Like many people this side of the Atlantic, I discovered Philippa Gregory when The Other Boleyn Girl came out in trade paperback. I enjoyed it greatly, and have since read almost everything that’s available over here (the whole Tudor-era series, the Tradescant duology, and the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy). While I still become totally engrossed in them, I haven’t enjoyed her most recent books as much as the first two in the series (The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Queen’s Fool). As she’s written more, she’s moved from the style of those first ones — where the best-known historical figures are at the sidelines of the main action — to a more simple retelling of the well-known stories of the wives of Henry VIII, and of Elizabeth I. Frankly, I didn’t find that as interesting, but I’m sure the fact that I know that history quite well contributed.

Gregory’s prose, however, is certainly enjoyable, and I have always found her books easy to read. This latest volume expands upon two main themes introduced in earlier books: (1) Henry VIII was frightfully mentally ill, and (2) all the women in the Tudor court were total tramps. If either of these propositions is a stunning shock, I apologize for the spoiler. I figure it’s hard to spoil the ending of historical fiction, though — I mean, we all know who got beheaded and who didn’t.

All in all, I’d rank The Boleyn Inheritance at the bottom of this series, behind the two gardener books (which I’d rank between The Queen’s Fool and The Virgin’s Lover in quality), but still above the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy. I can’t imagine that any of her books are worse than the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy, but I still haven’t read A Respectable Trade, so I can’t say for sure.

Un Lun Dun, the latest novel by China Miéville is lovely. Beyond enjoying the story, which I did, I am completely enamored of the useful illustrations. Not all of us can stand ready at any moment to pull up an image of, for example, a variety of mouthless beings. Thanks to the wee drawings, I don’t have to. The images also allow us to peek at another manifestation of Miéville’s rich imagination. I can just see him hunched over a notebook sketching away, and that image warms the cockles of my heart.

With the discussions around this book, it’s also been amusing to me to learn that he can’t seem to help himself with regard to including monsters, in both the narrative and the illustrations (note the venus flytrap in the above drawing). As with his adult novels, several of the imagined creatures endeared themselves to me through their connection to things I love: notably, the explorer and Skool, with their respective links to songbirds and the ocean. Others of the monsters were downright disturbing, although to a student of horror and sci fi, variations on undead creatures are par for the course. I find them creepy, and it’s a testament to Miéville’s writing that he manages to keep them so even in a young adult novel.

Monsters aside, if that’s possible, I enjoyed the book immensely. In the beginning, I found it hard to avoid mental comparisons to other books involving young protagonists, alternate worlds, and quests to be completed before one could return home; I got over that and got hooked on the narrative itself very soon into it. Un Lun Dun compares favorably to earlier works, and is endearingly modern in its sensibility, but I’m an adult now: it will never be the defining such narrative for me.

And, I had only a momentary disappointment that the tall blonde was not in fact going to be the one to save the day. I was kind of a sidekick myself, you see.