Book Review of The Hidden Face by M.I. Verras

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Using a mythical universe to understand and explain morality in the real world.

(This review is based on a purchased copy)

This novel has been described as “incomprehensible.” Actually, it’s just that comprehension is more than slightly uncomfortable for many when it comes, so they instinctively shy away from it.

When used properly, the mythical universe is a way of simplifying the environment in order to make a complicated (or simply uncomfortable) issue clear enough. The universe in this novel is physically highly simplified, so that only the ethereal plane may be infinite and politics are reduced to moral and immoral, so that intellectual constructs of political ideology cannot be used to camouflage or justify immoral choices. The author seizes and burns a goodly number of intellectual comfort-blankets by doing this.

The details of the simplified universe start with an ethereal “Home” of safety and beauty, where entities may even safely take a rest from fully existing, should they so chose. No-one will stop them from becoming more real if that is what they want or need. To get from there to the physical “World of The Hearths” one has to fall down a “Cathode Well.” The operative word is fall, but there’s an implication of a negative charge dragging particles downwards, too. Each of several “Hearths” (large communal dwellings) has a “Generator Well” ostensibly to maintain the building’s structural integrity, but actually these descend to the third level of existence, which is the “Abyss” a lake of fire. The population of each Hearth is no more than one or two hundred “Inhabitants” so the whole population of the World of the Hearths can only be in the low thousands. The world of the Hearths also has a prison “The Tannery” which is a place of utter misery and eventual execution. “Ministers” have an “Assembly Hall,” from where (although they do not know this) the Abyss can be accessed directly. All of these locations are many hours drive away from each other (there are cars, but only for Ministers and their Guards), and the journey by car is through vast fields of crops; as if the World of The Hearths could easily provide for countless numbers of people, even though it is only permitted to support a small number.

Under the impression that they are running all this, Ministers from all the Hearths attend secret meetings, where they are manipulated by an entity called “Sate.” Every so often all the ministers vanish and fresh ministers are elected. The Abyss contains the souls of countless inhabitants of the Hearths, who have some hope of rescue being innocent victims, and many former ministers, who are not innocent and have no hope of rescue. To escape from the Abyss one has to ascend, not to the Assembly Hall, but to the ethereal Home. This is not easy and it can only be accomplished by a peer of Sate, who would have to risk personal extinction and the loss of all hope for all other souls, in order to fight Sate in his own home ground of the Abyss to set others free.

There is technology in the World of the Hearths, but it is only available to Ministers and Guards for purposes approved of by Sate. And the Ministers have to gather, when summoned, at the Assembly Hall, the existence of which, never mind the location, is hidden from the ordinary Inhabitants.

In our more complicated real world, we might be graciously permitted to pay for and use technology, and we might even be told when our leaders assemble for secret meetings, but we do not get to chose or even know about ALL the purposes which our technical devices perform at our expense, and we’re certainly not welcome to visit a certain Alpine location when our leaders are in their version of the Assembly Hall. There is no Abyss under that place, but a fifty-mile particle collider is planned…

The Hidden Face by M.I. Verras is published by “Palmetto” and available for Kindle from Amazon. See:

https://amzn.eu/d/4nOghc4

 

 

Book Review of Last Train to Freedom by Deborah Swift

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Uneasy alliances and a most dangerous journey.

(This review is based on a review copy from the publisher.)

This Novel is set in 1940, when Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were still allies and the Empire of Japan also had a non-aggression pact with Russia. (Which Stalin did not actually break until 1945.) Poland was invaded the previous year (this was a joint exercise between Hitler and Stalin) causing Jews in particular to flee to the recently (and only temporarily) independent Baltic States. This novel does not even touch on the invasions of Denmark, Norway and Finland which were also enabled by agreement between Hitler and Stalin in the same period. (Perhaps the present day rapprochement between Russia and the United States might be evaluated in the light of this?)

Zofia, her twin brother Jacek and their uncle Tata are Polish Jews who have found refuge and even jobs, in Lithuania. Their escape from the NAZI-occupied half of Poland was a nightmare, both in terms of the violence directed at them and the violence which Jacek is compelled to commit to keep them all alive. Zofia now works in a library, Jacek is a journalist at a Lithuanian newspaper and Tata teaches at a school. The Red Army invades, suddenly and with rather more force directed at civilians than at the tiny Lithuanian Army. Instead of being at risk of summary execution by the NAZIs for being Jewish, they are now at risk of summary execution by the Red Army and NKVD for being “intellectuals” and Zofia finds her gentile, female librarian employer hanging from a tree and swarming with flies. This makes her more aware of the dangers than her brother seems to be, and it takes quite a while for Jacek to get his head around the fact that the Soviets are at least as murderous as the NAZIs and somewhat less fussy about protocol. Tata is seized by the Russians, supposedly for forced labour but it soon transpires that the Russians couldn’t be bothered to actually send everyone to labour camps so older detainees were killed out of hand and only just out of sight. All this sets the scene for Zofia and Jacek’s escape, and an important mission.

The Japanese Consul in Lithuania, Sugihara (this is a character taken from real life and treated with proper respect by the author) finds his consulate besieged by Jewish refugees who believe there might be a legal loophole which would allow them to travel, legally, right across Russia to Japan and onwards from there to the Dutch East Indies. This turns out to be technically feasible, but the Japanese Government, trying to satisfy both the Soviets and the NAZIs, forbids Sugihara to issue the necessary papers. But he also comes across evidence of systematic mass killings by the NAZIs, both of Jews and of Polish officers. He cannot convey this evidence to his nearest superiors in Berlin over the phone, nor to Tokyo by cable. Realising that he will be recalled and probably sacked, and realising also that the Russians will almost certainly kick him out of Lithuania anyway now the country is controlled from Moscow where there is already a Japanese full ambassador, he starts to issue as many transit visas as he thinks he will be able to sign in the time he has left. It is not enough, and Zofia and Jacek, plus one other, only get transit visas because Sugihara offers them the job of taking a sealed packet to his ultimate superior in Tokyo. They leave the consulate even as Russian troops are barging their way in to evict Sugihara.

The escape route involves two local trains to reach Moscow and an enforced stay in a hotel before refugees are allowed to board the Trans Siberian Express. It remains legal, because the Russians intend to extort money from every refugee at every stop on the fifteen-day journey across the world’s biggest country. It is an ordeal even for those refugees not carrying a packet of secret papers.

The NAZIs and the NKVD both know that Zofia and Jacek have a packet of evidence, which the NAZIs are determined to destroy and which the NKVD intend to exploit for propaganda purposes in the case of a German onslaught against Russia, which they know will come at some point. Either outcome would cost countless Jewish lives, by closing Japan’s borders to Jews seeking refuge or onwards transit.

The danger escalates every time the Trans Siberian Express stops and there are both noble sacrifices and bitter betrayals, and during the final stops of the train on Russian territory, the refugees who have seen their money taken from them along the way until they only have their spare clothes in their luggage, are robbed even of that by Russian soldiers. (Who are working at cross-purposes to both the NKVD and the SS.)

Even when the packet reaches Tokyo and Sugihara’s superior, the suspense persists because how can its contents be acted on without exposing Japan to a diplomatic rift with either Germany or Russia, or, worse, both countries at once? Japan still hopes to preserve its trade with the British Empire, too. The interesting and very Japanese denouement is based on historical fact.

Last Train to Freedom by Deborah Swift is published by HQ on the 8^th of May 2025

Book Review of The Stand-in Dad by Alex Summers

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Reinventing Woburn Sands as a Gay Village

(This review is based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

Although the author of this pleasant and engaging novel sees Woburn Sands as a satellite village of Milton Keynes, the village was there when Milton Keynes was a much smaller “satellite village” of Bletchley. The village is also on the Beds/Bucks border which always used to be crossable at the back garden gate of a very old house known as The Dene. The location matters, because although the gay and lesbian characters might be found anywhere in that region, a trendy gay florist’s selling coffee and cakes as a sideline wouldn’t have the same magic if it were set in Flitwick, for example. And none of the characters earn enough to live in Hitchin, let alone St Albans or London. The equations of economic reality and romantic fantasy require it to be set in Woburn Sands, so it is.

David identifies as a gay florist, but is also a middle-aged man too concerned for the well-being of young women to be trusted to look after his own interests and there are straight men like that, too. A young (by comparison with David) illustrator, Meg, has booked an appointment to discuss flowers for her upcoming wedding to fellow illustrator, Hannah, with David and her parents. Who don’t turn up. Meg is very upset, and David takes her into his shop and starts trying to make things go right for Meg. He persists in doing this for the rest of the novel, with results which veer from acceptable and promising, to muddle, misunderstanding, omission and utter catastrophe, before ending in a most unexpected triumph.

The sub-plot is David’s “significant other” Mark, who really wants them to become a married couple too, patiently trying to steer the man he loves in a less self-denying direction. David reacts to the behaviour of Meg’s parents in a very complicated way, because he had an even worse bust-up with his own parents, who both died before he got around to even seeking a reconciliation. The relationship difficulties are not simply homophobia, because there’s no clear boundary between that and misunderstanding, which on one occasion causes David a lot of hurt even though the other person had no malicious intent whatsoever.

The last quarter of the book, from catastrophe to triumph, has more twists than Tony Blair running the 100 metres sprint and salvation comes, not so much from facing reality as making the best of what you’ve got, even if it’s intangible or outright fantasy. In his determination to hang on to Meg’s dream, David is able to make it a reality, but only after his attempts to do so sensibly have been destroyed by circumstance beyond his control.

Interestingly, part of the solution comes from the youth club which David and Mark are involved with, because whilst the middle-aged gay men fail pretty miserably at communicating with Meg’s elderly and “homophobic” parents, the teenagers simply tell Meg’s parents what the score is and what they need to do. One of the teens also saves David’s business with a social media campaign, but that only takes off due to the wedding being made to happen despite the odds, which is too good a story for broadcast media to ignore.

There’s a lot in this book, and if it has a flaw it’s perhaps that the novel takes on a few too many issues at once. But it’s not a serious fault.

The Stand-in dad by Alex Summers is published by Avon Books on the 24^th of April 2025.