“The Long Earth” by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter (2013)

“In a forest glade: Private Percy woke up to birdsong.”

The multiverse theory has always been an interesting one. It suggests that our universe is not the only one in existence, but that there are other options out there, perhaps an infinite number. It is popularly assumed that they also represent alternate timelines and possibilities for the Earth and its occupants, and if only we could tap into them, we could see how things might have turned out. Because of this, alternate history stories are commonplace and often rich in imagination. However, when the greatest minds of science fiction and fantasy come together, it produces something special.

Step Day changed everything. When a reclusive scientist goes missing, leaving behind only instructions for the creation of a Stepper, the world will never be the same again. Anyone can make a Stepper, and with it pass from this world into alternate Earths, soon discovering that they go on and on. Some people use it to flee from responsibility. Others want to explore. Some still can see this as an opportunity to access resources and riches that they can’t get on what is now called Datum Earth.

Joshua Valienté is, however, one of a rare breed of people called natural steppers. Without the use of a device, he can cross through to the other Earths without any of the side effects of illness that most other people experience. He is hired by the transEarth Institute to travel through the Earths up to the “High Meggers” – the distant Earths – and learn more about these worlds. Accompanied by Lobsang who is either the soul of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman caught in software or a genuinely sentient AI, Joshua begins a journey through thousands of worlds, but with eighty per cent of people on Earth now able to access these worlds and evolution having produced different results elsewhere, he’s soon going to find there are far more questions than answers out there. Where have the worlds come from? Who are the trolls and what are they running from? And why can’t you move iron across a boundary?

I’ve not read much Stephen Baxter, but what I have is always phenomenal. He is truly one of the greatest science fiction writers in history, and the only reason I haven’t read more is that they’re usually very long and hefty tomes. Everything he writes, no matter how impossible it seems at first, comes across as realistic and perfectly probable. Pratchett, I am always more wary of and still can’t fully embrace the Discworld novels. However, as with Good Omens, it seems that, for me at least, Pratchett is best when tempered by someone else, but his imagination and humour come through here for sure, and a lot of the jokes and pop culture references are certainly his doing.

Between them, they have produced a scenario that is fascinating. True consideration has gone in to what would happen in a world like this. Religious factions spring up, crime becomes complicated on Datum Earth but rarely seen anywhere else due to the abundance of resources, and there is a lot of rearranging of economics and philosophy required. I also like the reaction of various nations to the change. The USA, for example, attempts to claim all versions of American soil as their own. Australia’s indigenous people disappear through the worlds in record numbers. The UK is one of the few countries that tries to ban stepping, but most of the population can’t be bothered with it, given Britain is routinely so densely forested it’s hard to get very far.

We meet a lot of characters, all going through different things and showing the different ways people reacted to the aftermath of Step Day, and the timeline jumps back and forth with reckless abandon. The stars of the book for me, however, are the Earths themselves. They are mostly uniform, and generally the further you get from Datum Earth, the warmer they become. Evolution seems to be fairly universal too. Homo sapiens are unique, although hardly the only hominid, but evolution will pretty much always throw up things that (broadly speaking) can be called fish, elephants, pigs, deer and dogs. The truly remarkable worlds are the ones where something very odd has happened, such as being entirely covered in water, lacking a moon, or showing evidence of an intelligent species descended from the dinosaurs. The book passes through well over two million new Earths, and I’d (probably) happily read a guidebook to each and every one of them.

There is so much going on here, and I’m already intrigued to continue the journey with the rest of the series.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“Bonjour Tristesse” and “A Certain Smile” by Françoise Sagan (1954)

“This strange new feeling of mine, obsessing me by its sweet languor, is such that I am reluctant to dignify it with the fine, solemn name of ‘sadness’.”

Despite it only being a short boat ride away, I’ve never been to France. It’s not somewhere that holds a great deal of appeal for me, despite the wine flowing like water through the countryside. Besides, it’s much cheaper to travel by book. I’ve just paid two visits with this collection by one of France’s finest young writers.

In the first story, Bonjour Tristesse, we meet seventeen-year-old Cécile who enjoys a life of laziness on the French Riviera with her father, the philandering Raymond, and his new mistress, the superficial Elsa. Because Raymond has no intellectual interests, instead spending his time meeting women and socialising, Cécile in turn doesn’t show any interest in her studies, instead spending her time achieving a sexual eucducation from Cyril, the student in the villa next door.

Things change, however, when Anne, an old friend of Cécile’s mother appear at the villa. She is intelligent and cultured, and the same age as Raymond, making her a far more suitable match for marriage, and within days Elsa has been turfed out and Anne and Raymond announce their engagement. Seeing this as a threat to her lazy, privileged life, Cécile schemes with Cyril and Elsa to get Anne out of the picture, with tragic consequences.

In the second story, A Certain Smile, Dominique is a young Parisian student who embarks on an affair with Luc, the uncle of her current boyfriend, despite knowing that if his doting and very sweet wife Françoise was to find out, it would ruin their blossoming friendship. Unperturbed and acting on base instinct, the affair continues but Dominique is sure that Luc will never leave his wife, meaning more than one person’s heart will get broken as events unfold.

The Guardian, and I sense they aren’t alone, called Sagan “the French F. Scott Fitzgerald”. I’m not sure I’d go that far. There is perhaps a similarity in style, but my overall sense is that she’s a 1950s Sally Rooney. Like her, the stories are led by unlikable, selfish young women who have read too many stories and think they understand what love is. Cécile and Dominique both act without realising that everyone else around them is also human with their own emotions and failings, and one gets the impression that even when you leave them to deal with the fall out of their actions, they’re never going to learn from their mistakes.

The writing, however, is beautiful (it’s French and the French don’t do ugly) and conjures up the long days of French summers and the need to do nothing in a hurry. Despite being written sixty years ago, in many ways it feels surprisingly modern, and I suppose it just reveals that people haven’t really changed all that much, not at a fundamental level anyway. We’re all just looking for ways to stem the boredom that encroaches some days, but we may not always go about it the best way.

Of the two, I think I preferred A Certain Smile, but with both I found myself sympathising with the older female characters most of all. Anne and Françoise do not deserve their fates in these books, whereas the protagonists are, as I said, not people I want to befriend and the men are all, well, men. That’s maybe the bit that tells you more that you’re in a different era. A book like this could be written now, but must be prepared to face a backlash. It is of its time, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed for what it is now, too.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“Thunderhead” by Neal Shusterman (2018)

“Peach velvet with embroidered baby-blue trim.”

Last year, fiction conquered death. I’m now back with the sequel. As ever when reviewing a sequel, spoilers are abound so if you haven’t read Scythe or don’t want to know what happens next, look away now. We’re about to dive in. For those who need a refresher, however, recall that this series is set several centuries into the future where natural death has been eradicated, everyone only dies when chosen by a scythe, and the otherwise fairly utopian world is governed by the Thunderhead, a sentient AI that remains neutral and neither can or will interfere.

A year has passed since the events at the end of the last book. Rowan has been off-grid all this time, and has managed to turn himself into an urban legend, using the skills he learnt in his apprenticeship to hunt down corrupt scythes and glean them for good. No one has ever caught him, and for now it seems that no one ever will. Elsewhere, Scythe Anastasia – formerly Citra Terranova – is getting into the swing of her role, and has developed her own way of gleaning. She gives people a month’s notice to get their affairs in order and then lets them choose their own method of death.

Things in government, however, are not so rosy. A schism is forming in the Scythedom, with some believing the old ways are best and others looking for total reform. Worse still, it seems that someone is trying to glean Scythe Anastasia and Scythe Curie, and no one is quite sure who. The Thunderhead might know, but it is forbidden from speaking to the scythes. Instead, it nudges Greyson Tolliver, a neglected young man who was all but raised by Thunderhead into acting on its behalf, but the consequences are severe.

With confusion reigning across the Scythedom, and with High Blade Xenocrates standing down as the leader of the MidMerica region, there is a time for change ahead. But when an old face that everyone thought they’d seen the last of reappears and another lost figure has solved a centuries old puzzle which could save the world, nothing is certain anymore.

The first book in the series very much dealt with the nature of being a scythe, explaining how their government works, how they are trained, and what rules surround their jobs. This time, the focus shifts slightly and we get to learn a lot more about the Thunderhead. As sentient AI systems go, it seems one of the most benevolent. It provides for people and can control most aspects of the world including the weather and unemployment levels, but never interferes with anyone specifically. The Thunderhead and the Scythedom also cannot speak to one another, which feels like a massive oversight in the system, and this comes into play here.

As before, it’s a fascinatingly complex world that Shusterman has designed here. Set far enough into the future for everything to be slightly too weird, it is a world unlike ours in many ways, but humans will always be humans, so their failings continue even if their deaths have ended. The viewpoint jumps around considerably, but that just makes the world richer, as if we were following the action from just one or two places, the story wouldn’t have nearly as much depth. Like Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series, it feels like one of those worlds where morality is not tied to the “black and white” philosophy, and where you can see points on both sides. One can imagine how the series will end, but I’m not sure quite how we’re going to get there, as the book ends on a superb cliffhanger, and with several of the characters we’ve grown to know and love, well, if not dead then deadish.

The Toll, the third and final book in the series is out next week, and I will be getting to it sooner rather than later.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“The Platform Edge” edited by Mike Ashley (2019)

“‘There’s a lot in knowing your engine well,’ said the Driver, as he shut the regulator and laid hold of the Westinghouse brake handle.”

What is it about trains that makes them so fascinating? They’ve been around for a long time now and yet have generally had some kind of hold over us. They still seem romantic, dangerous, exciting things that can take us anywhere and give us a whole new adventure. Unless you’re travelling on Southern, of course, like I normally have to. On the other hand, fiction is peppered with them, and there they take on a whole new lease of life. Trains continue to fascinate, and so do ghost stories, so The Platform Edge is a perfect marriage, containing some of the most obscure and spooky stories of haunted trains and ghost locomotives ever written. Just in time for Halloween!

Spanning 1878 to 1985, these eighteen stories – edited together by Mike Ashley – bring railways old and new to life, each filling us with dread and horror. There are spectral passengers, tales of hypnosis, dead drivers with warnings from beyond the grave, a haunted ghost train, and who-knows-what lurking in the subway. The range of authors is wide too. While F. Scott Fitzgerald is in here, he’s probably the only one who is a household name. Others include the author of the Mapp and Lucia novels, E. F. Benson, and

More are very obscure. Michael Vincent is one such author and Ashley admits he didn’t manage to find out anything else about the man. L. G. Mobley is another who was noted in her time (her short story “Inexplicable” was a big influence on Sigmund Freud and his use of the word “uncanny”), but her story in this book, “A Strange Night” hasn’t been seen in print for over a century.

The outstanding story for me was “A Smoking Ghost” by W. G. Kelly. Unique and darkly funny, it contains an idea I’ve never seen anywhere before. A man is alone in a train carriage when a second traveller barges in. When our hero complains about the cold, the newcomer offers to swap places with him, but this happens far more literally than our hero could have imagined. In “A Subway Called Mobius”, the a subway is thrown into chaos when one of the trains entirely disappears. While it never shows up again in any stations, subway workers do occasionally hear it rumbling past, but always just out of sight and often in two places at once. “The Last Train” takes us into the London Underground where a driver is under the impression that the disused station Museum is still active. He wonders what would happen if he stopped there…

In fact, the story I was least impressed with was Fitzgerald’s. His comes late in the book, and is about a haunted train and a lost love, but it’s a little disjointed and never quite grabbed me in the same way as many of the others. Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt – I expected more given the high quality of the stories that had come before. While there’s no way we can remember all authors equally, it is wonderful to have some of these forgotten names given a chance to be rediscovered. When you learn that some of these stories have been lost and languishing in libraries for over a hundred years, it makes you wonder what else we’ve forgotten. Well done to the British Library to taking the time to dig up these forgotten gems.

If you want a little bit of a fright this Halloween season, this is a good place to start.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“Kismet” by Luke Tredget (2018)

“The bus to Kilburn is a long time coming, and while waiting Anna looks back and forth between two versions of the Edgware Road, the real and the digital.”

As the chronically single member of my friendship group, I’m the only one who has much experience with dating apps. Most of the people I know seemed to get in just in time and settled down before they could download. I’m not particularly a fan though, as it’s often difficult to maintain a conversation with someone when there’s no need to reply immediately and you can project whatever version of yourself on there you like. There’s no denying, however, that they have changed the dating landscape forever, and some people seem to become obsessed with them. Luke Tredget’s book, therefore, is very timely.

Anna is having a bit of a crisis. While her career is going from strength-to-strength, and she’s got a great boyfriend in Pete, her thirtieth birthday is inching ever closer, and she begins to doubt whether she’s really got what she wanted. Intrigued, she downloads Kismet, a dating app that matches you to people nearby, but to her dismay she finds that the app has been so successful in the last few years that there are barely any single people left. That is, until she meets Geoff. He’s quite a bit older than her and, while handsome, she wouldn’t normally consider him dating material, but Kismet has given them a match of 81, which is extraordinarily high.

She starts to question everything, not least her relationship with Pete which Kismet rates at 70. Surely if there’s an option to do better, she should take it? She’s become all the more nervous because she’s accidentally discovered that Pete is going to propose after her birthday dinner and she isn’t sure she’s ready for that yet. As she looks at her life and all the things she’s yet to do, the stability of everything crumbles around her, all for the sake of a simple number on a screen.

The cover quote says that this is the book equivalent of Fleabag, which is true in that it’s about a not particularly likeable woman showing agency regarding her sex life, but I would say otherwise that it’s not quite the same thing. It is, however, a hugely important book for the zeitgeist. We are so used to algorithms now telling us what we should like, do and be, that even when it comes to love we’re happy to pass over responsibility to an artificial intelligence that thinks we’re compatible with someone just because we’ve watched the same TV show. You only need to spend five minutes on a dating app to know that these numbers are mostly meaningless. For example, I just checked my rarely-used OK Cupid profile and have a 91% match with a girl, but the entirety of her profile is a single “I’ll fill this in later” and it seems to therefore be based on the fact we both think Paris is more romantic than a camping holiday, and an aversion to horror movies. Hardly enough to make me drop everything and run off to find her.

The book is a romance, but not many of the old cliches are in evidence, which is nice. Rather than being desperate to settle down with her partner, Anna is scared by the commitment of marriage, and the mistakes she makes with her job are not part of her “ditzy but charming personality”, but rather quite serious and have actual consequences. While superficially, she and Geoff are a good match, Tredget does a good job at dismantling the notion that we are better off with someone just because it’s better on paper. It doesn’t account for everything, as there are some things that even Amazon and Facebook don’t know for sure about us. Kismet is shown as a particularly advanced app, but with a lot of secrecy embedded into its functionality, and it works on a whole other level to Tinder and its kin, suggesting this is a slightly altered version of our world where technology has developed a little faster. The app is spooky, but the world seems obsessed by it, as Anna is frequently seeing news stories and adverts for it, implying it is a hugely influential piece of tech.

I enjoyed the book because it toys with that notion of finding “the one” and how we’re all imperfect people trying to find perfection. Tinder only works because you can swipe left with few consequences, as another face will be along in the blink of an eye. How many people have you rejected on dating apps that you’d probably actually have quite a good time with? Kismet makes the reader face up to the idea of being happy with what you’ve got, rather than constantly striving for something that you think will be better, regardless of whether or not it actually is.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“Death Of A Bore” by M. C. Beaton (2006)

“There used to be quite a lot going on in a highland village during the long, dark winter months.”

Since I can’t be in Scotland as often as I’d like, it’s time to return via literature. It’s a lot cheaper too, and I get to spend some more time in the company of the delightful PC Hamish Macbeth. Once again, murder has come to Lochdubh, and the village is shaken.

John Heppel is a writer of literary fiction of dubious quality. Based on his youth growing up in the slums of Glasgow, his magnum opus is Tenement Days, but while some people worship it, others think it’s a lot of nonsense. Keen on the sound of his own voice, Heppel begins a writing class for the village and Hamish Macbeth is stunned to learn that nearly everyone in Lochdubh thinks they’ve got a novel in them. Heppel, however, makes enemies when he uses the class to instead talk about himself and pour scorn on everyone else’s creative attempts.

It, therefore, can’t come as much of a surprise when Heppel is found dead in his home, a suicide note on his computer and his mouth full of black ink. Since the villagers took umbrage with him and even pelted him with tomatoes on local news, it seems that all of them are on the suspect list, but Hamish knows these people and doesn’t think any of them are capable of murder. He instead turns his attention to the people at Strathbane Television where Heppel had just written a script for the soap opera Down in the Glen. Could someone there have a grudge? Hamish must reunite with an old flame to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The book remains as charming as the others in the series, and Hamish and his unorthodox policing methods are still fun and enjoyable. He freely admits that, while he pretends he maintains his job as a simple village copper (despite proving time and time again that he could be in a much more senior role) because he wants to ensure the village’s old people are looked after, he simply has no ambition. Sometimes that’s absolutely fine. He’s also becoming increasingly attractive, as it seems there’s hardly a new woman to cross his path who doesn’t immediately see him as a potential husband. There seems to be something in their desire to look after him and they see him as lonely. He seems to be doing just fine to me, although perhaps it’s just because he’s still caught up on his ex.

The one problem with these books is that because it’s set in a small village and many of the same characters recur over and over, when they all get named as suspects you immediately know that none of them are responsible as it would upset the status quo too much. I daresay that maybe somewhere in Beaton’s canon she pulls the rug out from under us and we’ll lose one of the regulars to crime, but for now they are safe and you can’t take any of their threats too seriously. However, their actions serve to spread gossip and prove that everyone has secrets.

Another love letter to the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and a funny, charming and intriguing story.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

Six of the Best … Books about death

Death is one of the certainties of life. Everyone and everything will die, and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. While in the real world, the two constants seem to be death and taxes, in fiction it’s death and love. Every book I think I’ve ever read contains at least one death and one person in love. Today, however, with Halloween on the horizon, we’ll just be focusing on one of those.

No one knows what happens when we die. I like to imagine that whatever comes next is some kind of library. Because the answer is unknown, however, it has given writers of all stripes free reign to go wild with their imaginations. Throughout history, death has been talked and thought about, and it’s perhaps one of the main reasons we ended up with religion, as a lot of it seems to centre around what happens to us after we die. We are lucky as a society now that we rarely brush up against death. There are people dedicated to dealing with it, life expectancy is high, and hospitals and doctors are on hand when things begin to reach there end. Things were not always this way, though. In earlier times, death rates were much higher, and infant mortality was just a tragic but commonplace fact of life. People were used to seeing and dealing with dead bodies. One would guess that our ancestors were not as squeamish as many of us today may be, but we can’t really know for sure.

Death as a process is fascinating, and some scientists have even asked why it evolved in the first place. Is there an evolutionary reason for growing old and dying? Certainly there must be, or it wouldn’t have happened. Most people assume that older generations die off to allow there to be food and resources for the upcoming ones, and that seems to make the most sense to me. If nothing ever died, the world would be pretty crowded by now.

In 2011, a piece in Psychology Today even suggested that death is just an illusion. Maybe it is. This could easily just be a phase that we pass through between others we don’t remember and ones that we’ve yet to experience. Maybe we all keep going round and round. I suppose one day we will find out. For now, though, I think it is important to talk about death. Maybe not in casual conversation on the bus, but it is important not to fear it, to be able to come to terms with its existence, and to help comfort those who are dealing with it. It would be heartless to say we should just “get over it” and I don’t agree that’s the right way to go about things. Literature, as ever, comes to the rescue. By seeing something in fiction, it gives us a lens to view reality in a new way. We can understand death by how our favourite fictional characters react to it.

Let’s press on to six of the best books where death takes centre stage.

Scythe

Hundreds of years from now, humanity has managed to eradicate death. There is no more illness or injury, and the only way to die is to be gleaned by a scythe – someone who has been trained in the art of killing. You never quite know when your time will come, and there is no arguing with a scythe. The only rule is that no one would wants to be one can ever achieve the role. Citra and Rowan are two young people who both are against this normality and find the idea of murder abhorrent, but when they are both selected as apprentices to Scythe Faraday, they have no choice but to enter a new world and have their whole lives turned upside down.

A story that removes death from the world is not unique, but there was something particularly chilling and fascinating about this one. Neal Shusterman imbues the novel with great detail and a lot of lore that really makes the world, ironically, come alive. It’s a great worldbuilding exercise, and despite the potentially dark subject matter, there are some really fun moments. Without death, crime has vastly decreased as everyone lives so long as to be on a similar footing in society, and religion has faded because there’s no discussions on the afterlife anymore. The introduction of tonal cults – sects that worship sounds and smells – is one that feels very unique and is an example of what can be achieved in storytelling when you take away something as fundamental as death.

R.I.P.

There seems to be a taboo in Western society that says death is not something that we should consider funny. Granted, in certain circumstances I agree, but I’m also someone who believes there is comedy to be found in pretty much anything and that context is key. Nigel Williams is a funny writer, and he tackles death with just as many laughs in R.I.P. as he does in any of his other books. George wakes up one morning feeling absolutely fine, with the slight exception of the fact he’s dead. His mother, Jessica, has also died in the house that day, on the eve of her ninety-ninth birthday. The house is full of guests, and when it is revealed to the police that Jessica was worth twelve million pounds and no one has seen the latest will, it appears that both she and George may have been murdered, and everyone else in the family is now a suspect. Bittersweet and working as a genuine murder mystery despite being narrated by one of the victims, it’s a great look at ghosts and how our consciousness may carry on once our body shuts down for good.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

It’s rare that a novel opens with a death, but Mitch Albom manages it here. Eddie is eighty-three when, while trying to save a small girl’s life, he loses his own. He finds himself in the afterlife, where he meets five people, one at a time, each of whom had a huge impact on his life. Between them, they will help Eddie explore and explain his time on Earth, and only when he’s met them all will he be able to move on to whatever comes next. I’ve read it twice, and just bought the long-awaited sequel as well, and think it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Albom has a stunning way with words, and conjures up great images from his precision and expertise. It is a book that reminds us that while we are the protagonist in our own story, everyone else has one too, and we’re just side characters in those. All stories are interconnected and nothing happens in a vacuum.

Sum

Of course, Mitch Albom’s version of the afterlife is only one possibility. In David Eagleman’s astonishingly beautiful Sum, he presents forty possible versions of the afterlife, each as beguiling, entrancing and magical as each other. In one, we find that power over the universe was handed over to a committee quite early on in the process. In another, we don’t die until we are entirely forgotten on Earth, which means the likes of Shakespeare are still there unable to move on for good. In one you meet all the different versions of yourself, and in yet one more, you can only spend time with people you knew on Earth. Some are fun, such as becoming the actors in the dreams of the living, and some are desperately weird, such as every atom in the universe being made up of the exact same quark that is attempting to be everything and everyone, and will eventually just wind itself down. It is, without question, one of my favourite books of all time and for such a slim novel contains so many lessons and ways of looking at the world.

Mort

I’m not particularly a Discworld fan, but I didn’t think I could let a post like this pass without mentioning Mort. Terry Pratchett’s character of Death is, despite everything I feel about the series, one of the greatest inventions in literary history. Dedicated to his job and quietly fascinated by the humans he has to deal with on a daily basis, the only time I can ever really bring myself to the world is when he’s in a starring role.

The title character of Mort is unsuited for the family business, and instead gets an apprenticeship under Death himself, leaning to take souls and deal in the business of death. When Mort fails to collect the soul of Princess Keli but instead kills her assassin, he sets in motion a parallel universe that will eventually collapse and see her dead anyway. Death, meanwhile, is taking a well-earned break while his apprentice holds down the fort and is learning what it’s like to be human. Mort must seek advice from Albert, Death’s assistant and former wizard, in protecting fate and seeing the universe restored to normality. Like all Discworld novels, it’s packed with jokes, silliness and some of the most phenomenally intricate world building ever attempted. While it’s the fourth book in the series, even Pratchett himself said this is the first one he actually liked.

Duck, Death and the Tulip

Death to many is scary, and children in particular may not understand the finality of the process. Duck, Death and the Tulip is a German book by Wolf Erlbruch and has been translated into many languages. In it, a duck meets the character of Death, who has been following her all her life. The two strike up a friendship and discuss life, death and a potential afterlife. Although Death seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to directly give the duck any answers, the conversations seem to bring about a certain peace, leading to a very moving ending where the title’s tulip comes into play. It’s short and sweet and has utterly adorable illustrations. It’s one of those books that is great for children and adults alike. I didn’t discover it until I was in my mid-twenties, but it charmed me immediately. With a touch of humour, the book provides a great deal of comfort and is a vital tool for all ages.

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Thanks for joining in and reading this new entry in my new series, Six of the Best. This is a twice-monthly series in which I take a look at fiction and books more generally and explore the fictional worlds I love so much. If you’ve got any suggestions for things you’d like to see me talk about, then please comment and let me know!