There was the Aristide lying beside him in bed — the charming performer and monarch of the demimonde — and there was the other Aristide, the one he was supposed to arrest and interrogate. The one whose life and livelihood he was meant to raze. They both knew where the boundaries lay. It was impossible to love someone when you spent your time digging at their secrets in the hopes of undermining their career. And vice versa. [p. 83]
It's easy to describe Amberlough as 'Cabaret meets Le Carré', not least because those are the two sources from which Donnelly has chosen epigraphs. The comparison is not inaccurate, but I was also reminded of Ellen Kushner's Riverside, another secondary-world fantasy with no magic, rooted in an urban landscape, featuring a city where homophobia and racism play little part, but crime, corruption and social classism are endemic.
Gedda, the four-state nation of which Amberlough is the wealthiest and most liberal quarter, is also reminiscent of Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy, which began with City of Stairs: I think the resemblance is mostly because they're both more modern in flavour than many secondary-world fantasies. This is one of the aspects of Amberlough, and Amberlough, that I liked most: there are gramophones, cocktails, nightclubs, trolleys (= trams), telephones ... People have favourite songs, and they read novels, and recognise their favourite colognes on other people's skin. They use idiom and slang, which is never explained but is thoroughly comprehensible in context. There is no organised religion, though some of the characters swear by the 'Wandering Queen', relic of 'the old religion' (which allowed marriage between more than two individuals). The map at the front (I told you it was a fantasy) is not especially informative.
I feel right at home.
Amberlough has three protagonists: Cyril, from old money, who works in the intelligence services; Aristide, drag queen and crime lord; and Cordelia, a red-haired nightclub performer. Cyril is the only white male, and he's the focal character of this volume, in that the other two are greatly affected by his actions: neither Aristide nor Cordelia is at all passive, though, and the events of Amberlough hinge on Cyril's self-confessed cowardice and hedonism.
(I did wonder why I initially read Cyril as the protagonist -- was it simply being accustomed, however wearily, to white male leads? -- but he does have more viewpoint scenes than either of the others (including the very first chapter), and he is the pivot on which the story hangs.)
Cyril is, to be honest, not a pleasant character: but he's charming, flawed, and to some extent the victim of circumstance. He has a traumatic back-story, only hinted here, and is betrayed by a mole within his own faction. He cuts a deal to keep himself and his lover, Aristide, safe. The only problem with this scheme is that Cyril and Aristide are technically on opposite sides, and can't trust one another with their secrets. They do have one thing in common: a kind of unscrupulous arrogance. Cordelia is the only protagonist who seems to be guided by actual moral scruples.
I should add that at the beginning of the novel, the rise of the repressive right-wing One State Party (a.k.a. the Ospies), is regarded as little more than an inconvenience. (Draw your own parallels here.) By the final page, Amberlough, and the whole of Gedda, are wholly changed. En route there are murders, betrayals, torture, sex, verbal abuse and some very painful conversations.
Which is to say: this is not a gentle book. But it seized hold of me and did not let go.
Off to reread the second one ...
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