This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in Summer 2010.
Fathom, something of a departure from Cherie Priest's earlier works (though not from her Southern Gothic roots) has something of the flavour of Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides. It melds furious tropical storms, the earth-quaking dreams of ancient gods, the stifling lushness of the forest and the sense of something ominous lurking beneath the calm surface of the sea. There are ghosts, witches, pirates and a shark-mouthed ingenue; there are elements of Greek myth, alchemy, urban legend and Shakespeare's Tempest.
Nia (short for Apollonia) is visiting her cousin Beatrice when she witnesses a brutal murder. Fleeing the scene, she plunges into the sea -- only to be dragged beneath the waves, along with Beatrice, by something ancient and evil.
But Nia is spared, in a sense: washed up like driftwood, she finds herself with plenty of time to reflect. Meanwhile, life on the little island of Anna Maria goes on without her, until the arrival of Sam, a harmless and likeable insurance adjustor, sparks transformation, change and a desperate race against the water-witch whose ambition is to waken a slumbering god.
While not a feminist novel in any meaningful sense, Fathom is full of strong, dangerous female characters. The men are less effectual, though somewhat more sympathetic. José Gaspar -- generally believed to be mere legend, puffed up by local tourist boards -- is portrayed as a former pirate who failed to discharge an errand and was punished for it: "I removed from the face of the earth every trace that he'd ever lived. There remains neither note nor relic to confirm he ever breathed before I claimed him." (p. 56) That's the vengeance of an angry goddess bound by her promise not to harm him; instead, she hits Gaspar where it hurts, in his reputation.
Fathom is a curiously timeless novel: it's set some time in the twentieth century, but it's hard to be more precise. There are Coke cans and cars, but most people on Anna Maria still get around on horseback; Nia wonders whether it's acceptable for a woman to wear trousers and bob her hair; Beatrice smokes 'to look smooth'.
Fathom is also rather unevenly paced, with long slow passages followed by frantic chases and abrupt reversals. The final few chapters, in particular, feel rushed and somehow unfinished, though perhaps that's more a product of Nia's detached point of view. On the other hand, that very detachment lulls the reader into a sense of complacency that's shattered by casual violence and character death.
There's something hollow at the heart of Fathom: perhaps it's the sense that we share with Nia, of moving -- or being guided -- through a world with rules and relationships that are never made clear. Perhaps it's the weight of reference and allusion that makes the novel top-heavy, so freighted with images and characters and ideas that it founders in confusion. Perhaps it's just the way the novel seems to simply stop, rather than finish: there's a lack of closure. Still, I'd recommend this. Priest's prose is robust, poetic, precise: she's adept at evoking atmosphere, and her flavour of horror is unique.
Showing posts with label vector. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vector. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Monday, June 01, 2009
The Hidden World -- Paul Park
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in Summer 2009.
The Hidden World concludes the quartet that began with A Princess of Roumania, and continued in The Tourmaline and The White Tyger. Miranda Popescu, raised in our own world as an adopted orphan, is still homesick for Massachusetts -- a Massachusetts that was only ever imaginary, a refuge created for Miranda by her dead aunt Aegypta Schenk. Massachusetts is lost to Miranda, and she finds a way to enter the hidden world, the uber-reality that lies beyond and within the 'real' world where Miranda now lives. That 'real' world is definitively not our own, cosmologically or geographically or historically. The sun orbits the Earth (which may be flat); the planets are also gods; the British Isles have sunk beneath the sea, leaving Newton and Shakespeare refugees in an altered Europe; North America is a wilderness inhabited by savages, and Roumania is a world power. Now Miranda has ventured beyond that reality into a purer, more elemental world.
The Hidden World begins with Miranda recuperating in an isolated farmhouse, musing on her missing friends Andromeda and Peter, and haunted in dreams by her dead aunt, who's still determined to use Miranda as a tool to forge a better world and bring about the salvation of Greater Roumania.
Roumania is at war with Turkey, both in the real world where massive tanks roll up from technologically-supreme Africa and in the hidden world where monstrous hybrid dogs snarl and snap at Roumania's defenders. Airships rain bombs upon Budapest: survivors of a train crash in the south of the country are afflicted by radiation sickness. The old government has been overthrown, and some still mourn the death of the infamous diva Nicola Ceaucescu, rumoured to have been involved in sundry wickednesses.
Being dead is no impediment to Baroness Nicola Ceaucescu, sorceress and socialite, heroine of Roumania (in her own eyes, at least), ambitious and clever and utterly determined to defeat Miranda Popescu and her aunt Aegypta's vision of Roumania's future. The Baroness is far from a cardboard character: on the contrary, she's more complex, more conflicted and more fascinating than almost any other character in the four novels. She's very much a product of her time and her world, and her fragile, careful shell of vulnerability ("the happy thing about being a woman [is that] you don't have to do anything, but only suffer for long enough") overlays an ruthlessly indomitable core.
How Nicola Ceaucescu opposes Miranda is only part of the tale in this concluding volume. Miranda's friends -- in Massachusetts, they were Andromeda and Peter -- both find a measure of peace with their true selves. Of the three, though, it's Miranda who sees her choices clear-eyed and determines that the price demanded of her is too bitter, too high, and never-ending. "There were a lot of books I used to read ... There was always something to be accomplished, and it was always difficult. People suffered. But at the end of the book it was all worth it, because the thing was finished and the story over. That's not true here."
The Roumania quartet is post-modern fantasy: there are no easy answers, and even the questions are trick questions. Park trusts his readers to read, not just what's written -- in clear, elegant, unfussy prose -- but what's not. The Hidden World gives up its secrets subtly and gradually. Details that seem insignificant (the way that the Tourmaline, Kepler's alchemical stone, feels less like stone and more like 'a tough little sack of flesh'; the way that Kepler -- according to Newton -- imprisoned a creature of the Hidden World in a stone tower; perhaps, too, the way that photographs of Miranda's father never show his face clearly) suddenly fall into place. The last few pages of this novel are tremendously complex, packed with allusions that cast light on what's gone before. And, to return to Miranda's complaint, it is worth it: it is over.
The Hidden World concludes the quartet that began with A Princess of Roumania, and continued in The Tourmaline and The White Tyger. Miranda Popescu, raised in our own world as an adopted orphan, is still homesick for Massachusetts -- a Massachusetts that was only ever imaginary, a refuge created for Miranda by her dead aunt Aegypta Schenk. Massachusetts is lost to Miranda, and she finds a way to enter the hidden world, the uber-reality that lies beyond and within the 'real' world where Miranda now lives. That 'real' world is definitively not our own, cosmologically or geographically or historically. The sun orbits the Earth (which may be flat); the planets are also gods; the British Isles have sunk beneath the sea, leaving Newton and Shakespeare refugees in an altered Europe; North America is a wilderness inhabited by savages, and Roumania is a world power. Now Miranda has ventured beyond that reality into a purer, more elemental world.
The Hidden World begins with Miranda recuperating in an isolated farmhouse, musing on her missing friends Andromeda and Peter, and haunted in dreams by her dead aunt, who's still determined to use Miranda as a tool to forge a better world and bring about the salvation of Greater Roumania.
Roumania is at war with Turkey, both in the real world where massive tanks roll up from technologically-supreme Africa and in the hidden world where monstrous hybrid dogs snarl and snap at Roumania's defenders. Airships rain bombs upon Budapest: survivors of a train crash in the south of the country are afflicted by radiation sickness. The old government has been overthrown, and some still mourn the death of the infamous diva Nicola Ceaucescu, rumoured to have been involved in sundry wickednesses.
Being dead is no impediment to Baroness Nicola Ceaucescu, sorceress and socialite, heroine of Roumania (in her own eyes, at least), ambitious and clever and utterly determined to defeat Miranda Popescu and her aunt Aegypta's vision of Roumania's future. The Baroness is far from a cardboard character: on the contrary, she's more complex, more conflicted and more fascinating than almost any other character in the four novels. She's very much a product of her time and her world, and her fragile, careful shell of vulnerability ("the happy thing about being a woman [is that] you don't have to do anything, but only suffer for long enough") overlays an ruthlessly indomitable core.
How Nicola Ceaucescu opposes Miranda is only part of the tale in this concluding volume. Miranda's friends -- in Massachusetts, they were Andromeda and Peter -- both find a measure of peace with their true selves. Of the three, though, it's Miranda who sees her choices clear-eyed and determines that the price demanded of her is too bitter, too high, and never-ending. "There were a lot of books I used to read ... There was always something to be accomplished, and it was always difficult. People suffered. But at the end of the book it was all worth it, because the thing was finished and the story over. That's not true here."
The Roumania quartet is post-modern fantasy: there are no easy answers, and even the questions are trick questions. Park trusts his readers to read, not just what's written -- in clear, elegant, unfussy prose -- but what's not. The Hidden World gives up its secrets subtly and gradually. Details that seem insignificant (the way that the Tourmaline, Kepler's alchemical stone, feels less like stone and more like 'a tough little sack of flesh'; the way that Kepler -- according to Newton -- imprisoned a creature of the Hidden World in a stone tower; perhaps, too, the way that photographs of Miranda's father never show his face clearly) suddenly fall into place. The last few pages of this novel are tremendously complex, packed with allusions that cast light on what's gone before. And, to return to Miranda's complaint, it is worth it: it is over.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
The Company -- K J Parker
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in Spring 2009.
.. as long as 'A' Company was still alive and together, as long as the five of them were together, the war could never end. It was part of them, their core, their reason, what they were for; they kept it alive and it kept them alive, which was why it, they, had lasted so long, against all the odds. 'A' Company could no more die in war than a fish could drown in the sea.
K. J. Parker's first stand-alone novel – previously s/he (the publicity material indicates a female author, but there is something masculine about the style) has published the Fencer, Scavenger and Engineer trilogies – is distinctly Parker in its focus on the military, the practical, the psychological: and yet it's oddly disappointing.
The war is over. General Teuche Kunessin ('the most devastating fighting man on either side of the war') returns to his homeland, intent on reuniting his comrades from 'A' Company and fulfilling the dream that kept them alive: the colonisation of an abandoned island, which he's ensured will not be of interest to the military. There'd been six of them, but one died right at the end of the war. (The Company is, as much as anything, a thriller about how the sixth man, Nuctos, died.) The remaining veterans, despite their arguments and objections, all leap at the opportunity. Supplies (including wives) are acquired. Sphoe is colonised, and turns out to have rather more resources than they'd been expecting.
As ever, Parker's eye for the gritty realities of a (pseudo)medieval society is impressive. When Kunessin was a boy, his family fell on hard times, because a battle was fought on their field, leaving a harvest of corpses: we can't bury them all, not in time. Can't burn them: there's not enough timber in the valley to fire this lot ... They'll start to rot, and they'll breed worms and flukes: the stock'll pick them up and they'll die. ... It'll be three years, soonest, before this land's fit to be grazed again. And Parker's a master at showing what's said and what's not – the male characters, in particular, are men who'd sooner die than talk out loud about emotions, but nevertheless very clearly have and are driven by said emotions – and at showing us the world through an individual's eyes, coloured and skewed with their perspective. Kunessin sees the sun 'slanting down over the roofs ... like a shower of pitched-up arrows'. Aidi analyses the profit and loss of each transaction. Menin has a sharp eye for nature's bounty.
In a series of flashbacks, we slowly discover how Kunessin amassed the fortune that enabled him to buy Sphoe, a ship, supplies. There are other flashbacks, illuminating the pasts of the other colonists: early on we discover that a couple of the wives have secrets in their pasts. All rumour and conjecture of course, nothing ever proved. And – in a quintessentially and aggravatingly Parker twist – there's an account of the betrayal of Nuctos, carefully crafted using only the third-person pronoun. It's several hundred pages before we can put a name to the viewpoint character of that section, and I cannot help but feel that this is cheating.
'A' Company ('the biggest bunch of underachievers the world had ever seen') are connected by more than chance: they've survived years of war together, and the sense of 'us against the rest of the world' – something darker and more codependent than mere camaraderie – is one of the strongest threads in the novel. Given that focus, the finale is successful, but it feels hasty and unfinished, as though there might be more going on than a bunch of soldiers surviving against all odds.
The Company, though flawed, is an enjoyable read, not least for Parker's dry humour and the careful construction of plot and backstory, and for another fantasy in which there's no magic, no music and beauty only in the eye of the beholders.
.. as long as 'A' Company was still alive and together, as long as the five of them were together, the war could never end. It was part of them, their core, their reason, what they were for; they kept it alive and it kept them alive, which was why it, they, had lasted so long, against all the odds. 'A' Company could no more die in war than a fish could drown in the sea.
K. J. Parker's first stand-alone novel – previously s/he (the publicity material indicates a female author, but there is something masculine about the style) has published the Fencer, Scavenger and Engineer trilogies – is distinctly Parker in its focus on the military, the practical, the psychological: and yet it's oddly disappointing.
The war is over. General Teuche Kunessin ('the most devastating fighting man on either side of the war') returns to his homeland, intent on reuniting his comrades from 'A' Company and fulfilling the dream that kept them alive: the colonisation of an abandoned island, which he's ensured will not be of interest to the military. There'd been six of them, but one died right at the end of the war. (The Company is, as much as anything, a thriller about how the sixth man, Nuctos, died.) The remaining veterans, despite their arguments and objections, all leap at the opportunity. Supplies (including wives) are acquired. Sphoe is colonised, and turns out to have rather more resources than they'd been expecting.
As ever, Parker's eye for the gritty realities of a (pseudo)medieval society is impressive. When Kunessin was a boy, his family fell on hard times, because a battle was fought on their field, leaving a harvest of corpses: we can't bury them all, not in time. Can't burn them: there's not enough timber in the valley to fire this lot ... They'll start to rot, and they'll breed worms and flukes: the stock'll pick them up and they'll die. ... It'll be three years, soonest, before this land's fit to be grazed again. And Parker's a master at showing what's said and what's not – the male characters, in particular, are men who'd sooner die than talk out loud about emotions, but nevertheless very clearly have and are driven by said emotions – and at showing us the world through an individual's eyes, coloured and skewed with their perspective. Kunessin sees the sun 'slanting down over the roofs ... like a shower of pitched-up arrows'. Aidi analyses the profit and loss of each transaction. Menin has a sharp eye for nature's bounty.
In a series of flashbacks, we slowly discover how Kunessin amassed the fortune that enabled him to buy Sphoe, a ship, supplies. There are other flashbacks, illuminating the pasts of the other colonists: early on we discover that a couple of the wives have secrets in their pasts. All rumour and conjecture of course, nothing ever proved. And – in a quintessentially and aggravatingly Parker twist – there's an account of the betrayal of Nuctos, carefully crafted using only the third-person pronoun. It's several hundred pages before we can put a name to the viewpoint character of that section, and I cannot help but feel that this is cheating.
'A' Company ('the biggest bunch of underachievers the world had ever seen') are connected by more than chance: they've survived years of war together, and the sense of 'us against the rest of the world' – something darker and more codependent than mere camaraderie – is one of the strongest threads in the novel. Given that focus, the finale is successful, but it feels hasty and unfinished, as though there might be more going on than a bunch of soldiers surviving against all odds.
The Company, though flawed, is an enjoyable read, not least for Parker's dry humour and the careful construction of plot and backstory, and for another fantasy in which there's no magic, no music and beauty only in the eye of the beholders.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Margarets -- Sheri S. Tepper
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in Winter 2008.
Margaret Bain, born 2084, grows up as the only child on Phobos. Earth is over-populated, ecologically devastated and governed by draconian reproductive laws. Those who come from large families (the calculation is based on number of children and number of siblings) are shipped out to one of the colony worlds, or indentured as bond-slaves to various unpleasant alien races. Not all the aliens are bad guys: the Gentherans, small besuited bipeds who made contact with Earth in 2062, seem to feel indebted to humanity, and have provided ships, assistance and galactic good will.
Like many solitary children, Margaret invents alter egos: a spy, a queen, a shaman, a linguist. Unlike most children, though, her fantasy selves become real: they split off at critical junctures, and go off to have adventures (and narratives) of their own. At nine, a version of Margaret leaves Phobos with a woman in a red dress whose spaceship looks like a dragonfly. At twelve, multiple selves leave Earth for different fates. At twenty-two ...
Margaret ends up seven-selved, each self on a different world and usually known by a different name. One self is male. One self is much older than the others, having passed through a time anomaly to reach the colony for which she's bound. Each self is only vaguely, if at all, aware that there are other versions of Margaret out there. And each berates herself for making the wrong choices, or bewails fate stacked against her.
Pan back from the Margarets. There's a plan millennia in the making, and a shadowy Order of the Siblinghood to implement it: there's a cosmic gathering-place, like an ocean or a forest or a galaxy, where the gods of all mortal races dwell. (Well, they say they're gods, but they would, wouldn't they?) The gods can only think, only do, what their followers are capable of thinking and doing; but this does not limit them in any useful way. Humankind's pantheon includes Mr Weathereye (a one-eyed gentleman of indeterminate age), Lady Badness, and the Gardener. There are other, less balanced entities in this assembly, notably a triptych of bloodthirsty Quaatar gods: the Quaatar harbour an innate loathing of humanity, and their gods are hatching a dreadful plot.
Now, blend in Tepper's big themes: population control (at all levels from intra-familial to racial); ecology and the fragile biome of Earth; inscrutable aliens; the need for rescue. Throw in a pinch of kindness-to-animals (in a kind of fairytale morality, this is a gift that benefits the giver), lost children, lost memories, some truly nasty religious practices, slavery and human trafficking, conjoined twins and the misuse of religion. And season with a new take on 'the human problem' -- not the problem perceived by various alien races, of the galaxy (and the pantheon) being overrun by humanity, but the more basic issue of humanity's appetite for wasteful destruction, and whether this appetite can ever be removed.
Stir well.
The Margarets is less about the roles and rights of women, and more about humanity regardless of gender, than in some of Tepper's earlier novels. There's a strong undercurrent of outrage at aspects of contemporary life: the dumbing-down of education, the ineffectuality of environmental policies, the pro-life movement. There's also humour, and something that I suspect an antagonistic reviewer might term 'whimsy', though I found it heart-warming. The seven-fold Margarets give Tepper ample room to indulge other favourite themes (shamanism, medicine, linguistics and a rather swashbuckling romance) without upsetting the balance of the novel. Which is, in a sense, about balance.
There's a certain amount of handwaving at the end of the novel ("The how is less important than the why," insists the Gardener). And readers who've followed Tepper's career may experience a sense of déjà vu from time to time. But this is a complex, cleverly-plotted novel, and a vastly entertaining read.
My personal review of The Margarets is here
Margaret Bain, born 2084, grows up as the only child on Phobos. Earth is over-populated, ecologically devastated and governed by draconian reproductive laws. Those who come from large families (the calculation is based on number of children and number of siblings) are shipped out to one of the colony worlds, or indentured as bond-slaves to various unpleasant alien races. Not all the aliens are bad guys: the Gentherans, small besuited bipeds who made contact with Earth in 2062, seem to feel indebted to humanity, and have provided ships, assistance and galactic good will.
Like many solitary children, Margaret invents alter egos: a spy, a queen, a shaman, a linguist. Unlike most children, though, her fantasy selves become real: they split off at critical junctures, and go off to have adventures (and narratives) of their own. At nine, a version of Margaret leaves Phobos with a woman in a red dress whose spaceship looks like a dragonfly. At twelve, multiple selves leave Earth for different fates. At twenty-two ...
Margaret ends up seven-selved, each self on a different world and usually known by a different name. One self is male. One self is much older than the others, having passed through a time anomaly to reach the colony for which she's bound. Each self is only vaguely, if at all, aware that there are other versions of Margaret out there. And each berates herself for making the wrong choices, or bewails fate stacked against her.
Pan back from the Margarets. There's a plan millennia in the making, and a shadowy Order of the Siblinghood to implement it: there's a cosmic gathering-place, like an ocean or a forest or a galaxy, where the gods of all mortal races dwell. (Well, they say they're gods, but they would, wouldn't they?) The gods can only think, only do, what their followers are capable of thinking and doing; but this does not limit them in any useful way. Humankind's pantheon includes Mr Weathereye (a one-eyed gentleman of indeterminate age), Lady Badness, and the Gardener. There are other, less balanced entities in this assembly, notably a triptych of bloodthirsty Quaatar gods: the Quaatar harbour an innate loathing of humanity, and their gods are hatching a dreadful plot.
Now, blend in Tepper's big themes: population control (at all levels from intra-familial to racial); ecology and the fragile biome of Earth; inscrutable aliens; the need for rescue. Throw in a pinch of kindness-to-animals (in a kind of fairytale morality, this is a gift that benefits the giver), lost children, lost memories, some truly nasty religious practices, slavery and human trafficking, conjoined twins and the misuse of religion. And season with a new take on 'the human problem' -- not the problem perceived by various alien races, of the galaxy (and the pantheon) being overrun by humanity, but the more basic issue of humanity's appetite for wasteful destruction, and whether this appetite can ever be removed.
Stir well.
The Margarets is less about the roles and rights of women, and more about humanity regardless of gender, than in some of Tepper's earlier novels. There's a strong undercurrent of outrage at aspects of contemporary life: the dumbing-down of education, the ineffectuality of environmental policies, the pro-life movement. There's also humour, and something that I suspect an antagonistic reviewer might term 'whimsy', though I found it heart-warming. The seven-fold Margarets give Tepper ample room to indulge other favourite themes (shamanism, medicine, linguistics and a rather swashbuckling romance) without upsetting the balance of the novel. Which is, in a sense, about balance.
There's a certain amount of handwaving at the end of the novel ("The how is less important than the why," insists the Gardener). And readers who've followed Tepper's career may experience a sense of déjà vu from time to time. But this is a complex, cleverly-plotted novel, and a vastly entertaining read.
My personal review of The Margarets is here
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tourniquet: Tales from the Renegade City -- Kim Lakin-Smith
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, Autumn 2008
Tourniquet, the debut novel from Kim Lakin-Smith, takes us to an alternative Nottingham; whether by 'alternative' you infer a variant history, or a dance to a different beat, the epithet rings true. Nottingham's transformation began some years before the action of Tourniquet, when 'the most revered band in the history of rock', ubergoths Origin, decided to turn their back on the mainstream and retire to the city, provoking an influx of adoring fans and followers, and an outflux of ordinary, decent Daily Mail-reading folk. Gradually Nottingham, its municipal bodies suborned by the wages of Gothic rock, has been transmuted into the darkly magical Renegade City, its familiar landmarks and thoroughfares -- Sneinton Market, St Mary's Church, Maid Marion Way, the legendary venue Rock City -- overseen by the Drathcar (the four neo-vampyric members of Origin) and overrun by the tribes that have evolved.
Tourniquet opens with a Fae girl, Jezebel, fleeing an army of Skinwalkers, one of whom turns out to be her estranged brother Harish. Next, we encounter Druid, Origin's drummer, vowing to avenge the reluctant martyrdom of lead singer Roses, who burnt to death in a fire that may have been no accident. Roses, it turns out, was Druid's brother, which may explain why Druid's so keen to discover the truth behind his death when the other members of Origin, slinky bassist Sophia and lilac-eyed lead guitarist Adeudas, seem fashionably unconcerned.
Fame can be its own punishment, as many a rockstar's found to their cost: but in this case Druid's famous face is his salvation, for he can pass as no more than one of the Drathy, obsessive fans who emulate the clothes, the physiology and the lives of their idols. It's the mysterious "D", then, who mingles with the lowlives of the Renegade City; who encounters the sassy and streetwise IQ (Irvine Quirk), his battleaxe grandmother Queenie, and a host of other colourful characters who seem drawn as much from legend and ballad as from the counterculture.
Lakin-Smith's prose is extravagant almost to excess, glowing as a stained glass window and spiky as baroque barbed wire. The Nottingham she paints is not one of soft-focus spires limned with dark fire, but a convincingly gritty cybergoth city, dangerous and dirty. There are motorbike tourneys, Fae wings patched with duct-tape, wireless pirates plying the canals. It's visually arresting, and often rather frantic as D and Jez progress on what's either a quest or an extended pub-crawl through the underside of the city.
Like Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love sequence, Tourniquet posits a world where rock'n'roll is really as important as it thinks it should be. Unlike Jones' amiable dystopia, the Renegade City is an isolated (and likely barricaded) polder in a land of normality. Very little is said of the rest of England, the rest of the world, save as something to be fled. Whatever the goths and hippies and punks hope to find in the Renegade City, it's not peace. The different tribes -- Trawlers, Castclan, Skinwalkers, Fae -- are engaged in constant internecine conflict, as exclusive and elitist as playground cliques: 'apartheid', Jez terms it, and Druid is increasingly aware that Roses' libertarian notions haven't translated well to reality.
Tourniquet's so tightly and intricately knotted a novel that it's sometimes hard to see through the gloss of poetic prose to the shape of the story. There's an unresolved feel to it, a haziness to the last few chapters, that makes me wonder if the stories herein are to be continued. I'll certainly look forward to more of Lakin-Smith's work.
PERSONAL REVIEW HERE
Tourniquet, the debut novel from Kim Lakin-Smith, takes us to an alternative Nottingham; whether by 'alternative' you infer a variant history, or a dance to a different beat, the epithet rings true. Nottingham's transformation began some years before the action of Tourniquet, when 'the most revered band in the history of rock', ubergoths Origin, decided to turn their back on the mainstream and retire to the city, provoking an influx of adoring fans and followers, and an outflux of ordinary, decent Daily Mail-reading folk. Gradually Nottingham, its municipal bodies suborned by the wages of Gothic rock, has been transmuted into the darkly magical Renegade City, its familiar landmarks and thoroughfares -- Sneinton Market, St Mary's Church, Maid Marion Way, the legendary venue Rock City -- overseen by the Drathcar (the four neo-vampyric members of Origin) and overrun by the tribes that have evolved.
Tourniquet opens with a Fae girl, Jezebel, fleeing an army of Skinwalkers, one of whom turns out to be her estranged brother Harish. Next, we encounter Druid, Origin's drummer, vowing to avenge the reluctant martyrdom of lead singer Roses, who burnt to death in a fire that may have been no accident. Roses, it turns out, was Druid's brother, which may explain why Druid's so keen to discover the truth behind his death when the other members of Origin, slinky bassist Sophia and lilac-eyed lead guitarist Adeudas, seem fashionably unconcerned.
Fame can be its own punishment, as many a rockstar's found to their cost: but in this case Druid's famous face is his salvation, for he can pass as no more than one of the Drathy, obsessive fans who emulate the clothes, the physiology and the lives of their idols. It's the mysterious "D", then, who mingles with the lowlives of the Renegade City; who encounters the sassy and streetwise IQ (Irvine Quirk), his battleaxe grandmother Queenie, and a host of other colourful characters who seem drawn as much from legend and ballad as from the counterculture.
Lakin-Smith's prose is extravagant almost to excess, glowing as a stained glass window and spiky as baroque barbed wire. The Nottingham she paints is not one of soft-focus spires limned with dark fire, but a convincingly gritty cybergoth city, dangerous and dirty. There are motorbike tourneys, Fae wings patched with duct-tape, wireless pirates plying the canals. It's visually arresting, and often rather frantic as D and Jez progress on what's either a quest or an extended pub-crawl through the underside of the city.
Like Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love sequence, Tourniquet posits a world where rock'n'roll is really as important as it thinks it should be. Unlike Jones' amiable dystopia, the Renegade City is an isolated (and likely barricaded) polder in a land of normality. Very little is said of the rest of England, the rest of the world, save as something to be fled. Whatever the goths and hippies and punks hope to find in the Renegade City, it's not peace. The different tribes -- Trawlers, Castclan, Skinwalkers, Fae -- are engaged in constant internecine conflict, as exclusive and elitist as playground cliques: 'apartheid', Jez terms it, and Druid is increasingly aware that Roses' libertarian notions haven't translated well to reality.
Tourniquet's so tightly and intricately knotted a novel that it's sometimes hard to see through the gloss of poetic prose to the shape of the story. There's an unresolved feel to it, a haziness to the last few chapters, that makes me wonder if the stories herein are to be continued. I'll certainly look forward to more of Lakin-Smith's work.
PERSONAL REVIEW HERE
Monday, October 01, 2007
The White Tyger -- Paul Park
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in November 2007.
This is the third in Park's Roumanian quartet, following A Princess of Roumania (2005) and The Tourmaline (2006). (The final volume, The Hidden World, is due next year.) Though penultimate volumes can sometimes seem slower and less eventful than other parts of a quartet -- marking time, building suspense -- The White Tyger provides a new perspective on previous events, and considerably more information about the world in which it's set. A great deal happens in this volume of the story, though it's inconclusive. There are reversals, mistakes, the gradual subversion and destruction of several well-laid and long-term plans. All it takes is a little greed, the wrong person in the right place, the hidden world trickling into the real.
The White Tyger moves the focus away from Miranda Popescu, who's been transplanted from our own Massachusetts to become a fairytale princess, a symbol of freedom and hope, in a Roumania quite different from the one we know. Miranda -- seen by her family's loyal followers as the embodiment of the White Tyger, a legendary symbol of Roumanian freedom -- is a shadowy puppet in this novel, and when she does appear it's seldom in a sympathetic role. There's more warmth in the widowed Baroness Nicola Ceacescu, calm within her web of plots: the Baroness is as happy to use magic -- simulacra, 'the old country magic of whores', and a degree of foreknowledge that may be prescience or predetermination -- as poison or intrigue. Sasha Prochenko (the bold and dashing lieutenant whom we encountered first as a girl, and then as a dog) is now a tripartite creature, capable of being male or female or something quite inhuman: and the ways in which Prochenko's three selves manifest, merge and interact with new protagonists, is fascinating.
Park fleshes out his world in this volume of the quartet. In A Princess of Roumania our own reality was written off as an elaborate deception to hide Miranda: now it's reinterpreted as a failed experiment. "Models for evolution, heliocentric ... fairy stories. A world where dreams mean nothing. Where the dead are dead. Where stars are only balls of flaming gas and planets are dead rocks, and we are only responsible to our own selves."
Miranda, the archetypal self-involved teenager, says lamely "And I thought it was all for me."
Roumania, even while occupied by the Germans, is the cultural, or magical, or actual centre of a world in which a god has been imprisoned in a tower for the last three centuries: where Cleopatra has taken her place amongst the deities on Olympos (and a world in which this deification is perceived as history rather than mythology): where Shakespeare's known as 'that English refugee' and Newton -- who 'died of syphilis and mercury in Potsdam, a drunken broken man' -- is more famous for his alchemy, and a few unpleasantly effective devices, than anything else. After all, in this world, Copernicus was wrong.
The story gathers pace like a runaway train -- yet there's also a curious, calming distance between the reader and the characters, a sense that we are watching their stories unfold rather than inhabiting those stories. In a way that could be said for the characters, too: that they're not inhabiting their own stories. For a world constrained by fate and gods, there are a great many individuals creating and recreating themselves, choosing the myths by which they live and die. Nicola Ceacescu, whose unfinished opera The White Tyger -- with herself in the leading role -- shows a steely determination to revise her own history and that of all Roumania, strives to find the myth that fits what she has done, and what she's become. Will she be Cleopatra with her asp? Or will she assume the attributes of that other princess of Roumania, the infanticidal Medea?
It remains to be seen whether or not Park can pull all the threads of his narrative together, explain every allusion and reinterpretation, in the final volume of the quartet. But having come this far, my hopes are high.
This is the third in Park's Roumanian quartet, following A Princess of Roumania (2005) and The Tourmaline (2006). (The final volume, The Hidden World, is due next year.) Though penultimate volumes can sometimes seem slower and less eventful than other parts of a quartet -- marking time, building suspense -- The White Tyger provides a new perspective on previous events, and considerably more information about the world in which it's set. A great deal happens in this volume of the story, though it's inconclusive. There are reversals, mistakes, the gradual subversion and destruction of several well-laid and long-term plans. All it takes is a little greed, the wrong person in the right place, the hidden world trickling into the real.
The White Tyger moves the focus away from Miranda Popescu, who's been transplanted from our own Massachusetts to become a fairytale princess, a symbol of freedom and hope, in a Roumania quite different from the one we know. Miranda -- seen by her family's loyal followers as the embodiment of the White Tyger, a legendary symbol of Roumanian freedom -- is a shadowy puppet in this novel, and when she does appear it's seldom in a sympathetic role. There's more warmth in the widowed Baroness Nicola Ceacescu, calm within her web of plots: the Baroness is as happy to use magic -- simulacra, 'the old country magic of whores', and a degree of foreknowledge that may be prescience or predetermination -- as poison or intrigue. Sasha Prochenko (the bold and dashing lieutenant whom we encountered first as a girl, and then as a dog) is now a tripartite creature, capable of being male or female or something quite inhuman: and the ways in which Prochenko's three selves manifest, merge and interact with new protagonists, is fascinating.
Park fleshes out his world in this volume of the quartet. In A Princess of Roumania our own reality was written off as an elaborate deception to hide Miranda: now it's reinterpreted as a failed experiment. "Models for evolution, heliocentric ... fairy stories. A world where dreams mean nothing. Where the dead are dead. Where stars are only balls of flaming gas and planets are dead rocks, and we are only responsible to our own selves."
Miranda, the archetypal self-involved teenager, says lamely "And I thought it was all for me."
Roumania, even while occupied by the Germans, is the cultural, or magical, or actual centre of a world in which a god has been imprisoned in a tower for the last three centuries: where Cleopatra has taken her place amongst the deities on Olympos (and a world in which this deification is perceived as history rather than mythology): where Shakespeare's known as 'that English refugee' and Newton -- who 'died of syphilis and mercury in Potsdam, a drunken broken man' -- is more famous for his alchemy, and a few unpleasantly effective devices, than anything else. After all, in this world, Copernicus was wrong.
The story gathers pace like a runaway train -- yet there's also a curious, calming distance between the reader and the characters, a sense that we are watching their stories unfold rather than inhabiting those stories. In a way that could be said for the characters, too: that they're not inhabiting their own stories. For a world constrained by fate and gods, there are a great many individuals creating and recreating themselves, choosing the myths by which they live and die. Nicola Ceacescu, whose unfinished opera The White Tyger -- with herself in the leading role -- shows a steely determination to revise her own history and that of all Roumania, strives to find the myth that fits what she has done, and what she's become. Will she be Cleopatra with her asp? Or will she assume the attributes of that other princess of Roumania, the infanticidal Medea?
It remains to be seen whether or not Park can pull all the threads of his narrative together, explain every allusion and reinterpretation, in the final volume of the quartet. But having come this far, my hopes are high.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Tourmaline -- Paul Park
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in July 2006.
The Tourmaline follows A Princess of Roumania, and will make no sense to anyone who hasn't read the previous instalment. Even those who have read it might flounder: this is the second half of a book intended as a single volume, split at what initially seems an awkward point. The end of Princess had great dramatic impact, but the logical division seems to be about a hundred pages into The Tourmaline, when Peter and Andromeda -- last seen on a river-bank in upstate New York -- undergo a transformation, a translation, as radical as Miranda's own.
In The Tourmaline, the focus changes from the wilderness of North America to Europe; to Roumania, a country torn by war and looking to the White Tyger for salvation. Miranda, reeling from an abrupt arrival, doesn't know what's expected of her, or even what she's capable of doing. And perhaps everything she's been told is false, because there is already a White Tyger in Roumania; Nicola Ceasescu has claimed her country's love and loyalty, and is determined to prevail by any means necessary, magical or mundane.
Peter, still travelling with Andromeda (who's also been transformed by her experiences) is no longer the rather diffident teenager of A Princess of Roumania. With the help of a mysterious African woman -- she seems a child, but there is nothing childish about her -- Peter's found his way to Europe, and he and Andromeda are making a living, searching for Miranda, searching in fact for some meaning to this extended stay in a world that's not their own.
Park draws back, showing us a broader world: a world in which Africa is technologically superior to Europe; in which barrels of a secret substance, labelled 'nepenthe', come north by train to aid the former Baroness Ceasescu in her covert war against the Germans; in which King Jesus crucified the generals before the walls of Rome, and remnants of an older race of humans roam the forests of Roumania. Magic works, here, though it's a strict and rigid discipline as full of theories and standard texts as any science. Nicola Ceasescu's methodology, her scientific magic, gives new dimension to the pre-Copernican cosmology of the first novel: she sets a spell that's also a trap, asking for help, and it seems that she is answered.
Yet all the world's a backdrop for Miranda's story, and the stories of Peter and of Andromeda. None of the three is especially likeable, as a character: that's one way in which Park subverts the tropes of genre fantasy. He's iconoclastic, too: the Magic Jewel? A fake. The letter from Miranda's dead aunt Aegypta? Lost before it's read. There's no logic to the Subterranean Portal (the weakest element of the novel, but I trust the author to explain it when the time's right). And the white tyger, that rare and special creature of the Roumanian countryside, turns out not to be a fearsome legend: it's no larger than a lynx.
Many readers seemed to misunderstand A Princess of Roumania, reading it as a YA novel (which it isn't, though it concerns Miranda's coming-of-age) or a historical fantasy (it's almost certainly set in the present day, albeit in another universe). I suspect this novel, with its broader view of the world in which Miranda, Peter and Andromeda find themselves, will confuse the issue further. Paul Park's clear, precise prose doesn't prevent him from clouding the issue with maddening scene-changes just as some vital crux is reached; with occasionally-clumsy obfuscations ("the soldier talked for a long time," without reporting what was said) and a presentation of this new world as is, unexplained. Something's hidden in plain sight, here, and I'm very much looking forward to finding out what it might be.
The Tourmaline follows A Princess of Roumania, and will make no sense to anyone who hasn't read the previous instalment. Even those who have read it might flounder: this is the second half of a book intended as a single volume, split at what initially seems an awkward point. The end of Princess had great dramatic impact, but the logical division seems to be about a hundred pages into The Tourmaline, when Peter and Andromeda -- last seen on a river-bank in upstate New York -- undergo a transformation, a translation, as radical as Miranda's own.
In The Tourmaline, the focus changes from the wilderness of North America to Europe; to Roumania, a country torn by war and looking to the White Tyger for salvation. Miranda, reeling from an abrupt arrival, doesn't know what's expected of her, or even what she's capable of doing. And perhaps everything she's been told is false, because there is already a White Tyger in Roumania; Nicola Ceasescu has claimed her country's love and loyalty, and is determined to prevail by any means necessary, magical or mundane.
Peter, still travelling with Andromeda (who's also been transformed by her experiences) is no longer the rather diffident teenager of A Princess of Roumania. With the help of a mysterious African woman -- she seems a child, but there is nothing childish about her -- Peter's found his way to Europe, and he and Andromeda are making a living, searching for Miranda, searching in fact for some meaning to this extended stay in a world that's not their own.
Park draws back, showing us a broader world: a world in which Africa is technologically superior to Europe; in which barrels of a secret substance, labelled 'nepenthe', come north by train to aid the former Baroness Ceasescu in her covert war against the Germans; in which King Jesus crucified the generals before the walls of Rome, and remnants of an older race of humans roam the forests of Roumania. Magic works, here, though it's a strict and rigid discipline as full of theories and standard texts as any science. Nicola Ceasescu's methodology, her scientific magic, gives new dimension to the pre-Copernican cosmology of the first novel: she sets a spell that's also a trap, asking for help, and it seems that she is answered.
Yet all the world's a backdrop for Miranda's story, and the stories of Peter and of Andromeda. None of the three is especially likeable, as a character: that's one way in which Park subverts the tropes of genre fantasy. He's iconoclastic, too: the Magic Jewel? A fake. The letter from Miranda's dead aunt Aegypta? Lost before it's read. There's no logic to the Subterranean Portal (the weakest element of the novel, but I trust the author to explain it when the time's right). And the white tyger, that rare and special creature of the Roumanian countryside, turns out not to be a fearsome legend: it's no larger than a lynx.
Many readers seemed to misunderstand A Princess of Roumania, reading it as a YA novel (which it isn't, though it concerns Miranda's coming-of-age) or a historical fantasy (it's almost certainly set in the present day, albeit in another universe). I suspect this novel, with its broader view of the world in which Miranda, Peter and Andromeda find themselves, will confuse the issue further. Paul Park's clear, precise prose doesn't prevent him from clouding the issue with maddening scene-changes just as some vital crux is reached; with occasionally-clumsy obfuscations ("the soldier talked for a long time," without reporting what was said) and a presentation of this new world as is, unexplained. Something's hidden in plain sight, here, and I'm very much looking forward to finding out what it might be.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Review for Vector: A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park
This review appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the BSFA, #243 (November / December 2005).
"I used to love those stories where the girl feels she doesn't belong, and she's having some kind of problems, and she wakes up in a different country -- just like this. ... This isn't that kind of story."
"I used to love those stories where the girl feels she doesn't belong, and she's having some kind of problems, and she wakes up in a different country -- just like this. ... This isn't that kind of story."
This isn't that kind of story: but at first you might think that it is. A Princess of Roumania introduces Miranda, a teenage girl living in small-town Massachussetts, who's haunted by memories of her early childhood. She has been told that she was adopted from an orphanage in Romania at the age of three, after her parents disappeared during the uprising against Ceausescu. She remembers playing on a beach, and travelling on a train, and a cottage in a forest; and these vividly visual memories, together with a bundle of keepsakes (a bracelet, some antique coins, a book -- The Essential History -- in a language she can't read), are all that she has of her parents and her origins.
These mementos, these symbolic quest-objects, draw the reader's attention. It's simple to construct a plot around them: a tale of a princess snatched from her home to be reared by common folk until she is adult enough to claim her inheritance, right wrongs, overthrow the oppressor and free her country. It's easy to think that we're reading that story, and Park knows it, is complicit in it.
But the tale is not entirely Miranda's. The Baroness Nicola Ceausescu sits in a tall house in Bucharest, in (we are told) 'a different time'. She has sent her servants, spirit-children under her magical control, after Miranda. She sits reading the other copy -- there are only two in all of time and space -- of The Essential History, and marvelling at the convoluted history (Hitler, Stalin, Communism) of the world it describes. "Such a tangle of invention, and for what?" This is not her world. The Baroness's world is at the centre of a pre-Copernican universe, the planets turning around it in concentric spheres. In her world England was destroyed by a tidal wave in the 17th century: some of the survivors fled to the Continent. (Newton was made welcome in Berlin.) In her world, Massachussetts is a wilderness.
Opposing the Baroness is the Princess Aegypta Schenk von Schenk, author of The Essential History: nobility reduced to poverty by the machinations of the Empress Valeria and her party. Aegypta is Miranda's aunt, and it is she who arranged for the infant Miranda to be hidden in a place of safety. The Baroness, though, has discovered that safe place, and Miranda is being drawn back to her homeland.
Miranda does not come willingly, or alone. She is accompanied by Peter Gross, a one-armed boy to whom she's drawn despite her thoughtless rejection of anyone who isn't clever and popular, and by her best friend Andromeda, who is smart and tough and feisty. But when they pass from this world to that other, Andromeda and Peter are dramatically, physically changed. And Miranda changes too, though it's not so obvious. She loses her certainty, her understanding, her confidence: and the reader flounders with her.
The story's told from a number of viewpoints (Miranda, Peter, the Baroness, the Elector of Ratisbon) yet never immerses the reader fully in any one character's perceptions. For example, during Miranda's narrative, we recognise her adoptive father's flash of joy when she quotes his own advice back at him. Scattered throughout the novel are observations and remarks that at first glance seem transparent. The metaphor that springs to mind is panning out: the author drawing back to show the reader some context.
Yet the context that's revealed is not necessarily the obvious one. There are subtleties of tone and shading, and of narrative pace, that steer the reader towards one understanding, and then another. This blurring of reality, this lack of definition, mirrors Miranda's own confusion. It bestows unexpected, and not necessarily reliable, insights into the characters' motivations, beliefs, and identities.
Park's achievement lies in the clarity of his prose, and in his careful, precise rendition of character. Many young heroines behave like grown women, but Miranda is credibly teenaged, utterly rooted in the world she's grown up in (transported to the North American wilderness, she still thinks of Albany as 'forty-five minutes' drive away') and not always very likeable. Peter is perhaps less believable an American teenager, but there are hints that he is, at heart, neither American nor teenaged. And the Baroness Ceaucescu, whose villainy is made explicit at her first appearance, has depth and dimension to such an extent that by the end of the book -- the first, damn, of a series, though it's not clear how many volumes this will comprise -- I began to wonder if this was her story, and not Miranda's at all.
This book will be compared to Pullman's His Dark Materials, and to the works of Jonathan Carroll and Gene Wolfe (and, inevitably, to the Harry Potter series, with which the sole consonance seems to be the fact that Miranda and her friends are teenagers). All these comparisons are in some sense valid, yet all fall short. Interestingly, too, every review I've seen seems to find a different interpretation of the events, the setting and the characters. A Princess of Roumania is like nothing except itself: bittersweet, clear and cold and
complex.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
A Princess of Roumania -- Paul Park
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in November 2005.
"I used to love those stories where the girl feels she doesn't belong, and she's having some kind of problems, and she wakes up in a different country -- just like this. ... This isn't that kind of story."
This isn't that kind of story: but at first you might think that it is. A Princess of Roumania introduces Miranda, a teenage girl living in small-town Massachussetts, who's haunted by memories of her early childhood. She has been told that she was adopted from an orphanage in Romania at the age of three, after her parents disappeared during the uprising against Ceaucescu. She remembers playing on a beach, and travelling on a train, and a cottage in a forest; and these vividly visual memories, together with a bundle of keepsakes (a bracelet, some antique coins, a book -- The Essential History -- in a language she can't read), are all that she has of her parents and her origins.
These mementos, these symbolic quest-objects, draw the reader's attention. It's simple to construct a plot around them: a tale of a princess snatched from her home to be reared by common folk until she is adult enough to claim her inheritance, right wrongs, overthrow the oppressor and free her country. It's easy to think that we're reading that story, and Park knows it, is complicit in it.
But the tale is not entirely Miranda's. The Baroness Nicola Ceaucescu sits in a tall house in Bucharest, in (we are told) 'a different time'. She has sent her servants, spirit-children under her magical control, after Miranda. She sits reading the other copy -- there are only two in all of time and space -- of The Essential History, and marvelling at the convoluted history (Hitler, Stalin, Communism) of the world it describes. "Such a tangle of invention, and for what?" This is not her world. The Baroness's world is at the centre of a pre-Copernican universe, the planets turning around it in concentric spheres. In her world England was destroyed by a tidal wave in the 17th century: some of the survivors fled to the Continent. (Newton was made welcome in Berlin.) In her world, Massachussetts is a wilderness.
Opposing the Baroness is the Princess Aegypta Schenk von Schenk, author of The Essential History: nobility reduced to poverty by the machinations of the Empress Valeria and her party. Aegypta is Miranda's aunt, and it is she who arranged for the infant Miranda to be hidden in a place of safety. The Baroness, though, has discovered that safe place, and Miranda is being drawn back to her homeland.
Miranda does not come willingly, or alone. She is accompanied by Peter Gross, a one-armed boy to whom she's drawn despite her thoughtless rejection of anyone who isn't clever and popular, and by her best friend Andromeda, who is smart and tough and feisty. But when they pass from this world to that other, Andromeda and Peter are dramatically, physically changed. And Miranda changes too, though it's not so obvious. She loses her certainty, her understanding, her confidence: and the reader flounders with her.
The story's told from a number of viewpoints (Miranda, Peter, the Baroness, the Elector of Ratisbon) yet never immerses the reader fully in any one character's perceptions. For example, during Miranda's narrative, we recognise her adoptive father's flash of joy when she quotes his own advice back at him. Scattered throughout the novel are observations and remarks that at first glance seem transparent. The metaphor that springs to mind is panning out: the author drawing back to show the reader some context.
Yet the context that's revealed is not necessarily the obvious one. There are subtleties of tone and shading, and of narrative pace, that steer the reader towards one understanding, and then another. This blurring of reality, this lack of definition, mirrors Miranda's own confusion. It bestows unexpected, and not necessarily reliable, insights into the characters' motivations, beliefs, and identities.
Park's achievement lies in the clarity of his prose, and in his careful, precise rendition of character. Many young heroines behave like grown women, but Miranda is credibly teenaged, utterly rooted in the world she's grown up in (transported to the North American wilderness, she still thinks of Albany as 'forty-five minutes' drive away') and not always very likeable. Peter is perhaps less believable an American teenager, but there are hints that he is, at heart, neither American nor teenaged. And the Baroness Ceaucescu, whose villainy is made explicit at her first appearance, has depth and dimension to such an extent that by the end of the book -- the first, damn, of a series, though it's not clear how many volumes this will comprise -- I began to wonder if this was her story, and not Miranda's at all.
This book will be compared to Pullman's His Dark Materials, and to the works of Jonathan Carroll and Gene Wolfe (and, inevitably, to the Harry Potter series, with which the sole consonance seems to be the fact that Miranda and her friends are teenagers). All these comparisons are in some sense valid, yet all fall short. Interestingly, too, every review I've seen seems to find a different interpretation of the events, the setting and the characters. A Princess of Roumania is like nothing except itself: bittersweet, clear and cold and complex.
"I used to love those stories where the girl feels she doesn't belong, and she's having some kind of problems, and she wakes up in a different country -- just like this. ... This isn't that kind of story."
This isn't that kind of story: but at first you might think that it is. A Princess of Roumania introduces Miranda, a teenage girl living in small-town Massachussetts, who's haunted by memories of her early childhood. She has been told that she was adopted from an orphanage in Romania at the age of three, after her parents disappeared during the uprising against Ceaucescu. She remembers playing on a beach, and travelling on a train, and a cottage in a forest; and these vividly visual memories, together with a bundle of keepsakes (a bracelet, some antique coins, a book -- The Essential History -- in a language she can't read), are all that she has of her parents and her origins.
These mementos, these symbolic quest-objects, draw the reader's attention. It's simple to construct a plot around them: a tale of a princess snatched from her home to be reared by common folk until she is adult enough to claim her inheritance, right wrongs, overthrow the oppressor and free her country. It's easy to think that we're reading that story, and Park knows it, is complicit in it.
But the tale is not entirely Miranda's. The Baroness Nicola Ceaucescu sits in a tall house in Bucharest, in (we are told) 'a different time'. She has sent her servants, spirit-children under her magical control, after Miranda. She sits reading the other copy -- there are only two in all of time and space -- of The Essential History, and marvelling at the convoluted history (Hitler, Stalin, Communism) of the world it describes. "Such a tangle of invention, and for what?" This is not her world. The Baroness's world is at the centre of a pre-Copernican universe, the planets turning around it in concentric spheres. In her world England was destroyed by a tidal wave in the 17th century: some of the survivors fled to the Continent. (Newton was made welcome in Berlin.) In her world, Massachussetts is a wilderness.
Opposing the Baroness is the Princess Aegypta Schenk von Schenk, author of The Essential History: nobility reduced to poverty by the machinations of the Empress Valeria and her party. Aegypta is Miranda's aunt, and it is she who arranged for the infant Miranda to be hidden in a place of safety. The Baroness, though, has discovered that safe place, and Miranda is being drawn back to her homeland.
Miranda does not come willingly, or alone. She is accompanied by Peter Gross, a one-armed boy to whom she's drawn despite her thoughtless rejection of anyone who isn't clever and popular, and by her best friend Andromeda, who is smart and tough and feisty. But when they pass from this world to that other, Andromeda and Peter are dramatically, physically changed. And Miranda changes too, though it's not so obvious. She loses her certainty, her understanding, her confidence: and the reader flounders with her.
The story's told from a number of viewpoints (Miranda, Peter, the Baroness, the Elector of Ratisbon) yet never immerses the reader fully in any one character's perceptions. For example, during Miranda's narrative, we recognise her adoptive father's flash of joy when she quotes his own advice back at him. Scattered throughout the novel are observations and remarks that at first glance seem transparent. The metaphor that springs to mind is panning out: the author drawing back to show the reader some context.
Yet the context that's revealed is not necessarily the obvious one. There are subtleties of tone and shading, and of narrative pace, that steer the reader towards one understanding, and then another. This blurring of reality, this lack of definition, mirrors Miranda's own confusion. It bestows unexpected, and not necessarily reliable, insights into the characters' motivations, beliefs, and identities.
Park's achievement lies in the clarity of his prose, and in his careful, precise rendition of character. Many young heroines behave like grown women, but Miranda is credibly teenaged, utterly rooted in the world she's grown up in (transported to the North American wilderness, she still thinks of Albany as 'forty-five minutes' drive away') and not always very likeable. Peter is perhaps less believable an American teenager, but there are hints that he is, at heart, neither American nor teenaged. And the Baroness Ceaucescu, whose villainy is made explicit at her first appearance, has depth and dimension to such an extent that by the end of the book -- the first, damn, of a series, though it's not clear how many volumes this will comprise -- I began to wonder if this was her story, and not Miranda's at all.
This book will be compared to Pullman's His Dark Materials, and to the works of Jonathan Carroll and Gene Wolfe (and, inevitably, to the Harry Potter series, with which the sole consonance seems to be the fact that Miranda and her friends are teenagers). All these comparisons are in some sense valid, yet all fall short. Interestingly, too, every review I've seen seems to find a different interpretation of the events, the setting and the characters. A Princess of Roumania is like nothing except itself: bittersweet, clear and cold and complex.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Roma Eterna -- Robert Silverberg
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in January 2004.
In the Prologue of Robert Silverberg's latest novel, Roma Eterna, Celer - the Roman Empire's leading scholar of Eastern religions - speculates about alternate histories. He wonders what would have happened if the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt had succeeded, and imagines "a new religion under an invincible new prophet." "Well," (says his friend Aufidius, yawning) "all that is sheer fantasy. It never could have happened …"
If you haven't already spotted that the world (or at least the history) that Celer is speaking of is our own, then this novel may not be for you. Roma Eterna presents a world in which the exodus from Egypt failed, and Christianity never happened; and the Roman Empire did not fall.
The novel consists of ten chapters, most of which have previously appeared (in some form) as standalone stories. The chapters are dated AUC - ab urbe condita, 'from the founding of the city' (Rome, of course) in 753BC - and a little mental arithmetic will prove most useful, as will a working knowledge of the major events of our own world history.
Each chapter is a vignette, a slice of everyday life from a past which differs from our own so subtly that the distinctions are never explicitly stated. Silverberg's protagonists are the little people, the ordinary folk who are never mentioned in history books. They don't know about the latest technology, or the political machinations of the Senate, or the fate of the expedition to Mexico. Leontius Corbulo (AUC 1365) is far more concerned with the peccadillo for which he was exiled to Mecca than he is interested in the religious beliefs of the local tribes. Lady Eudoxia (AUC 2206) is bored by her lover's talk of Roma's 'divine right' and the burden of ruling the world, and cannot understand why he has to leave her to become Procurator of Constantinople.
Silverberg teases out the strands of history in a strange but recognisable world, and he packs his narrative with teasing allusions to (and reflections of) our own history. An unwilling heir becomes Emperor, and casts aside Faustus, the ageing buffoon who's been his companion in mischief; two children accidentally discover the last survivor of a murdered royal house, who fled the massacre as a child; a great adventurer's record is tarnished by rumours of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the greater issues - such as whether or not the Empire can expand indefinitely, and whether democracy is inevitable - are played out in the background, between the chapters, and between the lines.
It's like a massive game of Civilisation - except that Silverberg sketches in those little lives with loving attention, dwelling on detail and choosing a different voice and style for each protagonist so that these voices from an imaginary past ring true.
The final chapter of the novel, 'To The Promised Land' (AUC 2723) brings the novel firmly into the category of science fiction. I wondered, when I read it, how long ago it was written: was it a response to actual events in the real world, or did it spring entirely from Silverberg's fertile imagination? In either case, I found it a moving finale to this understated and thoughtful alternate history.
In the Prologue of Robert Silverberg's latest novel, Roma Eterna, Celer - the Roman Empire's leading scholar of Eastern religions - speculates about alternate histories. He wonders what would have happened if the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt had succeeded, and imagines "a new religion under an invincible new prophet." "Well," (says his friend Aufidius, yawning) "all that is sheer fantasy. It never could have happened …"
If you haven't already spotted that the world (or at least the history) that Celer is speaking of is our own, then this novel may not be for you. Roma Eterna presents a world in which the exodus from Egypt failed, and Christianity never happened; and the Roman Empire did not fall.
The novel consists of ten chapters, most of which have previously appeared (in some form) as standalone stories. The chapters are dated AUC - ab urbe condita, 'from the founding of the city' (Rome, of course) in 753BC - and a little mental arithmetic will prove most useful, as will a working knowledge of the major events of our own world history.
Each chapter is a vignette, a slice of everyday life from a past which differs from our own so subtly that the distinctions are never explicitly stated. Silverberg's protagonists are the little people, the ordinary folk who are never mentioned in history books. They don't know about the latest technology, or the political machinations of the Senate, or the fate of the expedition to Mexico. Leontius Corbulo (AUC 1365) is far more concerned with the peccadillo for which he was exiled to Mecca than he is interested in the religious beliefs of the local tribes. Lady Eudoxia (AUC 2206) is bored by her lover's talk of Roma's 'divine right' and the burden of ruling the world, and cannot understand why he has to leave her to become Procurator of Constantinople.
Silverberg teases out the strands of history in a strange but recognisable world, and he packs his narrative with teasing allusions to (and reflections of) our own history. An unwilling heir becomes Emperor, and casts aside Faustus, the ageing buffoon who's been his companion in mischief; two children accidentally discover the last survivor of a murdered royal house, who fled the massacre as a child; a great adventurer's record is tarnished by rumours of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the greater issues - such as whether or not the Empire can expand indefinitely, and whether democracy is inevitable - are played out in the background, between the chapters, and between the lines.
It's like a massive game of Civilisation - except that Silverberg sketches in those little lives with loving attention, dwelling on detail and choosing a different voice and style for each protagonist so that these voices from an imaginary past ring true.
The final chapter of the novel, 'To The Promised Land' (AUC 2723) brings the novel firmly into the category of science fiction. I wondered, when I read it, how long ago it was written: was it a response to actual events in the real world, or did it spring entirely from Silverberg's fertile imagination? In either case, I found it a moving finale to this understated and thoughtful alternate history.
Monday, September 01, 2003
Memory -- K J Parker
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in September 2003.
Memory, the concluding volume in K J Parker's 'Scavenger' trilogy, opens with Poldarn lost in a wood. This may well be the best place for him. Since waking with amnesia on a battlefield at the beginning of Shadow, he has reconstructed enough of his past - from dreams, from chance-met strangers, from the people of his homeland - to realise that he may have been happier with no memories at all. Whoever Poldarn was before he lost his identity and assumed the name of an apocalyptic deity, he wasn't a nice person. Even the people close to him have been reluctant to tell him everything they know about his past career.
But ignorance is not bliss: far from it, in Parker's world. Post-amnesia Poldarn has always tried to do good; he's acted in self-defence, or to protect others, with the best possible motives. At worst, he's taken the only sensible course of action. In Shadow and Pattern, he rescued a cavalry officer from scavengers, saved his people from a volcano, and married a nice girl from a neighbouring settlement. Regrettably, this is a world where every action seems to have the worst of possible consequences. Poldarn's personal affairs make most of Greek tragedy look like Pollyanna. (Indeed, there are parallels between Poldarn's experiences and that of tragic heroes such as Oedipus).
It's obvious to Poldarn, by the beginning of Memory, that he's better off not knowing who he used to be, and so he buries himself (metaphorically speaking) in the middle of nowhere, using his smithing skills to get work at a bell foundry. Fate, however, has other plans for him. There's a reunion of his schoolmates, which might be a cheerful affair if this were a different novel. Memories and dreams are forced into context as catastrophes. Names and identities are shuffled, cast aside, revealed and obscured again as the mythic tragedy of Poldarn's life draws towards its conclusion.
After all that, it may come as a surprise to learn that this is also a very enjoyable novel. Parker's worlds - compare the magic-less setting of his 'Fencer' trilogy - have no room for the quaint, the archaic or the beautiful. Tolkien's characters wouldn't last a day here, with the possible exception of some of the orcs. If there is anything supernatural - gods, magic, fate - at work in the complex knottings of the narrative, it's kept offstage. Everything can be explained by common sense, a commodity that Parker's characters have in abundance (though it's seldom enough to save them). Their speech is resolutely mundane and their actions selfish, pragmatic and often unsullied by morality.
Parker's novels are firmly rooted in technology, and some will find the long descriptions of medieval smithing techniques unnecessary. They're key to Poldarn's character, though, and keys to the plot as well. The titles of the novels in this trilogy - Shadow, Pattern and Memory - allude to metal-working terms; they're metaphors for the processes by which Poldarn recreates himself, and they encapsulate some of the questions implicit in his situation. How much of his identity is a reaction to the world? Can he free himself from the person he was before he lost his memory? Can he make the decisions that determine his future, or is he being manipulated by others?
The plot is quietly and breathtakingly complex, with dreams and memories echoed throughout the story arc. Parker's attention to detail repays meticulous reading. A couple of casual asides in Memory led me to reread the whole trilogy, an immensely rewarding (if not always cheerful) experience. Perhaps surprisingly, Poldarn is a likeable and sympathetic character, and it's appallingly easy to overlook the swathe of carnage and moral disaster that he leaves behind him. He has more than enough good intentions to pave the road he's walking.
One criticism: the book could have done with more meticulous proofing. There's at least one place where a single incorrect substitution could indicate a whole new sub-plot.
Memory, the concluding volume in K J Parker's 'Scavenger' trilogy, opens with Poldarn lost in a wood. This may well be the best place for him. Since waking with amnesia on a battlefield at the beginning of Shadow, he has reconstructed enough of his past - from dreams, from chance-met strangers, from the people of his homeland - to realise that he may have been happier with no memories at all. Whoever Poldarn was before he lost his identity and assumed the name of an apocalyptic deity, he wasn't a nice person. Even the people close to him have been reluctant to tell him everything they know about his past career.
But ignorance is not bliss: far from it, in Parker's world. Post-amnesia Poldarn has always tried to do good; he's acted in self-defence, or to protect others, with the best possible motives. At worst, he's taken the only sensible course of action. In Shadow and Pattern, he rescued a cavalry officer from scavengers, saved his people from a volcano, and married a nice girl from a neighbouring settlement. Regrettably, this is a world where every action seems to have the worst of possible consequences. Poldarn's personal affairs make most of Greek tragedy look like Pollyanna. (Indeed, there are parallels between Poldarn's experiences and that of tragic heroes such as Oedipus).
It's obvious to Poldarn, by the beginning of Memory, that he's better off not knowing who he used to be, and so he buries himself (metaphorically speaking) in the middle of nowhere, using his smithing skills to get work at a bell foundry. Fate, however, has other plans for him. There's a reunion of his schoolmates, which might be a cheerful affair if this were a different novel. Memories and dreams are forced into context as catastrophes. Names and identities are shuffled, cast aside, revealed and obscured again as the mythic tragedy of Poldarn's life draws towards its conclusion.
After all that, it may come as a surprise to learn that this is also a very enjoyable novel. Parker's worlds - compare the magic-less setting of his 'Fencer' trilogy - have no room for the quaint, the archaic or the beautiful. Tolkien's characters wouldn't last a day here, with the possible exception of some of the orcs. If there is anything supernatural - gods, magic, fate - at work in the complex knottings of the narrative, it's kept offstage. Everything can be explained by common sense, a commodity that Parker's characters have in abundance (though it's seldom enough to save them). Their speech is resolutely mundane and their actions selfish, pragmatic and often unsullied by morality.
Parker's novels are firmly rooted in technology, and some will find the long descriptions of medieval smithing techniques unnecessary. They're key to Poldarn's character, though, and keys to the plot as well. The titles of the novels in this trilogy - Shadow, Pattern and Memory - allude to metal-working terms; they're metaphors for the processes by which Poldarn recreates himself, and they encapsulate some of the questions implicit in his situation. How much of his identity is a reaction to the world? Can he free himself from the person he was before he lost his memory? Can he make the decisions that determine his future, or is he being manipulated by others?
The plot is quietly and breathtakingly complex, with dreams and memories echoed throughout the story arc. Parker's attention to detail repays meticulous reading. A couple of casual asides in Memory led me to reread the whole trilogy, an immensely rewarding (if not always cheerful) experience. Perhaps surprisingly, Poldarn is a likeable and sympathetic character, and it's appallingly easy to overlook the swathe of carnage and moral disaster that he leaves behind him. He has more than enough good intentions to pave the road he's walking.
One criticism: the book could have done with more meticulous proofing. There's at least one place where a single incorrect substitution could indicate a whole new sub-plot.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Wolfskin -- Juliet Marillier
Juliet Marillier's earlier fantasy novels - the Sevenwaters trilogy - have earned her a cult following in the US, but a rather lower profile here in Britain. It's something of a surprise, then, that Tor have chosen her new novel, Wolfskin, as their lead title for the launch of Tor UK.
Wolfskin tells the story of the Viking colonisation of the Orkneys, which is generally believed to have taken place some time before 1000 AD. There are two protagonists: Eyvind, a Viking berserker, and Nessa, a Pictish priestess. Nessa doesn't appear until Eyvind's character is well established, but after that the two viewpoints alternate and intertwine. A man, a woman, a dramatically wild setting: the ingredients for the colonial romance of your choice. But the story isn't that simple, and Juliet Marillier's blend of speculative history and fantastical elements is more effective than many attempts to portray a magical past.
Eyvind grows up in a close-knit Viking community, his sole ambition to be a Wolfskin like his brother. He befriends an outsider - Somerled, awkward younger brother of the nobleman Ulf - and ends up swearing blood-brotherhood to him. Ulf's ambition is to found a new colony on the 'Light Isles': a colony which can then be used as a stepping-stone to the riches (whether traded or raided) of the British mainland. When he sails for the islands, both Somerled and Eyvind accompany him.
Nessa, meanwhile, has been leading a blameless life as a priestess, learning the rituals and becoming more in tune with the natural forces that shape life on the islands. She observes the initial meetings between the Folk and the incomers, and shares her observations with the Christian priest Tadhg.
For a while it seems that the colony might be established peacefully. But then a terrible, apparently ritual, murder sparks violent retribution and threatens a way of life that has existed for time out of mind.
The historical element of the story is credible enough, and this would be an accomplished historical romance if there were nothing else to the story. But this is fantasy, though the magic that underpins the story is subtle rather than spectacular. Eyvind's initiation as a Wolfskin, and Nessa's rituals as priestess, are magical experiences: whether they are objectively real is a different matter. Magic isn't a tool for making things easy, or for breaking natural laws. In part, it's a belief system that is embedded in both Pictish and Viking ways of life: a significance attached to events, actions, places.
This is a novel about ties and bonds: about the natural loyalty that exists, or should exist, between kin, and the loyalty that is manufactured between a Wolfskin and his Jarl, or between blood-brothers. (There's a strong theme of brotherhood: Eyvind's love for his true brother Eirik and his blood-brother Somerled, Somerled's difficult relationship with his own brother). It explores the ways in which women gain power in a male-dominated society, and the choices each individual must make in order to live well.
Eyvind and Somerled, Tadhg and Nessa and Ulf, are all utterly credible characters, embedded in their time and their culture. Somerled is especially fascinating, a man too clever for the culture into which he's born. The meeting of Pict and Viking cultures, a dry historical event, is given a human dimension in Wolfskin's exploration of that encounter's life-changing consequences for all involved.
Wolfskin tells the story of the Viking colonisation of the Orkneys, which is generally believed to have taken place some time before 1000 AD. There are two protagonists: Eyvind, a Viking berserker, and Nessa, a Pictish priestess. Nessa doesn't appear until Eyvind's character is well established, but after that the two viewpoints alternate and intertwine. A man, a woman, a dramatically wild setting: the ingredients for the colonial romance of your choice. But the story isn't that simple, and Juliet Marillier's blend of speculative history and fantastical elements is more effective than many attempts to portray a magical past.
Eyvind grows up in a close-knit Viking community, his sole ambition to be a Wolfskin like his brother. He befriends an outsider - Somerled, awkward younger brother of the nobleman Ulf - and ends up swearing blood-brotherhood to him. Ulf's ambition is to found a new colony on the 'Light Isles': a colony which can then be used as a stepping-stone to the riches (whether traded or raided) of the British mainland. When he sails for the islands, both Somerled and Eyvind accompany him.
Nessa, meanwhile, has been leading a blameless life as a priestess, learning the rituals and becoming more in tune with the natural forces that shape life on the islands. She observes the initial meetings between the Folk and the incomers, and shares her observations with the Christian priest Tadhg.
For a while it seems that the colony might be established peacefully. But then a terrible, apparently ritual, murder sparks violent retribution and threatens a way of life that has existed for time out of mind.
The historical element of the story is credible enough, and this would be an accomplished historical romance if there were nothing else to the story. But this is fantasy, though the magic that underpins the story is subtle rather than spectacular. Eyvind's initiation as a Wolfskin, and Nessa's rituals as priestess, are magical experiences: whether they are objectively real is a different matter. Magic isn't a tool for making things easy, or for breaking natural laws. In part, it's a belief system that is embedded in both Pictish and Viking ways of life: a significance attached to events, actions, places.
This is a novel about ties and bonds: about the natural loyalty that exists, or should exist, between kin, and the loyalty that is manufactured between a Wolfskin and his Jarl, or between blood-brothers. (There's a strong theme of brotherhood: Eyvind's love for his true brother Eirik and his blood-brother Somerled, Somerled's difficult relationship with his own brother). It explores the ways in which women gain power in a male-dominated society, and the choices each individual must make in order to live well.
Eyvind and Somerled, Tadhg and Nessa and Ulf, are all utterly credible characters, embedded in their time and their culture. Somerled is especially fascinating, a man too clever for the culture into which he's born. The meeting of Pict and Viking cultures, a dry historical event, is given a human dimension in Wolfskin's exploration of that encounter's life-changing consequences for all involved.
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille -- Steven Brust
Thirteen years after its first publication, Steven Brust's most science-fictional novel - Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille - has been reissued by Tor US.
With hindsight it's easy to detect Brust's debt to Roger Zelazny: there's a particularly metaphysical twist to some of his metaphors, and a cavalier disregard for modern English that's reminiscent of Zelazny at his most lavish. But the admiration went both ways: Zelazny's praise of Brust ("He's good. He moves fast. He surprises you.") appears on the cover of this and more recent Brust novels.
And he does surprise you. Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille is a murder mystery, a time-travel whodunit and a love story, with plenty of other ingredients to taste - including a memorable elegy to Laphroiag, and an ingenious use for goats.
The novel's credited to 'Steven Brust, PJF', and Tor would have done well to include Brust's own explanation of the acronym. 'PJF' stands for 'Pre-Joycean Fellowship', a tongue-in-cheek agglomeration of (mainly Minnesotan) writers who, in Brust's words, "exist to poke fun at the excesses of modern literature, while simultaneously mining it for everything of value."
Brust (unsurprisingly) is disingenuous. Billy, who sounds from the photofit as though he bears a marked resemblance to Brust himself, is as unreliable a narrator as you could wish to encounter. The 'Intermezzos' between each chapter, which at first appear to be telling separate, disjointed tales, have an unexpected connection to the primary narrative. And I remain mistrustful of any novel in which a major threat to humanity is described solely in terms of current jokes and references to taboo menu items. (Pancakes and flounders, if you must know).
The science-fictional trappings of the novel are more backdrop than setting: the eponymous restaurant executes a time/space leap whenever atomic war occurs in its vicinity, depositing itself and its inhabitants in a safer place. When the novel opens, the restaurant and its 'crew' - cook, handyman etc, plus an Irish folk band who happened to be playing when the first jump occurred - find themselves on New Quebec, their first trip outside the solar system. Working out why they're there, how they're there and what they're meant to be doing there, is next on the agenda: the process drives a fast-moving, emotional rollercoaster of a plot. The action is punctuated by jam sessions as the band submerge their sorrows in music, in a way that will be familiar to any devotee of early-Nineties North American urban fantasy. (Think de Lint, Emma Bull, Pamela Dean et al). If the music leaves you cold, the cooking might get to you: this is not a novel to be read on an empty stomach!
Brust's light, witty prose sits oddly, at times, with the salvation of humanity and the weighty ethical issues underlying the narrative. Yet - in part due to the emotional honesty of the characters - it carries off Brust's narrative sleight-of-hand with considerable flair. A welcome reissue! (Oh, and Deverra's there: page 94).
With hindsight it's easy to detect Brust's debt to Roger Zelazny: there's a particularly metaphysical twist to some of his metaphors, and a cavalier disregard for modern English that's reminiscent of Zelazny at his most lavish. But the admiration went both ways: Zelazny's praise of Brust ("He's good. He moves fast. He surprises you.") appears on the cover of this and more recent Brust novels.
And he does surprise you. Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille is a murder mystery, a time-travel whodunit and a love story, with plenty of other ingredients to taste - including a memorable elegy to Laphroiag, and an ingenious use for goats.
The novel's credited to 'Steven Brust, PJF', and Tor would have done well to include Brust's own explanation of the acronym. 'PJF' stands for 'Pre-Joycean Fellowship', a tongue-in-cheek agglomeration of (mainly Minnesotan) writers who, in Brust's words, "exist to poke fun at the excesses of modern literature, while simultaneously mining it for everything of value."
Brust (unsurprisingly) is disingenuous. Billy, who sounds from the photofit as though he bears a marked resemblance to Brust himself, is as unreliable a narrator as you could wish to encounter. The 'Intermezzos' between each chapter, which at first appear to be telling separate, disjointed tales, have an unexpected connection to the primary narrative. And I remain mistrustful of any novel in which a major threat to humanity is described solely in terms of current jokes and references to taboo menu items. (Pancakes and flounders, if you must know).
The science-fictional trappings of the novel are more backdrop than setting: the eponymous restaurant executes a time/space leap whenever atomic war occurs in its vicinity, depositing itself and its inhabitants in a safer place. When the novel opens, the restaurant and its 'crew' - cook, handyman etc, plus an Irish folk band who happened to be playing when the first jump occurred - find themselves on New Quebec, their first trip outside the solar system. Working out why they're there, how they're there and what they're meant to be doing there, is next on the agenda: the process drives a fast-moving, emotional rollercoaster of a plot. The action is punctuated by jam sessions as the band submerge their sorrows in music, in a way that will be familiar to any devotee of early-Nineties North American urban fantasy. (Think de Lint, Emma Bull, Pamela Dean et al). If the music leaves you cold, the cooking might get to you: this is not a novel to be read on an empty stomach!
Brust's light, witty prose sits oddly, at times, with the salvation of humanity and the weighty ethical issues underlying the narrative. Yet - in part due to the emotional honesty of the characters - it carries off Brust's narrative sleight-of-hand with considerable flair. A welcome reissue! (Oh, and Deverra's there: page 94).
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Shadows Bite -- Stephen Dedman
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in March 2002.
Shadows Bite, the sequel to Dedman's 1999 novel The Art of Arrow Cutting, is a novel that tries to fuse dark fantasy and Oriental myth - not altogether successfully. It's an action-packed tale of Hollywood monsters, old-school nosferatu in the sewers and a form of vampirism that is transmitted in an almost homeopathic fashion. Throw in black (and white) magic, an assassin and the daughter of a powerful Yakuza boss, and stir vigorously until overload is achieved.
Photographer Michelangelo Magistrale - Mage to his friends and relations - is a charismatic young man who happens to be gifted with a broad array of superhero powers, most intriguing of which is an ability to heal himself and others simply by visualising the injury healing. Following the events of The Art of Arrow Cutting - in which he encountered his friend and ally, Takumo, and came into his powers - Mage is working at a clinic in Bangkok. He's an idealistic young man whose powers enable him to right some of the wrongs he sees all around him - as well as engaging in simple cosmetic surgery for the poor.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Takumo finds himself opposing a genuine, old-fashioned black magician. Solomon Tudor habitually wears a black kaftan, and relies on a bookful of demonic pacts to give him a guaranteed century of life. He cossets his son Malachi, now a sullen twenty-something, as insurance in case the demons ever come calling for his blood: that of his firstborn son should prove acceptable in lieu of his own.
Tudor's hat, were he to wear one, would be unequivocally black. He's a two-dimensional villain, as are assassin Krieg and Yakuza boss Tamenaga. Mage and Takumo, though both potentially interesting characters, lack depth. Dedman's prose is unexceptional, with occasional lapses of logic and grammar that should have been edited out before publication. (When a character, ablaze, teleports to the moon, it's the vacuum that extinguishes the flames: the ambient temperature has nothing to do with it). Pacy, action-packed scenes - several of which echo popular vampire films such as Near Dark - propel the morally simplistic plot and leave little time for reader or characters to reflect.
Shadows Bite would work better as a graphic novel - to such an extent that I wonder if that's how it was originally conceived. It's easy to imagine Tudor's trip to low Earth orbit as a full-page spread, or 6-foot black female lawyer Kelly's battle with a Goth vampire as a motion-blurred sequence of drawings. Perhaps that's tribute to the visual qualities of Dedman's writing: perhaps it's inherent in the black-and-white ethical spectrum of Shadows Bite.
Shadows Bite, the sequel to Dedman's 1999 novel The Art of Arrow Cutting, is a novel that tries to fuse dark fantasy and Oriental myth - not altogether successfully. It's an action-packed tale of Hollywood monsters, old-school nosferatu in the sewers and a form of vampirism that is transmitted in an almost homeopathic fashion. Throw in black (and white) magic, an assassin and the daughter of a powerful Yakuza boss, and stir vigorously until overload is achieved.
Photographer Michelangelo Magistrale - Mage to his friends and relations - is a charismatic young man who happens to be gifted with a broad array of superhero powers, most intriguing of which is an ability to heal himself and others simply by visualising the injury healing. Following the events of The Art of Arrow Cutting - in which he encountered his friend and ally, Takumo, and came into his powers - Mage is working at a clinic in Bangkok. He's an idealistic young man whose powers enable him to right some of the wrongs he sees all around him - as well as engaging in simple cosmetic surgery for the poor.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Takumo finds himself opposing a genuine, old-fashioned black magician. Solomon Tudor habitually wears a black kaftan, and relies on a bookful of demonic pacts to give him a guaranteed century of life. He cossets his son Malachi, now a sullen twenty-something, as insurance in case the demons ever come calling for his blood: that of his firstborn son should prove acceptable in lieu of his own.
Tudor's hat, were he to wear one, would be unequivocally black. He's a two-dimensional villain, as are assassin Krieg and Yakuza boss Tamenaga. Mage and Takumo, though both potentially interesting characters, lack depth. Dedman's prose is unexceptional, with occasional lapses of logic and grammar that should have been edited out before publication. (When a character, ablaze, teleports to the moon, it's the vacuum that extinguishes the flames: the ambient temperature has nothing to do with it). Pacy, action-packed scenes - several of which echo popular vampire films such as Near Dark - propel the morally simplistic plot and leave little time for reader or characters to reflect.
Shadows Bite would work better as a graphic novel - to such an extent that I wonder if that's how it was originally conceived. It's easy to imagine Tudor's trip to low Earth orbit as a full-page spread, or 6-foot black female lawyer Kelly's battle with a Goth vampire as a motion-blurred sequence of drawings. Perhaps that's tribute to the visual qualities of Dedman's writing: perhaps it's inherent in the black-and-white ethical spectrum of Shadows Bite.
Saturday, December 15, 2001
Toxicology -- Steve Aylett
Toxicology bears the stamp, in quality and quantity, of impatience: a first collection of Aylett's short work, it includes pieces that might have been omitted if publication had been delayed for a few years. The anthology first appeared in the United States in 1999. It consisted of unpublished work as well as pieces (to call them 'stories' would be limiting, if not inaccurate) that had appeared in miscellaneous anthologies and publications since 1994. This expanded UK edition includes six additional pieces: some have been published in the last couple of years, while others are new. The additions are identifiable by their British spelling, if nothing else, since the earlier works retain the Americanised variants of words.
The diversity of the publications which have featured Aylett's short fiction gives an idea of his surreally eclectic material. Here are slipstream stories from themed anthologies like Disco 2000 and the NEL Book of Internet Short Stories: postmodern horror and satire from the independent magazine sector (Gargoyle, Carpe Noctem): topical rants from The Idler: and several pieces, like the Wodehouse pastiches 'Dread Honour' and 'Ballroom', which appear in Toxicology for the first time.
Aylett is best-known for his futuristic 'Beerlight' thrillers (Beerlight, as far as anyone can tell, being a State of America as much as a state of mind) and his contemporary crime fiction. This anthology reveals a broader spectrum of mode and inspiration, though there are common threads of satire, surrealism and social commentary. In particular, Aylett's fictions are often concerned with the failures of law - whether metaphorically ('What is the law but a cloven hoof embedded in a fallen child's belly?') or literally, as in the anti-CJB tale 'Repeater', dating from 1995. There are several tales of Beerlight, including a couple featuring non-detective Taffy Atom, star of last year's novel Atom: crime noir, metamorphosed, is still a staple of Aylett's fictions.
Aylett's style, while not noteably original, is distinctively his own: an extravagant melange of surreal imagery, pulp cliché, philosophical hypotheses and crazed ramblings. Many of the pieces collected here are more situation than story, and sacrifice plot, development and closure on the metallised black altar of style. (Some consider this a bad thing, I'm told). In the best of them, there's the precision of a stripped-down machine: even the worst are churning masses of eminently quotable aphorisms and images that stick in the head. Not to be taken in large quantities, as this may lead to inversion of the skull.
The diversity of the publications which have featured Aylett's short fiction gives an idea of his surreally eclectic material. Here are slipstream stories from themed anthologies like Disco 2000 and the NEL Book of Internet Short Stories: postmodern horror and satire from the independent magazine sector (Gargoyle, Carpe Noctem): topical rants from The Idler: and several pieces, like the Wodehouse pastiches 'Dread Honour' and 'Ballroom', which appear in Toxicology for the first time.
Aylett is best-known for his futuristic 'Beerlight' thrillers (Beerlight, as far as anyone can tell, being a State of America as much as a state of mind) and his contemporary crime fiction. This anthology reveals a broader spectrum of mode and inspiration, though there are common threads of satire, surrealism and social commentary. In particular, Aylett's fictions are often concerned with the failures of law - whether metaphorically ('What is the law but a cloven hoof embedded in a fallen child's belly?') or literally, as in the anti-CJB tale 'Repeater', dating from 1995. There are several tales of Beerlight, including a couple featuring non-detective Taffy Atom, star of last year's novel Atom: crime noir, metamorphosed, is still a staple of Aylett's fictions.
Aylett's style, while not noteably original, is distinctively his own: an extravagant melange of surreal imagery, pulp cliché, philosophical hypotheses and crazed ramblings. Many of the pieces collected here are more situation than story, and sacrifice plot, development and closure on the metallised black altar of style. (Some consider this a bad thing, I'm told). In the best of them, there's the precision of a stripped-down machine: even the worst are churning masses of eminently quotable aphorisms and images that stick in the head. Not to be taken in large quantities, as this may lead to inversion of the skull.
Saturday, December 01, 2001
Issola -- Steven Brust
Issola is the ninth volume, both by publication date and by internal chronology, in Brust’s ‘Vlad Taltos’ sequence. Those familiar with the setting (Vlad is a human assassin, retired, in the elvish Dragaeran Empire) may find in this novel a welcome return to the witty, mannered heroics of the earlier books in the series. I fear those who have but lately discovered Vlad Taltos and his friends and familiars will find Issola rather more opaque, though hopefully no less enjoyable.
The Taltos novels are all named for one of Dragaera’s seventeen noble houses: the Issola are noted for ‘grace, elegance and manners’, but also for the subtle strike. Vlad Taltos, living rough in the northern forest after the events of Orca, is tracked down by none other than the impeccably-groomed Lady Teldra, the Issola chatelaine of his friend Morrolan. This, it transpires, is no mere social visit, but a call to arms.
Morrolan and his cousin Aliera have been captured by the Jenoine, hated former rulers more powerful than gods who are rumoured to have created the Dragaeran race. Vlad Taltos, with the sorcerous assistance of undead Sethra Lavode and the diplomatic skills of Lady Teldra, is determined to rescue his friends. As the quest commences, it rapidly becomes clear that his career as an assassin may not be over after all.
Vlad, returning to a broader social milieu after his time in the literal and figurative wilderness, begins to mellow somewhat from the archetypal wise-guy loner. Perhaps it’s the company he keeps: at any rate, the ice has begun to thaw, and he’s a more sympathetic character than he has been for several volumes. The novel’s final, shocking conflict suggests interesting times ahead for the erstwhile assassin, and more epic themes than the Chandleresque intrigues of earlier novels.
In Issola, Brust reveals more about Dragaera than ever before. Apparent inconsistencies in the backstory are clarified, and obscure utterances assume new meaning. The imprisonment of Vlad’s two friends is as plain a case of alien abduction as ever occurred in a fantasy novel. Fantasy? While the setting is certainly fantastical - sorcery, gods and demons, and of course the pointy-eared Dragaerans are elves - this is also a novel of alien invasion, grounded as much in genetic engineering and psychosocial experimentation as in legend, heroism and enchantment. What’s recounted here as ancient history - including some fascinating insights on the role of the gods, and the truth behind the instinctive superiority of Dragaerans - would be the mythology of another, more magically-inclined world.
And, yes, Deverra makes a fleeting appearance.
The Taltos novels are all named for one of Dragaera’s seventeen noble houses: the Issola are noted for ‘grace, elegance and manners’, but also for the subtle strike. Vlad Taltos, living rough in the northern forest after the events of Orca, is tracked down by none other than the impeccably-groomed Lady Teldra, the Issola chatelaine of his friend Morrolan. This, it transpires, is no mere social visit, but a call to arms.
Morrolan and his cousin Aliera have been captured by the Jenoine, hated former rulers more powerful than gods who are rumoured to have created the Dragaeran race. Vlad Taltos, with the sorcerous assistance of undead Sethra Lavode and the diplomatic skills of Lady Teldra, is determined to rescue his friends. As the quest commences, it rapidly becomes clear that his career as an assassin may not be over after all.
Vlad, returning to a broader social milieu after his time in the literal and figurative wilderness, begins to mellow somewhat from the archetypal wise-guy loner. Perhaps it’s the company he keeps: at any rate, the ice has begun to thaw, and he’s a more sympathetic character than he has been for several volumes. The novel’s final, shocking conflict suggests interesting times ahead for the erstwhile assassin, and more epic themes than the Chandleresque intrigues of earlier novels.
In Issola, Brust reveals more about Dragaera than ever before. Apparent inconsistencies in the backstory are clarified, and obscure utterances assume new meaning. The imprisonment of Vlad’s two friends is as plain a case of alien abduction as ever occurred in a fantasy novel. Fantasy? While the setting is certainly fantastical - sorcery, gods and demons, and of course the pointy-eared Dragaerans are elves - this is also a novel of alien invasion, grounded as much in genetic engineering and psychosocial experimentation as in legend, heroism and enchantment. What’s recounted here as ancient history - including some fascinating insights on the role of the gods, and the truth behind the instinctive superiority of Dragaerans - would be the mythology of another, more magically-inclined world.
And, yes, Deverra makes a fleeting appearance.
Thursday, November 01, 2001
Dr Franklin's Island -- Ann Halam
Gwyneth Jones’ latest novel as Ann Halam takes a traditional adventure scenario – three teenage castaways, survivors of an air crash – and turns it into more than just a survival story. Semirah is a shy, chubby teenager who’s won a place on a conservation holiday in Ecuador. Failing to make friends with any of her fellow travellers at the airport, she is overwhelmed when Cool Girl – Miranda, whose parents are anthropologists – seems to befriend her on the plane. When disaster strikes, Semi and Miranda find themselves marooned on a tropical island with only the belligerent Arnie for company. Between them they manage to survive, and to cope with the horrors of their situation: body parts in the lagoon, the inevitable sharks, the challenge of staying alive …
Then the trouble really starts. Arnie disappears, and the two girls give him up for lost. Weeks later, they stumble across a hidden route into the centre of the island, and find themselves surrounded by armed men. They are introduced to Dr Skinner (nervously alcoholic) and to his boss, Dr Franklin. Dr Franklin has plans for the castaways, and there is no hope of escape or rescue. Even sensible Miranda begins to panic: for Dr Franklin’s research concerns genetic engineering, and Semi and Miranda are ideal specimens.
‘Nothing like it has ever been written before’ claims the back cover: some readers, however, may spot more than a passing resemblance to H G Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. Dr Franklin is certainly the literary descendant of Wells’ archetypal mad scientist. However, his methods are quite different – science, after all, has progressed – and his stated goals are laudably altruistic.
Ann Halam is not exploring racial and economic equality (as has been persuasively argued regarding the Wells novel) but the transcending nature of friendship, and the lessons that can be learnt as two people come to know each other well.
There’s more of the beauty and mystery of transformation in this novel than in Wells’ dark and menacing tale: while Semi and Miranda react with realistic horror, they retain enough humanity to appreciate the gifts that are being forced upon them. Perhaps the fact that Semi, the narrator, is a victim rather than a horrified observer, helps to make the story emotionally affecting.
Then the trouble really starts. Arnie disappears, and the two girls give him up for lost. Weeks later, they stumble across a hidden route into the centre of the island, and find themselves surrounded by armed men. They are introduced to Dr Skinner (nervously alcoholic) and to his boss, Dr Franklin. Dr Franklin has plans for the castaways, and there is no hope of escape or rescue. Even sensible Miranda begins to panic: for Dr Franklin’s research concerns genetic engineering, and Semi and Miranda are ideal specimens.
‘Nothing like it has ever been written before’ claims the back cover: some readers, however, may spot more than a passing resemblance to H G Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. Dr Franklin is certainly the literary descendant of Wells’ archetypal mad scientist. However, his methods are quite different – science, after all, has progressed – and his stated goals are laudably altruistic.
Ann Halam is not exploring racial and economic equality (as has been persuasively argued regarding the Wells novel) but the transcending nature of friendship, and the lessons that can be learnt as two people come to know each other well.
There’s more of the beauty and mystery of transformation in this novel than in Wells’ dark and menacing tale: while Semi and Miranda react with realistic horror, they retain enough humanity to appreciate the gifts that are being forced upon them. Perhaps the fact that Semi, the narrator, is a victim rather than a horrified observer, helps to make the story emotionally affecting.
Saturday, September 01, 2001
Shadow -- K J Parker
A man wakes up, half-immersed in a stream that runs through a battlefield, with no recollection of his identity. Overhead, crows circle, waiting. He has a vague memory of arguing with his reflection in the water, but that must have been a dream. Poldarn, taking the name of an obscure - and possibly made-up - god whose priestess he encounters, quickly adapts to a life without a past. His vivid dreams hint at that past, from a bewildering number of viewpoints: which dreams are truly his memories? Against a backdrop of a crumbling empire, beset by Viking-like raiders, Poldarn tries to reconstruct his identity. There are those who recognise him, but none of them live long enough to tell him his name. All that he can be sure of is his superlative skill with the sword and his ability to survive.
With the help of the fake priestess, Copis, he becomes a divine impersonator, a high-risk courier, and a button merchant - each role leading to another teasing encounter with a nameless face from his past. Legends and folk tales seem to link his fate with the story of the god Poldarn: could he, in fact, be a god and not know it?
Meanwhile, the sword-monk Monach (‘just a word for ‘monk’ in the southern dialect’) has been instructed by his Order to find the man who is calling himself Poldarn. The Order’s purposes are unclear, even to Monach, but they’re privy to knowledge about the god Poldarn that might help the mortal version to make sense of everything that’s happening to him.
K J Parker’s first fantasy trilogy, beginning with Colours in the Steel, met with critical acclaim for its straightforward grittiness, dark humour and attention to technological detail. The setting of the Fencer trilogy was a world of minimal magic, with few of the supernatural or mystical elements that have come to typify post-Tolkien fantasies. Shadow is similarly prosaic, focussing on the mundane rather than the magical. Parker conveys an intimate understanding of the mechanics of day-to-day life in a mildly industrialised Renaissance world - button-making machines, sword-fighting technique, the decades-long war against the raiders - without losing the tension of the narrative or glorifying its nastier aspects.
There are other similarities to Parker’s earlier novels. The prophetic dreams: the mirroring of dream and reality, highlighted by identical phrasing: the sheer complexity of plot, which is hinted at rather than revealed. Parker also has a rare gift for characterisation, and the plot is driven by credibly flawed individuals, rather than high-minded archetypes. Poldarn’s quest for his identity takes some improbable turns, working towards a revelation that is genuinely surprising and keeps the reader guessing until the end.
Shadow proclaims itself as ‘Book One of the Scavenger Trilogy’. Does the world really need another weighty fantasy trilogy, at over £10 for the trade paperback editions? Yes, when it’s by a writer as fresh and innovative as K J Parker.
With the help of the fake priestess, Copis, he becomes a divine impersonator, a high-risk courier, and a button merchant - each role leading to another teasing encounter with a nameless face from his past. Legends and folk tales seem to link his fate with the story of the god Poldarn: could he, in fact, be a god and not know it?
Meanwhile, the sword-monk Monach (‘just a word for ‘monk’ in the southern dialect’) has been instructed by his Order to find the man who is calling himself Poldarn. The Order’s purposes are unclear, even to Monach, but they’re privy to knowledge about the god Poldarn that might help the mortal version to make sense of everything that’s happening to him.
K J Parker’s first fantasy trilogy, beginning with Colours in the Steel, met with critical acclaim for its straightforward grittiness, dark humour and attention to technological detail. The setting of the Fencer trilogy was a world of minimal magic, with few of the supernatural or mystical elements that have come to typify post-Tolkien fantasies. Shadow is similarly prosaic, focussing on the mundane rather than the magical. Parker conveys an intimate understanding of the mechanics of day-to-day life in a mildly industrialised Renaissance world - button-making machines, sword-fighting technique, the decades-long war against the raiders - without losing the tension of the narrative or glorifying its nastier aspects.
There are other similarities to Parker’s earlier novels. The prophetic dreams: the mirroring of dream and reality, highlighted by identical phrasing: the sheer complexity of plot, which is hinted at rather than revealed. Parker also has a rare gift for characterisation, and the plot is driven by credibly flawed individuals, rather than high-minded archetypes. Poldarn’s quest for his identity takes some improbable turns, working towards a revelation that is genuinely surprising and keeps the reader guessing until the end.
Shadow proclaims itself as ‘Book One of the Scavenger Trilogy’. Does the world really need another weighty fantasy trilogy, at over £10 for the trade paperback editions? Yes, when it’s by a writer as fresh and innovative as K J Parker.
White as Snow -- Tanith Lee
Tor’s Fairy Tale series, edited by Terri Windling, has published a number of elegant literary fantasies since its inception in 1987. Each novel in the series aims to retell a classic fairytale in a new and startling way, restoring elements of sensuality and terror which have been bowdlerised by well-meaning children’s editors over the years. Authors to date have included Pamela Dean, Charles de Lint and Jane Yolen: the latest in the series, White as Snow, is Tanith Lee’s interpretation of the tale of Snow White.
It’s far from the first time that Tanith Lee has used fairy tales as a source. Her 1982 anthology, Red as Blood, retold a number of classic tales in styles ranging from the high-tech science fiction romance of ‘Beauty’ (Beauty and the Beast) to the more familiar surreal horror of the title story - another version of Snow White.
In recent years, Tanith Lee’s adult fiction has seemed ever darker and more decadent: her prose can, at worst, be overblown and humourless. Only her juvenile novels (such as the Wolf Tower and Unicorn sequences) retain the wit and vigour of earlier works.
White as Snow is, in that sense at least, a refreshing departure from form. Lee intertwines the tales of the evil ‘stepmother’ and her affection-starved daughter with elements of classical myth and medieval romance. Arpazia is a spoil of war, raped and impregnated by the conquering king: her disowned daughter Candacis, known as Coira, is no sweet cipher, but a complex personality in her own right. The dwarves, too, are finely-drawn individuals with unexpected depth, rather than the circus troop one might initially take them for.
The tale unfolds against a lightly-drawn backdrop reminiscent of medieval Italy. There’s a dreamlike lack of any sense of place and time. Nothing from the wider world crosses the boundaries of the narrative, although there are vague references to other lands, other wars. Christ and his mother Marusa are worshipped, but the women of the walled town go into the woods at solstice and equinox to pay homage to the forest king, remembering the old myths. Coira’s nickname is given to her by her nurse: it’s the name of the corn-goddess Demetra’s daughter, who was stolen away to a place under the earth by Hadz, the King of Death.
As if acting out a play, the characters in the novel perform various interpretations of the roles suggested by their names, at once blind to the myths and archetypes they embody and desperate to escape them. Unravelling the original texts of the fairy tale, as well as the Disneyfied popular conception, White as Snow marks a return to the clarity and vision of Tanith Lee’s finest fantasies.
It’s far from the first time that Tanith Lee has used fairy tales as a source. Her 1982 anthology, Red as Blood, retold a number of classic tales in styles ranging from the high-tech science fiction romance of ‘Beauty’ (Beauty and the Beast) to the more familiar surreal horror of the title story - another version of Snow White.
In recent years, Tanith Lee’s adult fiction has seemed ever darker and more decadent: her prose can, at worst, be overblown and humourless. Only her juvenile novels (such as the Wolf Tower and Unicorn sequences) retain the wit and vigour of earlier works.
White as Snow is, in that sense at least, a refreshing departure from form. Lee intertwines the tales of the evil ‘stepmother’ and her affection-starved daughter with elements of classical myth and medieval romance. Arpazia is a spoil of war, raped and impregnated by the conquering king: her disowned daughter Candacis, known as Coira, is no sweet cipher, but a complex personality in her own right. The dwarves, too, are finely-drawn individuals with unexpected depth, rather than the circus troop one might initially take them for.
The tale unfolds against a lightly-drawn backdrop reminiscent of medieval Italy. There’s a dreamlike lack of any sense of place and time. Nothing from the wider world crosses the boundaries of the narrative, although there are vague references to other lands, other wars. Christ and his mother Marusa are worshipped, but the women of the walled town go into the woods at solstice and equinox to pay homage to the forest king, remembering the old myths. Coira’s nickname is given to her by her nurse: it’s the name of the corn-goddess Demetra’s daughter, who was stolen away to a place under the earth by Hadz, the King of Death.
As if acting out a play, the characters in the novel perform various interpretations of the roles suggested by their names, at once blind to the myths and archetypes they embody and desperate to escape them. Unravelling the original texts of the fairy tale, as well as the Disneyfied popular conception, White as Snow marks a return to the clarity and vision of Tanith Lee’s finest fantasies.
Sunday, July 15, 2001
Bold as Love -- Gwyneth Jones [objective]
(See also my more subjective review of this book.)
Imagine a near-future England gently ravaged by flood, GM disasters and economic decline. The Home Secretary announces an initiative to get the kids involved in society (not to mention politics) by creating a 'counter-cultural thinktank' of the brighter stars of the indie rock scene. Maybe promoting politics as the new rock'n'roll will rouse England's youth from post-millennial apathy and rejuvenate England just as the Act of Dissolution - splitting the UK back into its component nations - comes into force. The rock stars will probably be too busy taking drugs and having sex to achieve anything significant, but they do seem to have influence ...
Fiorinda, brattishly independent teenaged daughter of a famous rock star, signs up for the think-tank by mistake while following someone who looks like her father. Skull-masked Aoxomoxoa (Sage to his friends) joins up to keep his friend Fio company. And Axl Preston, the political face of rock'n'roll even before this initiative, could hardly be excluded from such a gathering. To the surprise of many, though, it's not Ax whose political agenda provokes a bloody coup one night in December.
Fiorinda, Sage and Ax find themselves unnervingly close to the new centre of power. The England they live in is becoming stranger daily: by the end of this, the first of a series of novels, it's transformed to an almost medieval state.
That central triumvirate has evoked comparisons with the legend of Arthur: but this is no simple recounting, or recasting, of the archetypal British myth. It's a very English romance, though devoid of warm beer, cricket matches and old ladies cycling to church. The romance is not limited to a traditional love story, whether heterosexual or otherwise. Bold as Love is as much a love letter to the festival counterculture as it's an examination of the relationship between any two individuals.
Jones' future England is deftly drawn, with minutiae that are more convincing than any infodump in portraying the demographic and social changes between Now and Then. The climate's growing cooler, not warmer: the Royal Family have fled the country: Wonderwall is still a classic rock anthem.
We see the transformations wreaked upon the post-Dissolution remnants of the United Kingdom through the mildly distorting lens of Fiorinda’s alienation. 'This is not my world' is her refrain, but she could easily be a new Britannia, or an English Marianne, for a newly-independent, forcibly isolated England. Sage and Ax, charismatic but not entirely reliable heroes, struggle to hold things together through a sequence of revelations and catastrophes that emphasises the immutable frailty, cruelty and fallibility of humankind within this altered England.
Jones portrays these interesting times with an unfailing, occasionally grim attention to psychological and social detail. Bold as Love is not the frivolous romp that its subject matter - the Rock'n'Roll Reich - might suggest. That doesn't mean, though, that the bold new world painted here is unremittingly bleak. Welsh technology is quietly evolving solutions to problems that haven't yet begun to bite. The music scene is healthier than ever (and Gwyneth Jones resists the temptation to describe future gigs in tedious detail).
Whether or not you buy into the politics of the revolution - Bold as Love could be read as a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the counterculture - the focus of the novel is personal rather than political. Sage, Ax and Fiorinda are likeable, flawed individuals who strike sparks off one another as the tangled relationships between them evolve and mutate. There’s an exuberance about these three, even in their darkest moments, that is appealingly infectious. I’m looking forward immensely to encountering them again in the next volume, Castles Made of Sand.
Imagine a near-future England gently ravaged by flood, GM disasters and economic decline. The Home Secretary announces an initiative to get the kids involved in society (not to mention politics) by creating a 'counter-cultural thinktank' of the brighter stars of the indie rock scene. Maybe promoting politics as the new rock'n'roll will rouse England's youth from post-millennial apathy and rejuvenate England just as the Act of Dissolution - splitting the UK back into its component nations - comes into force. The rock stars will probably be too busy taking drugs and having sex to achieve anything significant, but they do seem to have influence ...
Fiorinda, brattishly independent teenaged daughter of a famous rock star, signs up for the think-tank by mistake while following someone who looks like her father. Skull-masked Aoxomoxoa (Sage to his friends) joins up to keep his friend Fio company. And Axl Preston, the political face of rock'n'roll even before this initiative, could hardly be excluded from such a gathering. To the surprise of many, though, it's not Ax whose political agenda provokes a bloody coup one night in December.
Fiorinda, Sage and Ax find themselves unnervingly close to the new centre of power. The England they live in is becoming stranger daily: by the end of this, the first of a series of novels, it's transformed to an almost medieval state.
That central triumvirate has evoked comparisons with the legend of Arthur: but this is no simple recounting, or recasting, of the archetypal British myth. It's a very English romance, though devoid of warm beer, cricket matches and old ladies cycling to church. The romance is not limited to a traditional love story, whether heterosexual or otherwise. Bold as Love is as much a love letter to the festival counterculture as it's an examination of the relationship between any two individuals.
Jones' future England is deftly drawn, with minutiae that are more convincing than any infodump in portraying the demographic and social changes between Now and Then. The climate's growing cooler, not warmer: the Royal Family have fled the country: Wonderwall is still a classic rock anthem.
We see the transformations wreaked upon the post-Dissolution remnants of the United Kingdom through the mildly distorting lens of Fiorinda’s alienation. 'This is not my world' is her refrain, but she could easily be a new Britannia, or an English Marianne, for a newly-independent, forcibly isolated England. Sage and Ax, charismatic but not entirely reliable heroes, struggle to hold things together through a sequence of revelations and catastrophes that emphasises the immutable frailty, cruelty and fallibility of humankind within this altered England.
Jones portrays these interesting times with an unfailing, occasionally grim attention to psychological and social detail. Bold as Love is not the frivolous romp that its subject matter - the Rock'n'Roll Reich - might suggest. That doesn't mean, though, that the bold new world painted here is unremittingly bleak. Welsh technology is quietly evolving solutions to problems that haven't yet begun to bite. The music scene is healthier than ever (and Gwyneth Jones resists the temptation to describe future gigs in tedious detail).
Whether or not you buy into the politics of the revolution - Bold as Love could be read as a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the counterculture - the focus of the novel is personal rather than political. Sage, Ax and Fiorinda are likeable, flawed individuals who strike sparks off one another as the tangled relationships between them evolve and mutate. There’s an exuberance about these three, even in their darkest moments, that is appealingly infectious. I’m looking forward immensely to encountering them again in the next volume, Castles Made of Sand.
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