to grind various future Prime Ministers into a wall in the name of recreation, all the usual stuff.

Hmmm, well actually perhaps not everyone's schooldays were exactly like this, but those of our narrator here (who we eventually discover is called Nick Jenkins) definitely were. Cast back by a wafer-thin framing device (a page and a half or so at the start of chapter one) into a reverie of his schooldays, at an unnamed school which we're clearly meant to infer is Eton, he recalls friendships with his old chums and room-mates Stringham and Templer, various hilarious scrapes involving their po-faced housemaster Le Bas - including the arguably less hilarious prank of making an anonymous phone call which resulted in Le Bas' arrest - and some out-of-school socialising during the holidays including meeting Stringham and Templer's respective families and navigating complex hierarchies of relative wealth and social class, as well as some more primal stuff involving the first stirrings of feelings, you know, Down There. Nick decides, for instance, that he is in love with Templer's sister Jean based on no more then a couple of mumbly teenage conversations.

Nick also encounters another schoolmate, Widmerpool, during a holiday in France. Previously something of a figure of fun and target for derision, Nick starts to see Widmerpool in a new light after he brokers a truce between two of the other residents of the house they are staying in, a Swede and a Norwegian who have been refusing to speak to each other after a disagreement over a game of tennis, a girl, or possibly both.

And so, schooldays over, it is time to put away childish things and proceed to university, seemingly without having to do anything as tiresomely proletarian as pass exams or undergo any form of entrance selection process. Again, the university is coyly unnamed but is clearly Oxford. Nick is re-acquainted with Stringham, and also encounters Sillery, one of the dons, who seems to have a limited interest in his students' academic progress but instead focuses on establishing political connections, easing his various protégés into influential positions in politics and business. These protégés include Stringham, who, with some behind-the scenes string-pulling (no pun intended) from Sillery, lands a plum (if somewhat ill-defined) job with a prominent industrialist. Templer, who has skipped going to university, pops in to visit with a couple of his London friends, and Nick's sense that his school friendships are gradually unravelling is reinforced when Templer drives a tightly-packed car (Templer, his mates, Nick, Stringham and a couple of random girls they've picked up) off the road and into a ditch, thankfully without seriously injuring anyone. 

Nick, recognising that a fresh start is required, heads off into London to meet his Uncle Giles, the slightly murky black sheep of the family. Will Uncle Giles be able to help him redirect his life?

Well, the answer to that specific question is a shrug and a "dunno", because the book ends at this point. That will be no surprise to anyone vaguely-acquainted with 20th-century literature and Powell's work in particular, as A Question Of Upbringing is the first book of the twelve-volume sequence A Dance To The Music Of Time. In other words if you want to find out what happens next, check out book two (which is called A Buyer's Market). I'm not conclusively ruling out ever doing this, but if you view A Question Of Upbringing as a stand-alone novel in its own right you'd have to say that not a lot of note actually happens. And fair enough, it's not that sort of novel, and if you want explosions, freaky sex and zombie Hitler that stuff is all available elsewhere. It's dryly witty, and there are some sly observations about wealth and class here, and just a sense that our narrator is slightly less rich and posh than some of his schoolmates, although these are just inferences since we never get to meet any of his family. For all that, there is also the sense that Nick is somewhat blind to his own privilege, drifting from Eton to Oxford, and probably subsequently into a nice job somewhere, nice and comfortably without having to sweat too much or wonder where his next meal is coming from. Whether he is deliberately written that way or whether these blind spots are just inadvertent reflections of Powell's own blind spots (he too went to Eton and Oxford) I couldn't say, at least without reading another eleven novels to find out. Beyond this it would be hard to say we actually know anything much about Nick at the end of the book, something noted by John Crace in his Digested Reads column. 

A bit like The Alexandria Quartet, the A Dance To The Music Of Time sequence, whose publication dates range from 1951 (this book) to 1975, has faded a bit in critical regard over the years, though it was still well-regarded enough in 1997 for a four-part (i.e. three whole novels crammed into each episode) TV adaptation to be made. While the general theme here of oblivious posh people going about their daily lives, borne safely aloft on a cushion of unexamined privilege, raises my lefty hackles a bit, it is very readable and pretty short at a whisker over 200 pages. I'd always thought of it as a sort of upper-class English condensed (or perhaps summarised) version of Proust, and maybe it is, although I am ill-qualified to comment, since although I own a copy of the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu (in an English translation, obviously) I have never read any of it. Maybe this year? Well, maybe. Having now, after just over 19 years of this blog, cracked part one of A Dance To The Music Of Time, will I now plough on and finish all twelve? Check back in 228 years to find out!

waiter, there's some wiener in my schnitzel

One thing that struck me while reading Staying On was the whole business of the Smalleys living in a little annexe off a bigger hotel complex and mostly subsisting off the food provided by the hotel, sometimes ferried across to them on trays by hotel staff. This set off an odd echo in my mind of our time living in Bandung, specifically the brief period shortly after our arrival in late 1978 when we stayed in one of the chalets attached to what was colloquially known by everyone in the expatriate community as the Bumi Club (pronounced to rhyme with "roomy"; stop sniggering at the back there), but is apparently more properly called Bumi Sangkuriang. It's a distinctive building in some sort of Dutch colonial style (lots of swoopy roof gables) built in the 1950s, and still there in a slightly modified form today. I say "slightly modified form" on the basis of having compared a photo taken in the outdoor recreation area at the rear of the main buildings in 1978 to one from the TripAdvisor page linked above: as you can see some of the buildings in the background have been expanded somewhat and the sloping grassy banks removed. For reference you can compare the original roof-lines and observe that the bit right in the middle of the newer picture with the distinctive notch at the back is the one in the older picture, with new sections built on top of and in front of it.

I'm reasonably sure that's me in the background in the top picture, standing on the pool steps (my two sisters are in the foreground), probably with some trepidation since as I recall the pool designers had made the bold decision to have the steps lead straight into the deep end. My (possibly flawed) recollection also tells me that the rightmost section of building in the background housed the room where (having evidently exhausted the entertainment options available elsewhere) I watched The Hindenburg twice in an afternoon.

Anyway, the thing that actually twanged my memory synapses was the food thing; I can't remember exactly what the arrangements were at the Bumi Club, including whether we had any facilities for preparing our own, but I do vividly remember some of the stuff we used to get from the club's own kitchens and - presumably - have delivered over to us. Or maybe we went to some communal dining area to eat? I can't remember. Anyway, things that stick in the mind (and probably stuck to the ribs at the time) were the thick crepe-style pancakes that always seemed to be cold (did they start out hot? I have no idea) and smeared with some sort of Nutella-esque chocolate spread, and the two varieties of schnitzel, which were badged as Wiener schnitzel and paprika schnitzel but could have been pretty much anything. You might, for instance, ask yourself what sort of meat it was likely to have been. Pork? Unlikely in a largely Muslim country, I'd have thought. Veal? Maybe. Chicken? Dog? Human flesh? Who knows.

I note that some other less specific Bandung reminiscences were prompted by my reading of Eight Months On Ghazzah Street back in 2010. More can be found here, here, and here. 

spacelebrity doggylikey of the day

Just a quick one today - I have no idea what sequence of clicks sent me down the YouTube rabbit-hole that led to some detailed second-by-second analysis of the Columbia space shuttle re-entry and break-up, but I assume these are things that have been pushed a bit more than usual by the algorithm given the imminence (February 1st) of the 23rd anniversary of the disaster, and indeed the even nearer imminence of the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster (January 28th). Anyway, it struck me, and hear me out here, that the nose of the shuttle, from certain angles, is slightly reminiscent of Brian Griffin from Family Guy. 

the last book I read

Staying On by Paul Scott.

It's the early 1970s, pretty nearly a full quarter of a century after Indian independence and the end of colonial rule. Lots of British people involved in the old system of colonial rule have packed up and gone home, there being no need for them to stick around among a population less inclined to consent to being subjugated and abused. I mean, where's the fun in that? Honestly, if you can't even find a decent punkah wallah to keep you cool while you're sipping a pink gin then you may as well be in Swindon.

Some have stayed, though, and will have a variety of reasons for doing so - maybe they have business interests in India, maybe they've married into Indian society, maybe they just like it there. For some it's more about having been in India for so long that they wouldn't feel comfortable in British society any more, and maybe because the cost of living over there is higher, plus the cost of getting there in the first place, plus perhaps a bit of laziness about uprooting oneself from a reasonably comfortable life and sailing off into the unknown. 

This latter category of people definitely includes Tusker and Lucy Smalley, eking out a just-about-comfortable existence, mainly facilitated by Tusker's military pension, living in the lodge attached to a fairly dilapidated old hotel in the small-ish town of Pankot. The hotel is run by the comically rapacious (money, food, sex, you name it) Mrs. Bhoolabhoy and her somewhat downtrodden husband; Mr. Bhoolabhoy maintains cordial relations with the Smalleys and occasionally enjoys a few drinks with Tusker, but Mrs. Bhoolabhoy regards them generally as an inconvenience and a potential problem should she wish to sell the hotel, something she has considered doing as profits have diminished since the building of a newer, swankier hotel just down the road.

Obviously during the Raj the social structure was nice and clear: the British are in charge and the natives do their bidding or expect a damn good thrashing. But 25 years later it's considerably less clear - some residual deference remains, and some residual expectation of deference remains in people like the Smalleys, both in their early seventies and fairly set in their ways. But for younger Indians in particular there's less of a sense that they should do as they're told by a bunch of elderly foreigners: after all, why should they?

The Smalleys' financial position is in a state of constant precariousness, not helped by Tusker's past unwise business dealings, some gambling problems and ongoing fondness for a drink or two. As befits people born in the early years of the twentieth century it's been Tusker who has held the financial reins with Lucy - objectively the more sensible and responsible of the pair - having precious little to do with it, and in a position of knowing very little about the details, including what her position would be if Tusker were to die, something that's been on her mind since he had a mild heart attack a while back. 

The Smalleys (mainly Lucy) maintain some correspondence with Britain, mainly people they knew from India who've now returned, or in some cases their children, and via this route Lucy learns that a vague acquaintance of an acquaintance, Mr. Turner, is visiting India and wants to pop in to say hello. This prompts a frenzy of excitement about what stuff they can get him to bring from home - with some it'd be Marmite, for Lucy it's a particular brand of blue rinse hair dye - and how they're going to make him welcome when he arrives, resources for lavish banqueting and the like being a bit thin. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Bhoolabhoy has seen the writing on the wall regarding the future of the hotel and has decided to sell up. This means that someone is going to have to write a letter to the Smalleys telling them that their tenure of their little lodge at preferential rates is at an end, and they'll have to find somewhere else to live, and that someone is Mr. Bhoolabhoy. And it turns out that it is the receipt and reading of this letter which is the thing that finally finishes Tusker off, his body being found later that day after suffering a massive heart attack, his hand still clutching the letter.

Paul Scott is of course most famous for the Raj Quartet, which is in turn best known for its 1984 TV adaptation, The Jewel In The Crown. Staying On is a sort of footnote to this series of much chunkier books, and the Smalleys feature as minor characters in the later novels in that series. I didn't know this when I bought my second-hand copy a few years ago and I can tell you that you have no particular need to plough through the quartet to appreciate this, unless you want to, of course, in which case have at it. Staying On, despite being written later, was actually adapted for TV first, in 1980, and the whole thing appears to be available on YouTube. It stars Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, more famous from Brief Encounter, as the Smalleys.

None of the great sweep of history that I imagine (possibly wrongly) features in the Raj Quartet here, just two fairly unexceptional people eking out the last few years of their lives (the last few days, in Tusker's case). No suggestion that Tusker was a particularly good soldier, despite eventually rising to the rank of colonel, nor a particularly effective businessman, nor even a particularly attentive husband, though he clearly does love Lucy in his own gruff and inarticulate way. There's an odd mix of comedy and pathos here with the two sometimes clashing with each other a bit, but you do feel a pang of sympathy for the Smalleys, desperately hanging on to the only life they've ever known while the country reinvents itself under their feet. I do agree with this Guardian review that Mrs. Bhoolabhoy is something of a grotesque caricature, but overall I enjoyed it; the 1977 Booker panel evidently felt the same way. Scott was unable to attend the presentation as he was already ill with the cancer that was to kill him a year later; he was also apparently a chronic alcoholic which probably didn't do much for his general health.

Previous Booker Prize winners on this list are: G. (1972), The Siege Of Krishnapur (1973), The Conservationist (1974), Midnight's Children (1981), Hotel Du Lac (1984), The Remains Of The Day (1989), Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993), The God Of Small Things (1997), The Sea (2005), The Gathering (2007), Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up The Bodies (2012). The Siege Of Krishnapur, Midnight's Children and The God Of Small Things also feature in the list of books set primarily in India, a list that I would have expected to also include a few others off this blog, but the only one I can think of is A New Dominion; novels that tangentially feature India would include The Marriage Plot and Around The World In Eighty Days. 

rolled turkey has got me on the run

I'm pretty sure that the last thing the world needs in January, or really at any time, is some more tips on cooking Christmas dinner, but I had a go at messing a bit with the standard formula for Christmas 2025 and I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out, so I'm going to share it here. As always this is as much for my own amusement and future reference as anything else; the links I'm going to include will give a far more comprehensive description of the method than I'm going to bother with.

Anyway, the principle is this: a standard turkey of whatever size is an awkward and unwieldy thing to cook all in one piece in a standard oven and pretty much always ends up being overcooked, not least because different parts of the bird are different thicknesses and cook at different rates. So while tradition says you must have a giant single golden steaming monolith of meat to present to your jolly apple-cheeked multi-generational crowd at Christmas lunch, a more pragmatic alternative viewpoint says: fuck tradition, I would prefer to eat something that's actually pleasant to consume, quicker to cook, and leaves some oven space free for the host of other stuff that I need to put in it.

So the principle behind the deconstruction is: the legs are awkward because the drumsticks in particular are thin and tend to overcook, in addition they're very bony and sinewy and a lot of people can't be arsed with that. Also the giant cavity and the creature's back aren't really doing any good except taking up valuable oven space and slowing the cooking down. So what we do is: take the legs and wings off, debone them and roll them up into giant sausages (you'll need some string, ideally culinary/butcher's string (rather than, say, gardening twine or cable ties) - I kept it pretty simple but you can add some stuffing or other filling as you do this). The deboning is a fiddly job, particularly in the drumstick area as those partially ossified ankle tendons are a pain to detach, but it's worth the effort. Then detach the crown from all the unwanted remaining bones and skin and connective tissue and get rid of them, or make stock or something with them if you must. That leaves you with a crown roast and two chunky leg/wing sausages.

I also wet-brined the crown for about 24 hours before cooking it. This is another advantage of the deconstruction: a trimmed crown plus brining liquid will fit in a large-ish bowl which will go in the fridge; a whole turkey will require a large bucket or a bathtub and obviously won't go in the fridge, though the shed or somewhere similarly cool will probably do for 24 hours, unless you're living in Australia and it's the middle of summer.

The other thing you should invest in is a meat thermometer. I have a simple analogue one, nothing fancy, and it is invaluable for this sort of thing. What you will find is an hour and a half is ample to cook all the meat - mine was gratifyingly succulent and delicious but even then could probably have come out of the oven ten minutes or so earlier. Opinions and guidance vary wildly regarding what's the optimum temperature at which to hoick the turkey out of the oven and let it rest, but I reckon 65-70 Celsius is about right, probably the low end of that range, if you dare, for maximum juiciness. 

The other thing about turkey is that whatever you do on Christmas Day unless you've calculated the amounts absolutely perfectly you're going to have some leftovers, and those can be a dishearteningly dry and joyless experience, with the resulting sandwiches needing a surprisingly large amount of wine to wash them down. In this particular case, though, I'm happy to report that the leftovers were themselves delightful and a positively pleasant prospect for consumption on Boxing Day and afterwards. Eventually we got bored and just chopped the remainder up and put it in a pie; that was pretty good too.

stats the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it

So here's part 2 of the annual book blogging stats round-up. Part 1 was the barely-there starter, a single quivering cube of beetroot jelly with a dab of blowtorched anchovy foam served on a roof tile; this is the entire haunch of venison with a bucket of gravy that follows.

Highlights to note: number of books read was pretty much the same as the previous three years but average length was down a bit at around 309 pages (longest book of the year was The Lay Of The Land at 726 pages, albeit with a few missing), so overall page count was also down a bit as a result. 2020 and 2021 in particular were bumper years (partly lockdown-related I assume) and 2022-2024 were steady at around 7500 pages in total; 2025 was a bit lower at 6805. Nonetheless once you get back beyond 2020 you have to go back to the honeymoon year of 2011 for a higher overall number.

Overall post count was pretty low at 51, only 2017 and 2022 were lower. As a result book reviews as a percentage of overall posts was the third-highest on record at 43.14%. 2022 remains the only year where that ratio has exceeded 50%.

7 of the 22 books I read in 2025 were by female authors; that percentage (31.82%) is the highest since 2016 and a great improvement on the testosterone-soaked, jism-festooned sausage-fest of 2019 which represents the nadir here at 11.76%.

If you've still got room I can offer you a little palate-refreshing dessert item with your coffee and cigars, again sex-related (no, stop it): Grass was the third female-authored novel in succession, just the fourth time that's happened in the history of this blog and the first since December 2015. As that linked post points out, even two in a row is relatively unusual, and a quick unscientific scan suggests that it's happened a further eleven times since the beginning of 2016. As with all three of the previous threesomes (no, stop it) there will not be a fourth as my current book is by a man. Sorry, ladies.

Grass was also the seventh one-word book title of the year, something I'm pretty confident must be a record (Kudos, Dalva, Jack, We, Trio and Day were the others). This post from late 2024 reckons I'd clocked up 84 in about 18 years at an average of less than five a year. I didn't manage to match the four in a row from early 2018 noted in that post, though. 

the last book I read

Grass by Sheri S Tepper.

It is the distant future, a galaxy far far away, yadda yadda yadda. And is mankind living in some kind of shiny techno-utopia with its every whim fulfilled? Not a bit of it. I mean, yes, we've done all the stuff that enables science fiction novels to take place in locations other than Swansea, i.e. invent faster-than-light travel and all that jazz, but there's still this outbreak of flesh-rotting plague to deal with that may be the cause of the actual end of humanity if left to spread unchecked. 

The actual end of humanity being an unpalatable prospect to those nominally in charge of humanity and its welfare, a cure is a priority. And so a keen interest is being taken in the planet of Grass, pretty much the only location in the known universe which seems to be free of the plague and the limb-rottage and associated unpleasantness. Grass? Pretty strange name for a planet, if you ask me. Well, I would ask you to note that a) nobody asked you and b) perhaps give some consideration to the name of the planet you're currently sitting on. 

Anyway, a party is rounded up from those still free of the plague on Terra, i.e. Earth, still very much Humanity Central in this particular future, albeit ecologically ravaged. The party basically consists of some high-ranking officials, largely chosen because they are horse-riding types and it is understood from the limited interaction the Grassians have with the outside world that they conduct some form of largely ritualistic activity akin to fox-hunting which the party may be able to join in with to ingratiate themselves into Grassian society. 

And so Rodrigo ("Rigo") and Marjorie Yrarier, their two children and a retinue of flunkeys (plus a whole stableful of horses) find themselves on Grass. They don't exactly get a warm welcome from the fox-hunting fraternity. though: these guys, the "bons", who consider themselves the aristocracy, are unhelpful, snobbish and weirdly twitchy and tight-lipped about anything that goes on outside the boundaries of their country estates ("estancias"), in particular any details of what happens on the hunts. By contrast, the horny-handed proles who inhabit the planet's only major town (and spaceport) are considerably more friendly, helpful and more generally knowledgeable about the planet and in particular its non-human life.

Most of the preconceptions that the Yrariers (and the reader) have about the hunts are blown away when they are (probably reluctantly) invited to witness one - not only are the "hounds" not really hounds but great slavering beasts the size of a small horse, but the "mounts" are also great slavering beasts the size of, erm, a freakin' massive horse, with deadly neck barbs that require the rider to stay out of their way or be impaled. Those humans who participate seem to enter a weird kind of trance where they remember little of what happens during the many hours they're out in the high grass which covers most of the planet, and there seems to be a kind of willed blindness among the bons to the fact that people occasionally arrive back minus limbs, or occasionally don't arrive back at all. Those who don't arrive back at all seem to include a disproportionate number of teenage girls, including, very recently, Dimity bon Damfels, a member of the family hosting the hunt when the Yrariers arrive.

Marjorie Yrarier, a bright and resourceful woman freed by her remoteness from the strict religious society that exists on Terra and stifles opportunities for women, makes enquiries in the town and starts to piece together a picture of Grassian society and wildlife, some of it wilder than she expected. Basically 90% of the planet (the grass-covered bit) is off-limits to humans and anyone venturing more than a small distance into it can expect never to be seen again. The town seems to be safe because it is located on a rocky ridge surrounded by a swampy forest and whatever lethal dangers exist elsewhere can't seem to get through.

Marjorie also discovers that there is a small sect of monks based in another grass-free location on the planet, mainly concerned with investigating the remains of a previous civilisation, the Arbai, who lived on Grass long anough to leave plenty of buildings and artefacts behind but who seem to have mostly died off in an abrupt and unspeakably violent fashion a long time ago.

Marjorie investigates further, being in the unique position of being able to hob-nob (to some extent, anyway) with the bons, talk to the townspeople and have enough resources at her disposal to have representatives of the monk fraternity brought to her. She also goes out riding on her horses, far in excess of the range deemed safe by most sensible people, and observes some of the ritual and lifecycle of the Grassian fauna. In particular she observes the hounds and the "mounts", known as Hippae, and determines that they are different developmental stages of the same organism. The Hippae are also clearly highly intelligent and able to exert some kind of telepathic hold on creatures in their vicinity, not least their human riders.

The time for careful investigation comes to an end, though, as Rigo and teenage daughter Stella participate (after much intensive riding training) in a hunt and, inevitably, Stella fails to return. Marjorie decides that the time for action has arrived and gets a posse together comprising her, various religious types and Sylvan bon Damfels - seemingly the one member of his family concerned by his sister's disappearance - and saddles up for a trip into the grass to find out what's going on. This is highly dangerous, as you might imagine, and the group is soon menaced by a group of Hippae, but manages to escape into the swamp where the Hippae do not generally venture. But why not?

Clues are provided when the party reaches an island in the swamp which houses a complex deserted treetop village, evidently an Arbai outpost, and also a group of "foxen", in their infant form the apparent target of the hunts, but in their adult form great giant cat-like creatures with even more well-developed mind-control capabilities than the Hippae. Marjorie strikes up a relationship with their seeming leader, whom she calls First, and learns more of the planet's history. Very briefly: the foxen are themselves the culmination of the hound-Hippae lifecycle, but the Hippae have evolved, as well as a destructive streak towards strangers, the ability to bypass the foxen stage of their complex lifecycle, and, the foxen being generally peace-loving and well-intentioned creatures, have decided to wipe them out with the largely unwitting help of the bons (i.e. hence the whole performative Hunt rigmarole). Not only that, but it was the Hippae who wiped out the Arbai, and not only that but it's the Hippae who were the source of the plague, using infected bats as a vector and the teenage girls as a delivery mechanism, their minds being seemingly just at the right delicate stage for wiping and re-programming, though the actual process is hand-waved somewhat, and probably just as well as there seems to be some slightly queasy sexual element to it.

There's a lot to process here, but precious little time to do it as it becomes apparent that the Hippae's merciless sweep of the planet is going to be extended to include the town, an extension of hostilities more than likely provoked by the Yrariers' presence and activities, and that a climactic battle is going to ensue. And so it does - the Hippae have managed to construct tunnels under the swamp to facilitate an invasion of the town with the inevitable savagery and killing, but are partly thwarted by a somewhat Dalek-like distaste for stairs (enabling the townspeople not ripped apart by the initial onslaught to take refuge on higher floors), and properly thwarted by eventual involvement from the foxen, once Marjorie has persuaded them that a cerebral distaste for killing must sometimes be overridden by a pragmatic view of the greater good.

While all this is going on the Grassian scientists have come up with an explanation of, and a cure for, the plague - some hand-wavey stuff involving right- and left-handed protein isomers which also accounts for the Grassian fauna's immunity - all they have to do now is avoid being sliced into tiny pieces by the Hippae or thwarted by religious fundamentalists and the universe is saved.

As with The Anubis Gates there's a tremendous amount going on here, and there really isn't room in an already quite long post to include it all. The book itself suffers from the same problem; as this review astutely notes it's got a beginning where all the world-building happens (and which is clearly the best bit) and an end where it all Kicks Off and much excitement happens, but arguably no middle, presumably just in an attempt to avoid it being 800 pages long (it's a pretty beefy 500 already). The observation that the sciencey bit of the plague stuff reads like something Tepper read in New Scientist the week before is spot-on as well, and the last-minute cooking of up some ancient (but miraculously still working) Arbai Stargate-esque teleportation portal as a beefed-up delivery mechanism is all a bit convenient, as if Tepper realised that naked teenage girls sneaking dead bats onto spaceships didn't really work very well on its own. 

None of that particularly matters, though, as this is tremendous stuff, and in any case as with much speculative fiction what it's ostensibly about is only partly what it's actually about: there's a strong feminist slant here with Marjorie clearly being the most intelligent and dynamic individual character, held back by notions like tradition and religious observance on her home planet. Commendably this doesn't mean that Rigo is portrayed as completely useless or an irredeemable bastard; yes, he has mistresses and a bit of a short temper but he is a fine and courageous horseman, offs a couple of Hippae in spendid fashion at the bon Damfels' estancia, and recognises Marjorie's newly-developed authority during the climactic battle. The feminist slant is quite reminiscent of Ursula K Le Guin, though it must be said that the one novel of hers I've read, The Dispossessed, still featured a male protagonist.

There is also much being said about organised religion, xenophobia, race and class struggle and the messy business of what happens when high-minded philosophical principles (like, for instance, thou shalt not kill) meet reality (like, for instance, Hitler), and action is required without, perhaps, the time to analyse all the possible courses of that action to determine with complete certainty which one is best.

There is also a really good usage of a classic narrative trope which I see I have cited here a few times before, usually using what in my mind is the canonical example, William Golding's The Inheritors (Rashomon would be the filmic equivalent I suppose): a second viewpoint of the same scene or sequence of events throwing a completely new light on it. We are offered a description of the hunt from Dimity bon Damfels' perspective early on which certainly hints at Something Not Quite Right going on but is very sketchy about the details (as befits everyone's addled mind-state), and it's only when we get the Yrariers' un-addled perspective that we get a glimpse of the full terrifying reality of what's going on: drugged-up riders unwittingly doing the malevolent bidding of a bunch of freakin' velociraptors. 

The other canonical example of a narrative trope which I would have assumed I'd mentioned here but don't seem to have done (although I've mentioned its parent book a couple of times) is Cowslip's warren from Watership Down: a society which functions OK as long as no-one mentions The Thing which occasionally claims one of its number and which even then we look the other way and Don't Talk About. Speaking of what would generally be considered a children's book, Tepper started off as a writer of children's fiction - other writers on this list to have taken that route include Penelope Lively and Russell Hoban. 

Anyway, it's really good, but, for all that, the news that it's the first of a loosely-connected trilogy doesn't fill me with an immediate desire to go and read the others. I'm sure they're all fine, though.