2024/017: Gogmagog: The First Chronicle of Ludwich — Jeff Noon and Steve Beard

A spell was underway. From the dank soil, from the memories of the witches of Dark Eden, from the gardener priests of the Wodwo clan as they huddled round their campfires in the days of snow and iron. From the flow of sap, from the river's tides. From the Deep Root. Aye, and from the dreams of the Old Ones, as they fell to earth in Year of First Arrival. [loc. 676]

Jeff Noon published the four books in the Vurt series, beginning with Vurt, in the 1990s: since then he's had a lower profile, working on interactive fiction and a series of SF-inflected pulp noir mystery novels. His latest work is coauthored with Steve Beard, with whom he's also worked on the writing game, and later novel, Mappalujo.

Cady Meade is a veteran river captain, full of tales about her years on the river Nysis, travelling up to the city of Ludwich and back down to the estuary. Now she's down on her luck, drinking too much, wandering the marshes, complaining about the youth of today. But perhaps her luck's about to change: two strangers come to her seeking transport, by river, to Ludwich. One is a young girl, and one is an artificial person, a Thrawl. No chance, Cady tells them. The river is more perilous than ever, it drives travellers mad, and it's actually the ghost of a great dragon.

So off they go to Ludwich, with Cady's young protege Yanish captaining the vessel.

This is not our world. It has echoes of post-war Britain, but it's also a land inhabited by various inhuman tribes -- the Wodwo 'of flower and flesh both made', the Azeel whose shadows wander -- and a land that was inhabited by monstrous Beasts before the Kindred came in their sky chariots. The Beasts, of course, were promptly slain: it's the ghost of the greatest, the dragon Haakenur, which haunts (or is) the river. But there might be another ghost, another danger...

Gogmagog is full of rich strange detail, and the world-building is fascinating even where indistinct. Yet I didn't really connect with the novel. Cady is a vivid but not wholly likeable character (though I did find myself warming to her over the course of the tale) and is often referred to as 'the old lady' -- not by other characters but by the authorial voice. Ugh! While 'old' is absolutely correct, and not the half of it, that phrase has too much cultural weight. ('Old woman' would be equally accurate and quite different in tone.) I was also not thrilled to discover that the final pages of Gogmagog introduce a major shift. I know it's the first part of a duology, but this felt as though it just stopped rather than concluding any of its subplots.

Fulfils the ‘Published in 2024’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Fulfils the ‘A Book with a Protagonist Older than 50’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 13th February 2024.