Killers of a certain age by Deanna Rayburn

I've tagged this one "mystery" but it's really more in the vein of "thriller".  

Our heroines are just-retired assassins who were employed by a private organization that was originally founded to hunt down and kill Nazis who had escaped ordinary justice. Now the four sixty-year-old women are reunited for a retirement cruise. We see their glory days as assassins in flashbacks that show them posing as stewardesses, nuns, archeology students and more to carry out elaborate killing plots that rid the world of various drug dealers, crooked bishops, and yes, even elderly Nazis.

In the present day, the women reminisce about their past while commiserating about lost loves, post-retirement life, and the inexorable symptoms of aging -- until one of them notices something that seems wrong, and they are launched into an adventure that requires them to use all of their skills to survive.

This book has a light-hearted tone at odds with the rather brutal murders that are sprinkled liberally across its pages. Because (of course /s) the very idea of a deadly 60 year-old woman is ridiculous.

I could fault the premise, but it seems to form the basis of the entire 'unlikely assassin' genre: it's certainly the rationale behind books like An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good and the entire Mrs Polifax series.

Killers is entertaining despite its many improbabilities and numerous plot holes, and delivers pretty much exactly what you'd expect on every page.  3/5 stars.

Trees against the wind: The birth of prairie shelterbelts by William R. Schroeder

 When you drive across the Canadian prairies, you'll soon notice that most farmyards are surrounded by trees. This isn't an accident. For 111 years, the Canadian government operated a prairie agroforestry program to support homesteading, control erosion, and enhance agricultural production. Over its lifetime  the Prairie Shelterbelt Program (its final name) gave away 175 million trees, free of charge, to Canadian farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. It changed the face of the prairies.

Growing up in Saskatchewan, I was familiar with shelterbelts. Some farms, particularly in the south of the province, had fields bordered by long hedgerows.  Almost every farm had a rectangular box of trees surrounding its farmhouse, barns, and equipment sheds.  I never questioned this: it's just how farms were. 

Trees Against the Wind explains.  The Indian Head Forestry Nursery Station (and later the Saskatoon Forestry Farm) were founded by Norman Ross, who oversaw a research program that identified the best trees for planting on the prairies and established the horticultural techniques needed to successfully grow them. Ross also created a nursery program that grew millions of trees annually, devised shipping techniques for seedlings that ensured the trees reached farmers alive (even in the days when they were transported by train and horse cart), and created an outreach/extension program to mentor farmers in tree husbandry so that most shelterbelt trees survived and thrived. He also publicized and promoted the tree planting program and cultivated the political support that saved it from budget cuts more than once. He also also never hired anyone with a non-British background to a responsible position on his team, and was known for being a bit of a martinet -- and didn't earn enough money to send his only son to University.

Other things I learnt by reading this book:

• Carragana hedges are ubiquitous in the oldest parts of Saskatoon, so I've always known about carragana. As it turns out,  carragana shrubs are originally from Siberia, and were the single hardiest tree produced by the shelterbelt program. During the severe drought of the Great Depression, the program focused on growing and distributing carragana because it was the plant most likely to survive.
• The Forestry Farm Park in Saskatoon -- d'uh!-- was originally a secondary tree plantation that was founded to expand production for the shelterbelt program. It operated as a tree farm until 1966, when operations ceased and it was transferred to the City of Saskatoon.  The main park area you visit today was conceived as a 'demonstration project' to show farmers what they could achieve by planting on their farms.
• The shelterbelt program originally focused on foresting farmyards.  Most of the prairies (especially the southern prairies) were flat and featureless.  By creating a treed farmyard, famers could not only shelter their homes from the ceaseless winds, they could capture snow over the winter, and create a tiny oasis where they could grow food plants (fruit trees and vegetables) that would otherwise not survive.  In the early years of the program, homesteads with farmyard shelterbelts were much more likely to remain occupied, because they made the farm much more hospitable for farm families.
• The husbandry techniques identified by the program meant that most trees could survive without watering, even in their early stages.  The techniques included soil preparation, the depth of planting, tree spacing, the mix of species used, and frequent weeding/inter-row cultivation during the seedlings' first three years.

Who should read this book?  Anyone who wonders why the Canadian prairies look like they do today, or who is interested in the history of horticulture and forestry in this part of the world. 

Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell

 Another space opera!  I'm not sure why I haven't heard of Gareth Powell, because he's published many books and has been nominated for or won multiple British Science Fiction Association awards. 

Apparently Stars and Bones is the first in new series for Powell, but it reads like a stand-alone. Well-written, well-plotted, with both some interesting original ideas and some borrowed ones (there were elements that reminded of both The Expanse and Ancilliary Justice.)  

The book grabbed me harder than Stina Leicht or L.M. Sagas, although I'm not entirely sure why. Because it had a gripping adventure plot? (instead of centring the relationships? Not that relationships aren't important -- our heroine takes some foolish risks to rescue people that she cares about.)

I'd be up for reading more books by Powell, although for me they fall into the category of "that's  entertaining" rather than "that's amazing".

Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon

 Why?  Why do I feel compelled to finish books?  The world is full of books, my time on this earth is limited, and there is no reason on earth to spend any of it reading books that I'm not really enjoying.  (Other than my recent obsession with meeting my Goodreads/Storygraph annual reading goals. Four books ahead of schedule as of today!)

Yes, I struggled to finish this one.  Yes, I did finish it.  

Was it a bad book?  Not at all.  The cover quotes reviews saying things like "Mind-bendingly clever and utterly gripping" and "Ingenious" and I can see where those comments come from.  It's well-written too.  

What's my problem? A number of things. The book has to overcome the fact that it leans into a couple of tropes/conventions that are not generally my favourites:

• Multiple characters, multiple timelines, multiple storylines that have no clear connection
• Reader is lost amongst a random, confusing set of situations in a universe where much of what happens makes little sense.  Rules of the world need to be inferred over many pages (Reader only begins to understand the overall situation about 125 pages in.)

Basically, Psalms 'buries the lede'. Which is not all bad.  Not every book needs to be (or should be!) an adventure full of characters saying "As you know Bob, if the graffelgrommit fails we're all DOOOOOOMED!"  

Equally though, does any book need to be stuffed full of graphic descriptions of post-WWII torture murders of Nazis?  Alongside conquistador murders and slavery torments and beatings by racist cops? Especially when all of these gruesome storylines are actually pretty peripheral to the main plot? They're more in the line of illustrations of the fact that we are operating in a universe with  <spoiler>  many parallel and interconnecting simulated worlds </spoiler>.

Why did I finish?  Because the 125 pages point was well-calibrated. (Any later and sorry, I'm not intrigued, I'm frustrated and bored.)  Because the writing was vivid, and the situations were gripping and/or intriguing (especially the ones that didn't feature graphic violence).  Because I wanted to see how everything came together. (Hallelujah. It did! In books like this it doesn't always.) Because the book had an editor (my guess :-) who insisted on the rare chapters that included clear explanations.  Because I could skip the most graphic descriptions of horrible things.

But mostly, because I'm stubborn.  Otherwise I'd have stopped at about page 250 (of 538).  

The Emotional Brain: Lost and found in the science of emotion by Dean Burnett

I wouldn't rate this one more than 3 stars out of 5, if this were Goodreads or Storygraph, mostly because I didn't find it a super-engaging read.  This is ironic because the author structures the entire book around his personal story of trying to understand his own emotions after the death of his father during COVID -- and one of his conclusions is that humans are wired to be more engaged by personal and emotional stories than by 'pure facts'.

I do have a few take-aways though:

• There is no 'scientific' definition of what an emotion is. Emotions are complicated.
• Many brain structures are involved in the creation of emotions, and emotions influence most brain functions
• Cognition (rational thought) is dependent on emotion: how else are we to identify what is important to focus on (of the literally overwhelming number and variety of things we can sense, remember, or identify)?  Without emotion, on what basis would we make decisions? (after all, what is a 'good' or 'bad' outcome without emotion? what would those words even mean?)
• Emotions evolved from our most primitive evaluative functions, deep in our evolutionary past. How do we know?  Emotions are fundamentally linked to our sense of smell i.e./ the part of our brain that evaluates chemical inputs. (The author imagines a single-celled organism in the primordial ooze being attracted to or repelled by chemicals that are useful or dangerous.)
• Sharing emotions, understanding others' emotions, being influenced by others' emotions....these are the basis of human cooperation, human survival, and ultimately, human evolutionary success. 
• Which is why we are more likely to believe information conveyed by someone we have an emotional connection with....and that's why anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists. climate deniers....

So, informative and worth reading, even if I found a few of his conclusions trite (no, I don't think we are attracted to rational thought because we find it emotionally satisfying. I think we are attracted to rationality because it works.)

 

The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson

You aren't as tough as a voyageur.  No, not even if you run marathons.  Not even if you run ultramarathons.

The York Factory Express is a non-fiction book based on the journals kept by Hudson's Bay Company 'gentleman' (company administrators). It documents their annual trip from the HBC post at modern-day Vancouver, Washington to the main HBC depot at York Factory Manitoba on the shores of Hudson Bay.  Remarkably, they made this 2,700 mile (4300 km) trip by paddle, sail, horseback, snowshoes, and foot without benefit of railroads, roads, or engines of any kind.  The main motive power was the voyageurs who paddled and rowed the boats upstream, except when the current was so strong that they needed to 'line' the boats through rapids with ropes or carry them across portages. To cross the Rockies they left the boats behind and snowshoed up and across Athabasca Pass (https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/alberta/athabasca-pass-from-jasper claims total elevation gain of 2500m), carrying packs of up to 70 pounds.  Days were long too: the journals document daily start times ranging from 2:30am to 4:30am, with days ending at 8 or 9pm -- except when they travelled all night to find better conditions for snowshoeing of course.

The trip typically took 3.5 months each way.  

Why?  Well, I also don't want to hear anyone complain about their work meetings again.  Sure, maybe that meeting could have been an email, but at least you didn't have to travel across the continent to attend.  It took sailing ships from England two years to reach Fort Vancouver. By travelling overland to to the annual HBC administrator meeting at Norway House (or the Red River colony), central administrators could get an annual accounting of the activities of Western fur traders, and the Western fur traders could make more timely requests for the right amounts and varieties of trade goods (which were  delivered by those annual ships from England).

The York Factory Express tells a remarkable story.

How about the book itself? The author quotes extensively from fur trade journals, and the book has a number of helpful maps to illustrate the path taken by the Express. However, I have to sympathize slightly with the reviewer on Goodreads who says "Like the voyageurs, my main feeling on finishing was relief that the journey was finally over."  The book would have been much improved if the author had added more analysis and context.  I found myself turning to the internet repeatedly to understand where locations mentioned in the book are in terms of modern landmarks, a task made more difficult by the fact that most of the rivers the Express travelled have since been extensively altered by Hydro developments.  I also struggled sometimes with fur trade terminology and history -- when there are explanations, they often appear well after the terms, events, or people in question are first mentioned.  

Who should read this book?  Anyone interested in the history of the land we all now share, or who wants to understand why Cumberland House (1774) is the earliest European settlement in the province of Saskatchewan.  But it would help if you already knew something about the history of Western Canada and the role of the Hudson's Bay Company in that history, as the author assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of her readers.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinsin

 Well, this is a change of pace. You know how I said I like 'cozy' books? The Traitor Baru Cormorant definitely doesn't qualify.

Baru Cormorant is a story of colonization, told from the point of view of one of the colonized people (like Mission Child by Maureen McHugh).  As in all stories sympathetic to colonized peoples (like Ancilliary Justice by Anne Leckie), the background of the book is quite grim.  Baru is removed from her family as a child and is educated in the colonizer's school to teach her both the values of the colonizers and the specific skills that will make her useful to Empire. As in The Poppy War by RF Kuang, our protagonist overcomes her disadvantaged background to excel in the imperial service exams.  From there Baru takes up a challenging post in service to the Falcresti empire. Her secret goal is to remain true to her family and her birth society.  She wants nothing more than to find a way to free Taranoki from imperial rule.

This is a morally complex story with a morally complex protagonist and a surprising but inevitable conclusion.  And while the book has its moments, overall it's very dark from page one through to the end.  As a writer I admire and hope to learn from Dickinsin's skilled use of foreshadowing, but I am not planning to read the two sequels.  At the moment I'm not up for reading more dark stories set in dark worlds.