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I offered this book up as a random option for a book club read, wanting something short, recent and Nigerian. It has been great fun having the fact that Nigeria is one of the major hubs of modern day English literature slowly dawn on me, with the classic greats such and Chinua Achebe and Amos Tutuola, but also more recent authors of the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The voices are fresh, replete with understandings and experiences which are a far cry from the typical North American or British offerings, and Ghostroots - far from perfect as it may be - did not disappoint.

We find ourselves gifted with 12 short stories, each of a perfect length to be read in a single evening with ample time to meditate on the themes and forms the stories take on. My personal two favourites are “Breastmilk” - a story of a woman struggling to come to terms with her acceptance of the inacceptable - and “The Hollow” - a story about what houses can be, and which left me regularly and emphatically saying “oh noooooooooo”.

The impact of the different stories varies, but most manage to feel satisfying concluded - not always a given with short stories. There is a decent variety of themes and moods, with the ideas of problematic mothers, men are not ok, and the pains of aging as a woman being some of the most recurrent, while never feeling repetitive for all that they permeate the book. Definitely watch for how pronouns and points of view are used in each story, they add to the fun.

Worth a read, especially with how digestible this book is, and curious which stories will most stand out to other people. For my book club, Breastmilk was the clear stand out.

ARC provided by NetGalley.

When getting this book to review, two parts of my life came to mind: buying second hand books from the store near my school, and my first experiences of volunteer work.

An odd way to start the review, fair, but they both heavily influenced how I felt about the book.

When I was younger, my main source of books was a second hand book store, leaving options limited and eclectic, and I would often pick up the second or third book in a series as my first foray in a setting. Bee Speaker being the 3rd in a series of books and my first Tchaikovsky book gave the read the feeling of there being a bigger world that I was not fully aware of, which was surprisingly refreshing. It made a story which has only three locations feel much wider and part of a real world. I also appreciated that despite that feeling of there being a larger world, everything was made clear quickly and succinctly, never leaving me feel lost in what was happening or who we were talking about.

The other part of my life which came to mind as I was reading was, as mentioned above, my first experiences of volunteer work. The story of Bee Speaker is as follows: a team of people from the human colony of Mars return to Earth to try and help after receiving a distress call, and in trying to help, make everything hit the fan at record speed. People setting out to change the world often go into it with visions of a changed world, only to be confronted with the realities of how hard the world is to change, and that seems to be a big part of the idea behind the story. Add in an interesting take on AI, genetically engineered dogs, reptiles and transhumanist Martians in a world destroyed by unbridled capitalism and post-ai dependence on unsustainable tech, and you've got a setting with some fun chaos to offer.

Tchaikovsky writes extremely well, with a voice which stands distinctly apart from other authors, and feels erudite, thoughtful and down to earth all at the same time, and allows for the book to almost feel like someone telling you an anecdote from their own lives. Throughout beekeeper there is a large cast of POVs, giving us an understanding of events from all sides of the discussion, often switching between characters who are antagonistic towards each other as they are interacting, and letting us get a full 360 shot of quite a few scenes.

A great time, a great and quick read, Tchaikovsky has jumped up higher on my TBR.

Guy Gavriel Kay knows how to write, and this book is no exception to that - the turns of phrase, the characters and the scenes all shine with the same brightness I found while reading Tigana and the Lions of Al-Rassan. But. But, but but. There are a few awkward stumblings, and a few moments which pulled this book out of the clutches of being of the same level of quality as Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan to me.

As will be the norm with all but a few of GGK's books, we find ourselves in a world both familiar and foreign, this time taking its aesthetic and thematic cues from troubadour-infested Languedoc of the 12-13th century. Courteous love, the push and pull of desire and respectability, romantic chivalry, poetry and song are all along for the ride, and happily so. GGK likes his artistic bent to his writing, cheerfully advancing the plot and helping us to understand the characters of his stories through the songs and poems he includes.

With the mood in mind, we need to also look at the underlying themes, and of the ones one could pull from the novel, what stands out to me is the idea of the weight of the past. Many of the characters in A Song for Arbonne are weighed down by their past decisions, by choices they made, and the wounds left thereafter. And what's especially interesting is how many of these characters don't go through the classic narrative arc of getting over their past within the story of the book, and in fact I wonder if any get past it at all, with the exception of exactly two characters who die immediately after they reach that point. Because as people do we ever really get over what we have done or has been done to us? It's a refreshingly honest portrayal.

Of the characters, I found myself quite liking the mercenary Blaise and Duke Bertran - characters which are very much alike, yet polar opposites. One a sword-for-hire rejecting his "given role" in life, the other a powerful noble fully taking on his own role. One stern and reserved, the other fully embracing the joyful hedonism of troubadour culture. Of the two, we only get the POV of Blaise, and it makes for an interesting contrast of characters, leaving us to wonder at a lot of what Bertran shows to the world.

Now, I mentioned "stumblings" earlier, and these stumblings are what makes A Song for Arbonne a less successful book in my eyes than Tigana or the Lions of Al-Rassan. The first of these is the introduction of the antagonistic faction of the story. From two other readings of GGK I had really enjoyed how there is not necessarily a side which is the "good" side. Sure, there are groups you may root for, but arguments could be made for the "bad guys" being in the right. In A Song for Arbonne, the intro of the antagonists gave me whiplash from how clearly and grossly evil they were. Ademar, the king of Gorhaut, is just the icky-est individual, and Geralt de Gersanc, the High Elder of Corannos gave me the impression of being that kid in school who claimed to be performing "social experiments" whenever he was called out on his bullshit. There is no nuane, no room for discussion of the merits of one side over the other. Arbonne is good, Gorhaut is bad (save for the exception of Fulk, Rosala and Blaise).

The other issue I had with the book was that the ending felt very "telenovela". Too many coincidences, too many surprise reveals. Some of those reveals needed to happen, one was completely out of the blue and actually made me groan.

I still recommend the book - in fact once I was finished I ordered every Guy Gavriel Kay book I didn't own. But it is definitely not his best to my taste.