Stross, Charles: The Apocalypse Codex

Another book about the adventures of Bob Howard who has been promoted in the Laundry, the branch of the Secret Service dealing with the paranormal and other worlds.   As with the earlier books, one has to accept that there are monsters and that magic can defeat them while the normal everyday activities go on with the standard risks from guns and other hazards.   Howard uses an outward appearance of a bungler as a weapon as it makes people underestimate him.   Here, he is teamed up with two agents with greater powers who are decidedly superior in rank (not that he knows this) to deal with an evangelical cult based in Colorado whose leader is about to summon the Sleeper who feeds on human souls by the thousand and whose re-awakening will lead to the end of the world.   What transpires is definitely logical with none of the 'with one leap he was free' elisions that spoil lesser thrillers.   The path to final success is anything but straightforward but Stross keeps things moving and holds the attention effortlessly.   Well up to the earlier books in the series showing a development in Howard's career.

Fables du paysage Flamand

Rather a change as this is a review of an exhibition held at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille.   We went there by Eurostar which took around 1 1/2 hours there and near 2 hours back as there was a delay on the way.   The exhibition covered the period of such well-known artists as Bosch and Bruegel as well as others less well know such as Mandyn and Brel which extended our visual knowledge of the period.
The exhibition was set out in a series of themed sections which did allow for comparing the work of the
artists with their contemporaries with a number of them using the Temptation of Saint Anthony as the
theme with one section almost completely devoted to depictions of the Tower of Babel.   The wealth of the pictures did leave me wishing it were nearer at home as it would have taken more than one visit to
appreciate all the works fully.   However, the overall impression was one of delight that the journey had been more than worthwhile in providing an excellent cross-section of the period of Flemish art after that of the great originators Van Eyck, Campin et al.   The catalogue provides a first-rate coverage of the exhibition though, perhaps unfortunately, only in French.

Twelve Trees, John: The Traveller

There are ordinary people, Travellers who are able to enter another dimension and Harlequins whose function is to protect Travellers beyond anything else.   Travellers and thus Harlequins are looked on as destroyers of the status quo, the situation in which governments control and manipulate people.   The increasing use of computers, computer-linked items such as credit cards, cctv systems etc make it much easier to control and to trace the unwanted elements.   This book tells how a girl called Maya tries to deny her training as a Harlequin until her father, recently crippled, is murdered in Prague.   She has to trace two brothers, both of whom may well be Travellers.   To do this, she goes to the USA to find that her primary connection has turned against the basic code of Harlequins to assist a major corporation to extend its power by tracking down and using a Traveller.   One of the brothers succumbs to them while the other does not and much of the book relates his adventures with Maya in evading capture and in trying to find and rescue his brother - not that the brother wants that.   Absolute hokum with a strong undercurrent of paranoia at the way people in general are nowadays caught in the system.