Tag: sci-fi

Throwback Thursday: The Things We Learn When We’re Dead by Charlie Laidlaw

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.  If you decide to take part, please link back to It’s Book Talk.

Today I’m reviewing The Things We Learn When We’re Dead by Charlie Laidlaw, published in January 2017.

TheThingsWeLearnWhenWereDeadAbout the Book

With elements of The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead shows how small decisions can have profound and unintended consequences, and how sometimes we can get a second chance.

On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what appears to be a hospital – but a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident… Or does God have a higher purpose after all?

At first Lorna can remember nothing. As her memories return – some good, some bad – she realises that she has decision to make and that maybe she needs to find a way home.

Format: Paperback (501 pp.)       Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 26th January 2017      Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting local UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Things We Learn When We’re Dead on Goodreads

My Review

As Lorna adapts to her new surroundings on the spaceship, random objects she sees – M&S underwear, lamb cutlets, even a hamster – trigger memories from her past life.  At first these are fragmented, incomplete and often confusing.  Some are pleasant memories: childhood holidays, family picnics, games with friends, the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex.  Others are reminders of loss and grief.

Many of Lorna’s memories revolve around exploits with her stylish friend, Suzie, and Lorna’s relationships with men that, it has to be said, have not been entirely successful.   I confess to feeling a pang of sympathy for poor sweet, stolid Austin (described at one point as ‘a rather dull dog with very few tricks’).  As the book progresses, the reader sees that actions do indeed have consequences, even if unintended, and may set in motion a chain of events that can end tragically.

The book blurb describes The Things We Learn When We’re Dead as having ‘elements of The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones’. Personally, I couldn’t detect that much of a connection with The Lovely Bones and only slight allusions to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (I understand these comparisons were the publisher’s decision.) If looking for cultural references, I would say the depiction of the stranded HVN spaceship draws more from Star Trek than anything else with its transporters, holographs and replicators.  I enjoyed Lorna’s pleasure at the small, surprising miracles on the spaceship, like the ability of a chilled glass of wine to stay chilled even when drunk in the bath.

When it comes to The Wizard of Oz, certainly there are characters described as lacking courage and not having much of a brain that remind one of the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow.   However, I think a reader expecting this book to be a straight retelling of The Wizard of Oz may be disappointed.  What they won’t be disappointed in is the quality of the writing, the quirky humour and the authenticity with which Lorna’s memories of her childhood and young adult experiences are described.

I really enjoyed The Things We Learn When We’re Dead.  As someone who reads very little fantasy and science fiction only occasionally (and then more of the dystopian variety), I wasn’t really disappointed that the extra-terrestrial element takes more of a back seat as the book progresses.  The ending left me wishing Lorna well in the future choices she makes.

I received a personally inscribed review copy from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.   I’d like to thank the author for his patience in waiting for his book to reach the top of my review pile.

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In three words: Quirky, engaging, imaginative

Try something similar…for more space-based fantasy, Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar (click here to read my review)

Charlie LaidlawAbout the Author

Charlie Laidlaw is the author of two novels, The Herbal Detective (Ringwood Publishing) and The Things We Learn When We’re Dead (Accent Press).

Charlie writes: ‘I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.  I was brought up in the west of Scotland (quite near Paisley, but thankfully not too close) and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.

I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.  I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember.

Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.  Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.

I am married with two grown-up children and live in East Lothian.’

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Book Review: The Rain Never Came by Lachlan Walter

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TheRainNeverCameAbout the Book

In a thirsty, drought-stricken Australia, the country is well and truly sunburnt. As the Eastern states are evacuated to more appealing climates, a stubborn few resist the forced removal. They hide out in small country towns – where no one would ever bother looking.  Bill Cook and Tobe Cousins are united in their disregard of the law. Aussie larrikins, they pass their hot, monotonous existence drinking at the barely standing pub.  When strange lights appear across the Western sky, it seems that those embittered by the drought are seeking revenge. And Bill and Tobe are in their path. In the heat of the moment secrets will be revealed, and survival can’t be guaranteed.

Format: ebook, paperback (262 pp.) Publisher: Odyssey Press
Published: 25th May 2017                    Genre: Science Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com ǀ  Publisher website ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting local bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Rain Never Came on Goodreads

My Review

The Rain Never Came situates the reader in a drought stricken Australia with a distinctly post-apocalyptic feel.  The long drought has resulted in a division in the country leaving a lawless, wild area that government forces have struggled to control.  Those left ‘beyond the line’ face being rounded up and sent to government camps with an uncertain future. ‘The Brisbane line.  The southern-most border of “civilised” Australia, sealing off the majority of the population from the desiccated wasteland that some of us still called home.’

The protagonists, Bill and Tobe have a longstanding friendship characterised by jokes, shared cultural references and love of a good time.   ‘Tobe stood there, squinting in the sun with an easy smile on his face.  He was my oldest friend, my best mate, the brother I never had.’  However, not all the memories they share are good ones and there are limits to what both of them are prepared  – or courageous enough – to reveal to the other.  Bill is our narrator so Tobe always remains a bit of an enigma, particularly because of his mysterious comings and goings, his secretive nature and the odd nuggets of knowledge he occasionally reveals.  However, Tobe is the more adventurous of the two and, as Bill admits, ‘a little manic’.

Those still residing in the east, like Bill and Tobe, face a daily struggle for survival, constantly short of food and water.  ‘Our ravaged world was utterly unmoved by the life that trod upon it.’ The bleak reality of the arid, drought-stricken environment of Australia is evocatively described.  ‘I could see to the horizon – a parched land of dying trees, bleached grass, dead towns.  A world of thirst and ruin that sprawled as far as we could see.’

When strange lights are seen in the distance one night, it’s Tobe who persuades Bill they should investigate.  What follows is an incident and curiosity filled road trip with some shocking and quite gruesome findings.  What the pair discover will alert them to just how precarious is the civilisation they thought they knew.  Along the way, the bonds of friendship will be severely tested, traumatic events of the past will come to light and they will experience firsthand what the necessity of survival entails.

I really enjoyed The Rain Never Came for its exploration of the impact of extreme climate change and its engagement with themes such as freedom and authoritarianism.  The picture of a drought-stricken, lawless world was quite chilling.   Personally, I would have liked a bit more exposition about the events that led to the division of the country.

Lachlan has written extensively about Australian post-apocalyptic fiction and recently published a fascinating article about climate fiction very relevant to the themes explored in The Rain Never Came.  If your interest has been piqued by my review, why not read an extract from the book and my Q&A with Lachlan.

I received a review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.   I’d like to thank Lachlan for his patience in waiting for his book to reach the top of my review pile.

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In three words: Compelling, dramatic, thought-provoking

Try something similar…Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

LachlanWalterAbout the Author

Lachlan Walter is a writer and nursery hand (the garden kind, not the baby kind), and has completed a PhD in the relationship between Australian post-apocalyptic fiction and national identity. His debut novel The Rain Never Came has just been released by Odyssey Books, and he also writes science fiction criticism for Aurealis magazine and reviews for the independent ‘weird music’ website Cyclic Defrost. He loves all things music-related, the Australian environment, overlooked genres, and playing in the garden.

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