Review: The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So, I very much wanted to fall in love with this book, in the same way that I've fallen in love with some of Grimwood's previous novels, with their adrenaline-charged near-future settings and their wise-cracking sociopathic protagonists. This is a very different sort of book, and while I didn't instantly fall in love with it, I think we've now established a solid friendship that might well blossom into something deeper.

This book is an alternate history, set in a Venice ruled by Marco Polo's descendants. Also a Venice with vampires and werewolves, although neither term appears in the book. (Fulfilling the rule that the best vampire novels are the ones that never use the word vampire.) You can expect plenty of political intrigue, some pretty awesome fight scenes, and a large dose of blood, other bodily fluids, and general filth. File this one under "G is for gritty".

So, why did it take me a couple hundred pages to really start to warm to this novel? Well, part of it is that the complex strands of intrigue take a while to weave themselves together. The book does eventually get quite exciting, but the overwhelming sensation of the first hundred pages or so is of waiting for things to really kick off. Probably more significant for me is that the characters also take some time to warm to. Early on in the book, the three best options for a really sympathetic character are: the head of a secret order of assassins who work for the Dukes of Venice; an amnesiac vampire who is initially unable to understand or control his impulses to kill people; and a young woman from Venice's ruling family whose bravery and intelligence are initially matched only by her spoiledness and naiveté. (Thankfully, she grows up a lot during the course of this novel.)

However, these flaws aside, by the time we get to the end of this book (which really seems very much like the first third or quarter of a larger story rather than a standalone novel), Grimwood had sold me on everything. I'm very much looking forward to the second book.

One other aspect of the book really deserves to be singled out for praise. There's been a lot of discussion online lately of fantasy novels that don't do a brilliant job by their female characters or characters of color, often with the defense offered that, "Well, it just sucked to be female or non-white in the middle ages, so what can you do?" You can do what Jon Courtenay Grimwood does in this book, is what you can do. This book absolutely grapples with the reality of how much it did suck to be female or non-white in the early 15th century, without using this as an excuse to either eliminate women and characters of color from the book, or to deny them their own interior life, ambition, or agency within whatever scope they were able to wield it.

View all my reviews

Review: Muscle Medicine by Rob DeStephano and Joseph Hooper

Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints by Rob DeStefano

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is based around an intriguing premise: that many cases of joint pain (especially such prevalent complaints as knee, lower back, and shoulder pain) are actually caused by tight or damaged muscles, and that fixing the underlying muscle problems through a combination of stretching, massage, and muscle strengthening can sometimes cure these types of chronic pain without surgery or more invasive treatments. (An interesting illustration: if you do MRI scans on people without back pain, you'll actually find that slightly more than half of them have bulging or herniated discs or other minor spinal damage. The difference between these asymptomatic people and people with back pain seems to be that in the asymptomatic people, the core muscles are doing a good enough job of supporting the spine in good alignment that the damage doesn't lead to pain.)

The most novel aspect of this book is a particular stretching technique that the authors have developed in which you use gentle pressure to pin down a muscle at a certain point along its length, and then stretch. (For example, to stretch the illiotibial band, you'd apply pressure on the outside of your thigh a couple of inches above the knee, and then straighten the leg to stretch. You repeat the stretch, gradually moving the pressure up the leg.) I've been dabbling with the technique, and while I can't say it's been revolutionary, it certainly does give you a very thorough stretch. It's also a bit tedious and time consuming to really thoroughly stretch yourself out in this way. LIke many people, I'm lazy about stretching. If I were less half-assed about following the program, I'd be able to give it a fairer review. (My own chronic aches and pains are minor enough that I haven't yet been fully motivated to implement the whole program to the letter.)

The caveat here, which the authors freely acknowledge, is that these sorts of injury prevention and rehab techniques are difficult to impossible to evaluate in double-blind controlled scientific studies. The evidence for this stuff working is more anecdotal than solidly scientific. However, none of the exercises in the book seem likely to do anyone any harm, and they don't require expensive equipment. (Most of them require no equipment at all - there are a few that use a Swiss ball or things like that.) The biggest investment you'll need to make is the time and effort involved in learning the exercises.

View all my reviews