Hello bookish friends and a very warm welcome to damppebbles. It’s November which can mean only one thing, #R3COMM3ND3D2023 is here! It’s my favourite time of the year and one of the things I love the most about damppebbles. This is the seventh year (SEVENTH??!!) I’ve run #R3COMM3ND3D on the blog and I am giddy with excitement to see what books are selected this year by my very special guests. Who are these special guests, you ask? They’re book bloggers, bookstagrammers, reviewers and published authors. The kind of people you can rely on to know a good read when they see one! I’ve been looking forward to this moment for nearly a year now so without further ado, let’s crack on and welcome my first guest…

Joining me today is one of my very favourite bloggers, it’s the brilliant David of Blue Book Balloon. David’s blog is a treasure trove of bookish loveliness. If you don’t already subscribe then you need to change that as soon as humanly possible. I can guarantee David will help you find your next favourite read! He’s a bit of a legend.

So, what is #R3COMM3ND3D2023? It’s about sharing the book love. It’s a chance for authors, book bloggers, reviewers and bookstagrammers to shout about three (yes, *only* three) books they love. They can be written by any author, in any genre and published in any way (traditionally, indie press or self-published). But there is a catch. All three books must have been published in 2023. To make things interesting there are a couple of teeny, tiny rules; 1) the book must have FIRST been published in 2023 and 2) special editions and reissues do not count. See, it wasn’t too painful. I just like to keep you lovely people on your toes 😉

Let’s not wait any longer, here are the three books David recommends…

Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow
Set in early 30s Birmingham, Needless Alley explores the contradictions of that city – the powerful and wealthy with country houses and vast incomes from manufacturing, and the demimonde, the bridge between the two being William Garrett – Billy – a private detective whose trade is to facilitate divorces for husbands who wish to be shot of their wives. William is a complex character, a man who’s reinvented himself, a noir hero with a Brummie twist. The book takes us to William’s worlds – to clandestine Queer bars, to haunts of artists and sex workers, to the tenements of the poor and to the locations of seamy photoshoots where powerful men pay to watch the models pose, to closed factories and far-right politics, to the struggles of desperate people to stay one step away from destitution. A perfect noir setting, Marlow’s Birmingham is a city whose residents are still struggling with the legacy of war – William clearly suffering form what now we’d call PSTD – and, as I said, struggling to get by, but one where every new opportunity (and every willing victim) is being exploited. It’s a a beautifully written novel, a very material book. Natalie Marlow dwells on the physicality of her city – the heat of the Summer, the stink of the canals, the Birmingham brass of a bullet casing, I loved this book. I loved William. I loved Phyll, his unlikely ally in the spiral of blood and deception he enters and his guide in some of the hidden places he needs to walk. I loved spotting familiar locations transformed. I loved its engagement with the toxic mess that is British class. Most of all I loved its exploration of a vibrant, jostling city – and of the darkness just beneath the surface. A glorious read.
David’s Review of Needless Alley

Hopeland by Ian McDonald
Hopeland is a fierce storm of a book, a story on an epic scale covering thousands of miles and centuries of time, and also satisfying chunky in the hand. Yet it still has plenty of space for the personal and the small which McDonald uses to tell a big story, clashing Amon Brightborne – aka Tweed Boy – a young Irish musician from a wealthy, old established family, with Raisa Peri Antares Hopeland. The Hopelands are a chaotic, sprawling “family” or more of a tribe, which anybody can join existing across time, space and cultures and with its own own centres, or ‘hearths’ everywhere, its own ways of doing things, even its own religion. When Brightbornes encounter Hopelands, what might happen? The setting is a world that’s increasingly restive as weather, populations and trends are increasingly disrupted by climate change. The book takes us to Iceland, to Greenland, to the Pacific kingdom of Ava’u and to points in between as humanity struggles to move into its future. The writing is just incredible, this book is like a feast and simply gives so much (my favourite section perhaps being the one where a whisky soaked and self pitying Amon, exiled in Ava’u like a figure out of Jospeh Conrad, or perhaps Graham Greene, becomes involved in political chicanery, a subplot that many writers would base a whole book around). What else? Corporate and geopolitical shenanigans, the squabbles of gods and an element of possible fantasy or magic that is very much part of the texture of the story but kept as subsidiary theme. And McDonald dares to not give answers to some of the mysteries here. It’s just the way things are, alongside all the other marvels of Hopeland – the water driven musical engine playing its thousand year melody, for example. In short, Hopeland is a book that simply draws one in, a wonderful book full of so much. I strongly recommend it.
David’s Review of Hopeland

The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna
The Cleaving is an Arthurian retelling that at one level fits very well with what we might expect (though “Arthurian” isn’t quite the right term here, for reasons come back to). But don’t be deceived by the surface impression, at another this retelling is actually very different. To begin with, there is a much clearer overall narrative, rather than a procession of wonders. And more importantly that isn’t a narrative about Arthur, indeed in some ways he’s almost incidental. Yes, Arthur desires to be High King of Britain, and strives to achieve that, but behind him, there is a desperate – and actually more interesting – conflict over the role of magic. Nimue, one of the Hidden People, from whose viewpoint the story is told, sees magic as dangerous to mortals and seeks to limit its role (in line with the principles of the Hidden People). Merlin, and some others of the People, want to use it to establish Arthur’s throne, allegedly so he can be a bulwark against magic running wild although sheer desire for power may also figure here. It’s a very anti-heroic book – in the sense both that it explicitly disavows the simplistic “Arthur is the foretold King so anyone standing against him is evil” but also in the way that it acknowledges, indeed celebrates, the complexity of life: all those feats of arms, for example, don’t just happen, the provisioning and cooking must be organised. Camelot – and the other fortresses – need to be managed and operated, a task falling on the women, who are central here. The daily routine – growing food, mending fences, preparing food, spinning and weaving, healing – finds its place in The Cleaving where its importance is fully acknowledged, making this book – for all its magic and wonders and mounted knights – historical at a fundamental level. It focuses on the truly important things in life with battles and power play more an irritation. Instead of working to find a slot for an Arthur in British history, McKenna is I think restoring a place for women and women’s activity. This book is therefore perhaps not Arthurian so much as Nimuean – celebrating the making of an ointment, the planning of a feast or care for an orphaned child, all things that belong in history as much as swordplay and marching. A lovely and important book, I think.
David’s Review of The Cleaving

Three brilliant books to kick off this year’s #R3COMM3ND3D. Thank you so much, David.

About David:
Husband of the Vicar in a small village that you may recognise from Midsomer Murders on ITV (“Barnaby” outside the UK). I am a parent to two children; an adult daughter with autism and severe learning disabilities and a now adult son who’s training to be a priest in the Church of England. I spend my time reading, walking the dogs and seething over the state of the world.

David’s Blog and Social Media Links:
| Blue Book Balloon | X (formerly Twitter) @Bluebookballoon | Bluesky @bluebookballoon.bsky.social |

#R3COMM3ND3D will only run for the month of November this year so places are very limited. If you would like to take part in #R3C this year (and I would LOVE you to!) then please get your three choices in ASAP. If I’m unable to fill all 30 dates then any posts scheduled for the end of November will be brought forward and I will close the series early (but I don’t want to do that, it sounds miserable! 😂). Here are two different versions of the form if you fancy taking part.

If you’re a book blogger, bookstagrammer, reviewer or an author and you have three books published this year which you want to shout about then please complete the following form (or click this link: https://forms.gle/d6HbMLZJjEtUSm8FA)