The Art of Neil Gaiman: The Visual Story of One of the World’s Most Vital Creative Forces by Hayley Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Neil Gaiman seems to exist in a binary state. You either know him and all the things that he has created over the years, or you don’t. But when you talk to those that have gone ‘Who?’ it doesn’t take long for them to realise that they have come across him in one form or other, they just weren’t aware of it. He is a prolific and original tour de force who has given us some amazing creations.

So far he has written novels, non-fictions books, comics, graphic novels, articles and speeches. On top of that he has then created scripts for radio, film and TV shows and theatre, collaborated with all manner of people on all sorts of subjects and projects, sung on stage despite “no kind of singing voice”, dabbled with art and is not afraid to be political for issues that he is passionate about. Somehow he manages to fit in a professorship and tours publicising his own material and with his current wife Amanda Palmer.

Hayley is the daughter of Eddie Campbell, a graphic novelist and long-time friends of Neil Gaiman. This friendship allowed her almost unrestricted access to the archives, notebooks, random scribblings and most importantly the mind of Gaiman to show just how he creates the things he does best. It is a lavishly illustrated book, full of scanned images of the drafts and germs of ideas, that over time became the books and graphic novels that he is best known for. There are loads of photos of him from early years when growing up and some equally dodgy ones from when he was a journalist as well. I knew he had a boundless imagination, but what came across is just how long some of his most successful books took from the initial spark of an idea to the final offering. It is not that he is a slow, jut some of these things need time and thought invested to make them as good as they are.

Campbell has given us such a good book, it is not quite a biography, but reading this feels like you are privy to the places where the magic happened. One minor flaw is that there could have been a little more on Neil, but I guess that will come one day in another book. A stunning book and one that I am going to be buying.

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Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rose cannot wait to ride her new bike, the one with the tassels on the end, so she sneaks out the house and cycles off. Something distracts her and she leaves her bike at the edge of the trail and climbs down to see what was making the light… Some time later she comes to, finding herself in a perfectly square hole with her father looking down at her. After they had got her out and back home, one of the firemen asked if she would like to see some photos, she was at the bottom of a hole lying in the centre of a giant metal hand surrounded by glowing symbols.

Skip forward a few year and that girl is now Dr Rose Franklin and the world’s leading expert of the item that she inadvertently discovered. The hand defies all logic. It is made of iridium, normally a super rare metal and the weight of the object does not tally with its volume. Everything about it is strange. The research into it is now higher than top secret after they realised that there are other parts of the body scattered around the world after accidently discovering one in Turkey. The race is on to find them all before other countries work out what the Americans are looking for, and then they might, just might be able to understand the significance of their discoveries. But will they get the significance, and just who is this guy who keeps asking the most probing questions.

Overall this is quite a good book, I liked its innovative plot and concept of this artefact having been left by a race utterly unknown to us that we could only begin to find when we had reached a certain point in our technological development. I like some of the ‘interview style’ prose, it added drama and a sinister edge, but after a while it did get a bit much as it slowed down the narrative at times. Worth reading though as It as the sci-fi addition gives us a completely different take on the world domination political thriller genre. 3.5 Stars

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Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Yuval Noah Harari’s previous book, Sapiens, he considered how humanity got to where we are today from a hunter-gatherer culture to a modern industrial farming systems that can support millions. In this latest volume, Home Deus, he contemplates the future; our future, and the events that will shape us in the twenty-first century.

We have reached the apex of our abilities with current technology. Going back only a hundred years our lives were frequently cut short by famine, war and illness. Today, in the Western world at least, we have mostly conquered disease and extended our lifespan, but now we are as likely to suffer from obesity or contemplate suicide, total different challenges for the coming decades. He suggests that these will be met as we embrace the modern age of data, pervasive networks and genetic modification. That is assuming that we have a place to live as our world too is under threat because of our relentless pursuit of extracting the maximum resources for the cheapest price.

So, what does the future hold for humanity?

Harari ponders the possibilities and pitfalls of our future self. He asks and goes some way to answer the questions that we will have to address in the coming years. He proposes that our obsession with information flow may almost become a religion, dataism. How will we deal with the dilemma of choosing between intelligence and consciousness and what is the possibility that we might become part of a wider algorithm or part of the internet of things. These are all interesting questions and whilst he goes some way to answering them, there is a fair amount that is pure speculation and conjecture, but that is what makes this actually quite an interesting book. 3.5 stars overall.

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How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

AIDS was supposed to be the next pandemic, A disease that would take out 1 in 4 of the population. So far this virus has claimed around 40 million victims and it is thought that there are around 37 million still carrying the HIV or full blown AIDS virus at present. These are huge numbers. When it surfaced in the early 1980’s in America no one knew anything about it. It was passed from individual to individual through sexual contact and once it had entered into the gay community it spread rapidly. No one knew how to treat the symptoms or even if it was curable. Most people in America, in particular, those of a right wing persuasion could not be described as ‘sympathetic’ of the New York or any other gay community. This was even before men started to start to succumb to this unknown illness, initially thought to be some form of cancer, which was fast becoming an epidemic. It was a huge struggle for the gay community to even gain acceptance a lot of the time, this unknown virus was seen by some to be some sort of punishment. The problem was that this virus was decimating people.

David France brings us this insider’s view from the gay community on the characters that fought for recognition of their rights through the group ACT UP and for the fight that they had for resources for finding out just what this illness was and if it could be cured. This book is not the easiest to read, it is very dense, long and incredibly detailed. However, because of France’s perspective from within the community that suffered the most by reading this, you will gain an insider’s perspective on the devastation that was wreaked on the gay community in the early 1980s. He lost partners and many close friends and associates to the virus and this made him do what he could do best, write. He describes the pretty despicable action by the American team of scientists undertaking research after the French team at the Institut Pasteur discovered the HIV-1 virus, and how Burroughs Wellcome developed AZT; supposedly the drug that would help those suffering. Problem was, it didn’t work. They made a fortune and still, people died. In their thousands.

Thankfully modern drugs mean that the disease is manageable, but this book is a reminder of a time that should not be forgotten.

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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genetically you are unique.

However, there is nothing particularly special about being unique if everyone else is…

In your 23 base pairs of DNA there are around 20,000 human protein-coding genes. To put this in perspective, a banana has 36,000… The first complete draft of the sequence was published on February 12th 2001. Being able to read this code of T C G A’s is one thing; being able to understand it is another, and we are nowhere near being able to manipulate it yet either. This code is what makes you, you, but hidden deep within it are the countless secrets of our forefathers and mothers, the history of our species including the echoes of past events. There is even small amounts of Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Denisovan genome intertwined within our homo sapiens DNA.

Rutherford takes us on this fascinating journey up and down our collective family trees via the spirals of our DNA. No subject is beyond his gaze, hair and eye colour, to the horrors of eugenics to finding out if a body under a carpark is a deceased monarch or why it seems to be those of European descent are the only ones who can drink milk. There are some amusing parts, such as when he lists just what journalists think that scientists have found the genes for and the genetic peril of being in the Royal family. Given how complicated this subject could have been, and it did occasionally go right over my head, it is written with a refreshing clarity. The anecdotes and stories that are in here add greatly to the book. Thankfully I could understand most of it, which is the principle aim of these books to bring science to the wider audience.

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I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You may think that we are just made from muscles, blood cells, bones and a fair bit of DNA, but in between the gaps are microbes. Billions and billions of them. There are the odd rogue ones, but most of them are useful and make up an essential element of our being. Without them we could not live. They help us in countless ways, sculpting our organs, protecting us from disease and feeding and nourishing us; our gut contains a complete ecosystem that ensure that we extract all the energy we need.

Microbes work equal miracles in other animals too, providing the ethereal light that disguises a squid as they hunt, ensuring that koalas are able to digest the unpalatable eucalyptus leaves and the weevil that uses bacteria to make its shell before killing them. The modern worldview of eliminating all microbes is causing as much harm as it is good; people nowdays have a revulsion of all things bacterial, hence the raft of cleaning products that are designed to scour all surfaces and hands clean of these unwanted intruders. However, as Yong successfully argues in this book that not only we might be missing a trick, but our bacterial ecosystem is essential for our survival. A good example of this is in hospitals; the modern view is that all windows have to be locked shut to keep rogue microbes out, but the effect of this is that patients sit in their beds stewing in a lethal mix of micro-organisms. This hazardous situation can be simply solved by opening a window, this allows the dispersal and dilution of the potentially lethal ones. Simple, but very effective.

It is a fascinating account of the unseen creatures that live within and all around us. Yong takes us on this journey through the microscope to discover the most recent research from scientists all round the world and tell us of the secrets that are being discovered about microbes. Some of the treatments being developed have the potential to make people’s so lives much better; one example is RePOOpulate – as unappealing as it sounds! However, this treatment has worked miracles with a 94% success rate and no side effects, a success rate not seen in many other cures. Yong writes with an engaging and eloquent style and makes the science in here really accessible. Well worth reading. 4.5 stars.

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Caraval by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Scarlett and her sister Tella have never left the tiny island that her father runs with an iron fist. Scarlett is betrothed to a Count, someone that her father knows, but she has never met him. But, before she gets married she wants to attend Caraval, a performance and game that takes place on another island. She has been writing to someone called Legend for a number of years begging to be invited, and not heard a single thing. Until now. An envelope appears with three invitations in, one for her, her sister and fiancée. She is desperate to go, but knows that her father will refuse. A set of events is set in motion, she finds Tella wrapped in the embrace of a strange man, an altercation with her father, and suddenly her and her sister are fleeing the place that they have known all their lives to play Caraval.

Almost immediately after arriving on the island, Tella is kidnapped by Legend, the mastermind of the game. Scarlett is alone and up against experienced players of the game as this year, the winner of the game will be the one who finds Tella first. Scarlett finds a set of clues to assist her in the desperate search for her sister and she has five night to solve them. The game is supposed to be an elaborate and theatrical performance, but what sounds like a piece of fun initially has suddenly become a lot more sinister, because if she doesn’t find her she may loose her forever…

This is Garber’s debut novel and for a first one, it is reasonable. I liked the way that the game was set on an island and way she manages to convey the atmospheric events that take place at night. It is not a bad plot, though there are the odd discrepancies. While there is tension as Scarlett seeks her sister, it has a more melodramatic and gothic feel to it. There really wasn’t a lot of character depth though; they all came across as slightly two dimensional. The magical elements felt like they were dusted on rather than integral to the world she has created and there was more romance than I normally read, but that is my preference rather than a fault with the book.

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