Just Finished Reading… Sunrise On The Reaping(Hunger Games). New York: Scholastic, 2025

 

This is the fifth Hunger Games book, a prequel to the original trilogy. I haven’t got around to reading the fourth book, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, which is also a prequel, a back story to the trilogy’s villain.

In case you haven’t read the trilogy, the premise is a future America(Panem) in which there had been a rebellion against the Capitol and, as a punishment,  all the Districts have to send teenagers as tributes to fight and die in the Games, a process known as the Reaping. Only one will survive, though in the first book, the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, gets her fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark, spared by saying, in front of the entire nation, that they are in love. That embarrasses the Capitol enough to work. There are hints that this premise is based on Greek mythology, in which tributes go to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur. 

Sunrise On The Reaping  is the back story of Haymitch Abernathy, the town drunk who won his Hunger Games and has been drinking to handle his PTSD. The middle-aged Haymitch was mentor to Katniss and Peeta during their Hunger Games. In this book, he is sixteen and rebellious. The title is based on his promise to his girlfriend, Lenore Dove, to try to end the Hunger Games for good, so that there will never again be a “sunrise on the Reaping.”  The older Haymitch has no friends or family; the teenage Haymitch has both. In fact, one of his friends is Burdock Everdeen, future father to Katniss. 

We know Haymitch will win the Games and survive, but there is a lot more to it than that. He has made a major enemy, President Coriolanus Snow. 

We meet some characters, apart from Snow, who will appear in future stories. Effie Trinket, who will later travel to the districts to collect the young tributes, is one. At this stage, she is just the older sister of another character, who helps the District 12 tributes, who have been neglected. Plutarch Heavensbee, a major character in The Hunger Games, is the photographer and propaganda film maker. 

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” is quoted a lot, as Lenore Dove’s favourite poem. It connects with her name in Haymitch’s mind. 

I won’t do spoilers here, but I had a hard time keeping dry eyes and by the end of the book, I absolutely understood why, apart from the Games themselves, Haymitch suffered PTSD. 

You really need to have read the original trilogy to get the most out of this book, but up to you. All I can say is that it is every bit as good. 

Available in all good bookshops and websites. I hear that there will be a film. 

On Rereading Phryne Fisher - Books One to Five

 I’ve just bought the very last Phryne Fisher novel, the last because Kerry Greenwood died earlier this year. I still haven’t read the last Terry Pratchett book because… well, it is the last one. But I decided to reread all the Phryne Fisher books before I read Murder In The Cathedral. So far, I’ve reread the first five and have started the sixth.

Some of you will have read them. But I’m going to comment anyway, for anyone who hasn’t, or who has only seen the TV series.

If you’ve only seen the TV series, it’s very different from the books. To be honest, I prefer the later episodes, which are not based on a book, because they aren’t trying to squash a novel into fifty minutes. But they look beautiful and are made by people who loved the books. 

If you haven’t read or seen it, I promise no spoilers here! I did enjoy even the reread, and I have read nearly all of them several times. The earlier novels are, in my opinion, better than the later ones, but they are all worth a read.

Phryne Fisher is a beautiful, wealthy private detective in the late 1920s. She lives in St Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne, with her maid Dot and Mr and Mrs Butler, her staff, and has adventures. No way does anyone need to rescue her - more often, she rescues others. She has a gorgeous red Hispano-Suiza car, which she drives like a demon. Dot really doesn’t enjoy travelling with her.

Cocaine Blues 

Phryne Fisher, who was born in Australia but has been living in Europe(mostly England, but also France) returns to Australia on the request of a couple who are worried about their daughter, Lydia. They think her husband is trying to poison her. In this novel, we meet characters who will later become regulars or semi regulars. Dot, her maid, is one. She introduces herself as Dorothy Bryant, but becomes Williams later in the book and stays Williams for the rest of the series. An editorial glitch! Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is plain and easy to miss in the novels, but gorgeous in the TV series. He is happily married with children in the books, divorced in the TV series so that he can have a URST with Phryne. Bert and Cec are taxi drivers who become Phryne’s friends and assist with her cases. Dr Macmillan is a Scottish woman doctor, a semi regular. 

As in her other books, there are two storylines. One is about cocaine peddling, the other is about illegal abortions. It’s a great start to the series.

Flying Too High

Again, two storylines. One is about a child being kidnapped, the other is about a pilot whose obnoxious father is hit on the head by a rock, leading to the son’s arrest for murder. Of course, Phryne is hired to investigate both. 

She and Dot have moved into a house on the Esplanade in St Kilda, across the road from the beach. There, we first meet her house man, Mr Butler and his wife, Mrs Butler, a fabulous cook. The author loved writing about food, even gave recipes in the Corinna Chapman series, so Mrs Butler’s meals are described in loving detail.

Some semi regular characters first appear in this book. Bunji Ross is a brilliant pilot, but a humorous character. She appears again in later books.

The child’s rescue ends up at the Queenscliff Hotel. I used to go there by ferry, for lunch, when staying in Sorrento some years ago - just because I read about it in the novel. This story wasn’t filmed, unfortunately. It would have made a good episode

Murder On The Ballarat Train

Phryne and Dot are on their way to Ballarat by overnight train. You can get there now in about an hour and a half from Melbourne, but this is 1928. Phryne, who is a light sleeper, wakes to the smell of chloroform, and, of course, saves everyone in the first class carriage, by opening windows and calling for the conductors. 

Everyone but an elderly woman, who has been dragged out of the window and hanged. The woman’s daughter hires Phryne to investigate. 

This book features the first appearance of Phryne’s adopted daughters, Jane and Ruth, and her black cat Ember. In the TV series, they showed only Jane as a regular - Ruth appeared briefly but went back to her family. I guess they didn’t want to pay two child actors. It’s a pity, but there you are.

Death At  Victoria Dock

Phryne is on her way home late one night when a young man is shot dead in front of her and the killers try to shoot her too. She doesn’t take this well and soon finds herself involved in Latvian affairs and anarchists. And a yummy Latvian lover…

A case she is asked to investigate is the disappearance of a teenage girl who wanted to be a nun. The girl’s family are horrible.

In this novel we first meet Hugh Collins, Dot’s boyfriend, who becomes a regular. In fact, he got more time in the TV series, where he was shown as Jack Robinson’s sidekick. But it’s nice to meet him. This was filmed, but not very close to the book. It was more about the dock workers on strike.

The Green Mill Murder

Phryne is dancing at the Green Mill, a real place that was on the site of Melbourne’s current Arts Centre, at the end of a dance marathon. Her dress is described in great detail, and that was real too. Kerry Greenwood said that in her day job as a lawyer a client had to bring his grandmother with him, and the old lady described a dress she once wore at a dance.

The dance marathon is near its end, with only a few couples left, so it’s not hard to notice when the man in the next couple drops dead during Bar 35 of “Bye Bye Blackbird”. Naturally Phryne has to investigate, though Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is also on the case. He has enough respect for her to accept that she probably has figured out the murderer and will share the information when she gets back from flying to Gippsland to find a young man who came back from the Great War with shell shock(what they called PTSD in those days). 

There is a lot of jazz and blues in this novel, which includes an American blues singer with the band. When it was filmed, that role was played by Deni Hines, the daughter of Marcia Hines, who came to Australia to be in Jesus Christ Superstar, and stayed. 

The second storyline involves the gay community, who had pretty difficult lives, as it was illegal in those days.

Phryne has two lovers in this story. In the seventh book, she finally gets a regular boyfriend. Stand by for my posts on the rest of the series. 

What I’m Currently Reading And Rereading!

 I’m doing a lot of reading and rereading right now. I never read only one book at a time. 

So here are some, to share with you.

I’m having a Poul Anderson binge right now. Time Patrol is a series of short stories, about a bunch of people employed to fix things in history. Mostly, they live and work in a particular era, maybe even their own, helping other agents, but the main character of most of these stories, Manse Everard, is an Unattached agent, which gives the author the excuse to have him travel in time and fix things in different eras. He learns languages and backgrounds under sleep tuition before he travels. I remember reading some of these stories when I was at university, but that was a very long time ago and I only remember two or three. 

I’m rereading his novel A Midsummer Tempest, in which the hero is Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I, a real person, but living in a universe in which everything Shakespeare wrote was true, and he is known as the Great Historian. There were clocks in Ancient Rome, so technology is ahead of ours. There are trains in the time of Charles I, and an Industrial Revolution already. It’s all connected with the Puritans, who are winning the war. Rupert is given the job, by Oberon and Titania, of finding and bringing back Prospero’s book and staff, which he threw away at the end of The Tempest. There is an inn between universes, the Old Unicorn, where he meets characters from Poul Anderson’s other books. I’m tempted, when I have finished this reread, to pick up those books again. One is Operation Chaos, also set in a different universe, in which World War II is fought against the Saracen Caliphate - who fly on flying carpets. The other one is Three Hearts And Three Lions, in which the hero discovers he is one of Charlemagne’s paladins, left as a baby in our world, and the war he is fighting there becomes the war against the Nazis here. 

I am also reading, yet again, the books by L.Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt, The Incomplete Enchanter, The Castle Of Iron and The Wall Of Serpents. They are classics, no doubt about it. The hero of the series is Harold Shea, a psychologist at an institute. He and his friend Reed Chalmers, an older staff member at the same university, work out a way to use mathematical formulae to travel between universes. They are all based on mythology or classic fiction, such as The Faerie Queen and The Kalevala. Harold tries to visit the world of Irish mythology on his first trip, but a mistake in the formula lands him instead in the world of Norse mythology, and, worse still, it’s just before Ragnarok. He can’t use any of the technology he brings with him, even matches, but finds he can do magic while there. After this, he is more careful and knows what is possible, when he and Reed visit the world of Spenser’s Faerie Queen, where he meets and falls in love with Belphebe, an archer girl who lives in the forest. I’m currently reading the third book in the series, The Wall Of Serpents, in which they go to the world of the poem Kalevala, the national epic of Finland. I think Tolkien was inspired by it and used some ideas from it. 

Just started a reread of People Of The Book, by Geraldine Brooks. In it, an Australian woman who is a restorer, is given the task of working on the Sarajevo Haggadah. This book is real, by the way, a mediaeval book created to be read on Passover. But it’s a novel. Each bit she works on is a story in itself, such as a picture in which the artist paints herself along with the family who owned the Haggadah. There is a wine stain - who put it there? And so on. There is a fictionalised version of a true story when a Muslim librarian saved it from the Nazis. 

It reminded me a bit of James A. Michener’s The Source, set at an archaeological dig at a fictional town in Israel, which had a story about each of the objects the archaeologists find. So I have started a reread of that too. 

Any book you are currently reading or rereading? And are you, like me, unable to read one book at a time?

Just Been To See…Rebecca!

Last night I went to see the Melbourne Theatre  Company production of Rebecca, based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel. It was the first MTC show I have seen since before COVID. My sister and I used to go to every season together, but we can’t do it any more, since we take turns looking after our mother. So these days I buy the occasional ticket to something and go on my own, during the week instead of Saturday. And I have been to two Bell Shakespeare shows this year - Henry V and Coriolanus. I’ll be seeing another Shakespeare play next month, Much Ado About Nothing, also by the MTC. It’s one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, I do love romcoms! 

Speaking of Much Ado, one of the cast of an earlier MTC production of it was in Rebecca last night. Pamela Rabe, an actress I love, was Mrs Danvers, the spooky housekeeper. She is older now, of course, so won’t be playing Beatrice or Katherina (Taming Of The Shrew) as she did all those years ago. But she played a plum role for an older woman. There really aren’t enough of those, so good to see her get one.

It’s a cracking Gothic piece. I admit that I hadn’t read the book or even seen the film. I got a download of the novel last night. I couldn’t resist seeing the show, though. It’s one of those stories that everyone knows something  about, even if they haven’t read it. I even remember a Rebecca skit on the Carol Burnett Show.

There were only four cast members, of whom I’ve only heard of Pamela Rabe, but they managed to convince me that they were different characters. In fact, two of them, Max De Winter and the young wife, played only one role each, so the other two carried the other roles between them. 

The sets and props were impressive too. 

If you are in Melbourne, or can get here, it’s on for several more days and is well worth a visit. 

In Which I Celebrate Kerry Greenwood With Sisters In Crime!

 Today I went to the Windsor Hotel in the Melbourne CBD for an event staged by Sisters In Crime, that organisation celebrating women crime writers. I’ve been a member for years, but rarely get to attend any of their events or meetings, which tend to be on Thursday or Friday, when I have to look after my mother. However, on Sundays my brother gives me a break, taking over looking after Mum, and the event, celebrating the life and times of Melbourne crime writer Kerry Greenwood, who passed away a few months ago, alas, was two hours long, right in the middle of my time off, so I went, giving myself the ticket as a birthday present. 

It was a high tea, for which the Windsor is famous. Kerry Greenwood wrote the place into her Phryne Fisher fiction, so it was the perfect place to celebrate her. I found myself wishing they had done it while she was alive to enjoy it. 

I wore a dress I bought for a wedding a few years ago, but found most people - the women, anyway - were in costume, 1920s style. A nice touch, I thought. 

The afternoon tea was nice, but there were also a couple of panels going on. One was especially interesting because it was about how they made the Phryne Fisher TV series, including the writing and the set design. The writer of the series, Elizabeth Coleman, told us that they were pressured to have a romance between Phryne and the policeman Jack Robinson who, in the novels, was happily married and plain(it was one of the things that made him a success as a policeman- the crooks never noticed him till it was too late!). Of the actor who played Jack in the show it is often said, “He can put his shoes under my bed any time!” A nice-looking man indeed.

Another thing I found fascinating was that we heard from Kerry’s first publisher, who told us the story from her viewpoint. Kerry often told us how she didn’t sell her original book, but they suggested she write a crime novel instead. The publisher said she wanted to buy the first novel, which was set in England in the 18th century, about a female highwayman, but was told that the theme was just not right for them. So, instead, she suggested taking the character and transferring her to Melbourne in the 1920s. 

Imagine if they had bought the original novel. It might have done well enough, but it just wouldn’t have made the first of a series. Maybe it’s a good thing! 

There was a raffle at the end. I didn’t win, but it’s fair enough, as I have read most of her books. The woman who won first prize in the books also won the big prize of having her name put into the last Phryne Fisher novel, which is coming out in November. I bought some raffle tickets for the books, but the winner of third prize was the person who bought the very next ticket after me!  

As usual, I ended up buying some e books mentioned by the panels. I just couldn’t resist. 

It was a great afternoon. I’m very glad I went.

Worldcon 2025

Fair usage

 I’ve just been to the Seattle Worldcon- virtually, anyway. I wish I could say I got to a lot of panels, but I didn’t. The virtual option has been around since ConZealand, which was entirely virtual due to COVID. I think that and the Glasgow Worldcon last year were the best. They ran smoothly and you could click on a link and be in the panel. Furthermore, if you missed something you wanted, they were mostly recorded and they were available as long as till the end of the year. 

Alas, though there were some wonderful looking panels, I couldn’t get in. I don’t know why, because others seemed to manage. The technical folk were kind and patient and very helpful. 

But every time I wanted to get in, I had to send for a link, which is fine, except that the link didn’t get me far. I clicked into the portal, and found myself back on the entry page. I tried to use the app with the panels listed, which also sent me back to the portal page. The lady doing the tech stuff set up a link that was supposed to get you out of a loop. It didn’t. Finally, she got me in via a session number link. I thought the problem was fixed when she sent me a full list of panels with session numbers, only to find that they no longer worked. Apparently they had remade the whole stream and nobody had told my lovely tech lady. So I missed the last two panels I was hoping to attend.

And the replay function didn’t work. They said they would get it going and announce when it’s fixed, but not so far. If/when they do get it up, it will only be available for about two weeks. I suspect it won’t be up at all. Everyone organising a convention has their own life, after all, and jobs to go back to. I remember how exhausted I was after Aussiecon 3, where I was working on the children’s program. And I had to go back to work the next day! 

I did manage to see a panel on African SF and another on fan fiction. I bought a book of African SF short stories, the only book I bought this weekend. 

The fan fiction panel was interesting, though I was shocked to hear that many people are monetising it. Fan fiction is using other people’s universes, after all. It can be fun to write, but you aren’t supposed to make money out of it. I know how I’d feel if it was my work being monetised. The people doing the panel didn’t seem bothered by it. After all, the argument went, if artists can make money out of it, why not writers?

I think they may have missed the point. One of them said, though, that she was being approached by professional artists asking for commissions! She said no. 

I remember the days of print fanzines. Okay, we sold them, but only because you had to print them out and postage wasn’t free, after all. You weren’t supposed to do that, but people did. I never made a profit out of it. Nobody was paid for their work; you gave them a free contributor’s copy. Mind you, I once was asked by a Star Trek club if they could publish one of my longer stories as a fanzine, but they wouldn’t give me a free copy, so I said no.

These days they can post it on line, and it’s hard to find out if money has been paid. 

The panel also talked about podcasts of fan stories. I’ve only listened to one, which was very well read. Podcasters were advised to ask for permission before doing that. Well, duh! 

Well, that was my Worldcon experience. At least I got the Hugo Awards shortlisted works as my souvenir. It was worth the membership fees paid. I haven’t checked for the winners yet, but will share with you when 

I do. 

It’s after 10 pm here, so good night!