1. The Spirit Engineer - A.J.West - 7/10
2. The Lost Man - Jane Harper - 8/10
3. The Fall of Babel – Josiah Bancroft - 5/10
4. The Forest – Michaelbrent Collings – 3/10
5. Black River – Will Dean – 7/10
6. Winter is Coming – Garry Kasparov – 9/10
7. Archangel – Robert Harris – 8/10
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22nd March was my last update! It’s taken a good few weeks to finish my latest, but that was mainly down to Covid and not reading too much whilst away over Easter. It’s certainly no reflection of what I was reading, which was an engrossing thriller.
After reading the Kasparov book, I wanted to read some fiction based in Russia. I remember reading two Craig Thomas books in the 80s (
The Bears Tears and
Firefox Down) that were partially set in the Soviet Union, and I loved the repressive atmosphere depicted in these books (albeit they were really tech thrillers).
Although he’s a well known author, I’d never read anything by Robert Harris, so
Archangel seemed like a good pick. It features English historian, Fluke Kelso, who’s invited to the opening of the Soviet archives (the novel is set in the late 90s). He’s quickly on the trail of a notebook which is purported to contain Stalin’s personal diary and the opening of this book – as told in flashback by an old Soviet guard – is excellent.
As the story moves from Moscow to the frozen wastes of Archangel, the story took an unexpected turn that I didn’t anticipate and the ending was suitably downbeat and partially ambiguous, which I thought worked well. There are some interesting things said about Russia that have become hauntingly familiar recently, which is quite prophetic given that it was written in 2003. I see that the BBC made a dramatization of this in 2005, starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, so that’s gone straight on the watchlist.
