Tag: fantasy

Book notes: Richard Weihe and Robert Jackson Bennett

20th October 2012 / / 3 Comments

Richard Weihe, Sea of Ink (2003/12)
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Peirene Press’s Year of the Small Epic has so far brought us a grand domestic drama and a study of bereavement. The series takes a lighter turn in its final instalment, with Swiss writer Richard Weihe’s fictionalised biography of the Chinese painter Bada Shanren. He is born Zhu Da, a scion of the Ming dynasty; but political change and his father’s death lead him to join a monastery and devote his life to art, going through many names before settling on Bada Shanren, ‘man on the mountain of the eight compass points’.

Sea of Ink has eleven illustrations of Bada’s beautiful paintings, and Weihe includes descriptions of how the artist worked, his brush strokes and hand movements. This has the striking effect of creating a detailed impression which remains just that – an impression. Even though we can see the final paintings, there’s room for our subjective interpretation of Weihe’s words. The novella itself works in a similar way, its short chapters acting like brush strokes to create a portrait of Bada’s life which is necessarily a fiction, a construct.

The ultimate story told in Sea of Ink seems to me one of a man finding peace in life through finding (or accepting) his place – finding the world in the marks of ink and brush. The tone of the writing is quiet and reflective; I’d say this is ideal reading for an autumn night.

Robert Jackson Bennett, The Troupe (2012)

Over the last few years, Robert Jackson Bennett has been crafting his own distinctive visions of the American fantastic’s iconic tropes. For his third novel, he turns his attention to the magical travelling show. We meet George Carole, a sixteen-year-old vaudeville pianist as he leaves his current job to visit the troupe of Hieronomo Silenius, whom George believes to be his father. Silenius’s reputation precedes him, but no one ever remembers the details of his show. When George watches a performance, he finds out why: the Silenius troupe plays an extraordinary song that make those who hear it forget what they’ve seen – but it doesn’t work on George.

Falling in with the troupe, George discovers that this music is pat of the ‘First Song’, the one that brought Creation into being; peforming it is the only thing that holds back the ‘wolves’ who would seek to devour reality. Silenius’s band go from place to place in search of fragments of the First Song, which only those of the Silenius blood-line can carry (the song didn’t work on George because he is of that line). So begins a journey into the world’s mythic spaces, with reality itself at stake.

Bennett achieves a nice balance between the personal and cosmic focus. All the members of Silenius’s troupe are pretending to be something they’re not, and the theme of escape runs through the novel – escaping the past, and escaping the inevitable. The ending makes use of a risky technique (I appreciate this is vague, but want to avoid a spoiler), but Bennett pulls it off. His body of work continues to intrigue, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

M. John Harrison, Viriconium (1971-85)

3rd September 2012 / / 7 Comments

This is Viriconium: the city to end all cities; namesake of the dominant empire in Earth’s twilight. This is Viriconium: an omnibus of novels and stories by M. John Harrison. When you venture in, it’s important to bear in mind which of these statements is the more accurate.

By the way, this post is going to tell you quite a bit about what happens. I can’t really see that as a spoiler, because plot is not the point of Viriconium (except insofar as it’s an illusion, like much else in the stories). It’s the experience of reading Harrison’s work that counts, and nothing I say here can substitute that. Not that it’s going to stop me trying to give a sense of Viriconium, of course.

The first novel in the sequence, The Pastel City (1971), sees Viriconium under attack from the forces of the ruling queen’s cousin. One of the old king’s champions, tegeus-Cromis (‘who imagined himself a better poet than swordsman’), picks up his weapons and sets out to reunite his comrades-in-arms and defend the city. So far, so conventional, it might seem – albeit with a vividly realised setting of a decaying far future. Advanced technology from previous eras (the ‘Afternoon Cultures’) persists, but the world has forgotten how it works. The landscape is one of rust and garishly-coloured metal salts. The stars have been rearranged to spell the name of a past culture, but no one is left who can read it.

But the deeper themes of Viriconium are already becoming apparent. Some say that reality is becoming thin with age, forgetting itself. Cromis’s journey does not run according to plan, and he turns away from witnessing its ending, and away from greater knowledge. By the close of The Pastel City, individuals from one of the Afternoon Cultures have been resurrected – so Viriconium finds itself in danger of being superseded by the past.

As a fictional city, Viriconium is a timeless mish-mash; but, in The Pastel City, one nevertheless has the impression of a coherent, functioning place. That impression is predicated on the structure of the novel, though, as A Storm of Wings (1980) makes clear. This is a much more fragmented text, which could be seen in some ways as a parody of its predecessor’s quest-fantasy. Various characters (some from The Pastel City, some not) assemble in the queen’s palace to begin dealing with a threat to Viriconium. But the sense is much more that they have been moved there, like pieces on a gameboard; the reasons for their gathering are not so clear, to them or the reader.

All those reasons, it turns out, are aspects of the same thing: an invasion of insect-people who have their own way of perceiving the universe, radically different from humans’ – and these alternative perceptions vie for supremacy. Reality in Viriconium (in Viriconium) is literally what you make of it. The scenes of A Storm of Wings slide between perceptions; the reader’s best hope is perhaps just to hang on.

In the third novel, In Viriconium (1982), part of the city has been afflicted by a ‘plague’ which causes reality itself to thin out: people fall ill, buildings decay, ventures fail. A portrait-painter named Ashlyme attempts to rescue his fellow-artist, Audsley King, from the plague zone – a mission which, perhaps inevitably, leads to disaster. Harrison shows the reality of Viriconium to be ever flimsier here: so much so that the real world (our world) is leaking through. The mundanity of the novel’s events, and the fragmented nature of its ‘narrative’, suggest that the coherence of The Pastel City was illusory, no more than a matter of perception.

It might seem at first glance that the Viriconium novels take place in the same chronology, but there are enough discrepancies to make clear that it’s not so. And the stories which were assembled as Viriconium Nights (1985) – and are scattered throughout the 2000 omnibus I was reading – demonstrate that even more emphatically. Characters and places (even Viriconium itself) can have different names or histories. This is revealed to the character Ignace Retz in the story ‘Viriconium Knights’, when he is shown scenes of adventure featuring warriors who bear his face. ‘All knights are not Ignace Retz,’ he is told – but, if all these scenes have happened, or will happen, somewhere, what does that make him?

In my omnibus, ‘Viriconium Knights’ is placed first of all (even before The Pastel City); so we know from the start that there can be no such thing as a definitive vision of Viriconium. Essentially, the Viriconium Nights stories are slices of life from ‘places’ that can have no life beyond their individual tales. In ‘A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium’ – the final story – Viriconiun is no more than an abstract entity for which people in our world may yearn. The protagonist tries vainly to make the mirror of a café toilet act as a portal to Viriconium. After images of the far future and tales of saving the world, that is all you have left. That is what’s real.

Viriconium represents a systematic destruction of the idea of fantasy as escape. It is bleak, even nightmarish at times – yet it’s beautiful, too. You’ll have to read it for yourself, though, to really see what I mean.

Ten favourite books read during the lifetime of this blog

21st August 2012 / / 9 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I’m joining in this week because I was really taken with the theme. I’ve been reviewing books online since 2004, but this blog started in 2009, and I’m concentrating on the period since then. What follows here is not a definitive list of favourites, nor is it in a strict order – it’s a list of highlights. It’s a snapshot of what I like to read.

1. The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

This is a tale of pure serendipity. I was visiting Cambridge, and saw the hardback of The Rehearsal in a bookshop. It wasn’t the subject matter that grabbed me, but the blurbs promising something different. I took a chance on it… and really didn’t get along with its mannered prose style at first. But I persevered and, once I realised what Catton was doing – how completely the novel’s different aspects embodied its theme of performance – I got into it, and ended up absolutely loving the book. The Rehearsal is the fondest memory I have of reading a book in the last few years, and it showed me a new way to appreciate fiction.

2. Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas

A few bloggers enthused about Pocket Notebook in 2010 – and I really liked its Clockwork Orange-inspired cover – but I never got around to reading it. The following year, I started reviewing for Fiction Uncovered; when I saw Pocket Notebook on their review-copy list, I decided to try it. I was utterly blown away by the vividness with which Thomas created his corrupt-copper protagonist. My only regret is that I didn’t read this novel a year earlier.

3. Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

This book has 661 pages. I devoured the whole lot in a weekend. An Irish boarding-school comedy with added quantum physics, Skippy Dies goes from humour to sharp characterisation to social commentary to pathos to the borders of science fiction and back again, without putting a foot wrong. Stunning stuff.

4. Solo – Rana Dasgupta

When I started this blog, I was just beginning to investigate the parts of the contemporary British literary scene that would most interest me. The website Untitled Books was (still is) a great resource, and it’s where I found out about Solo. I love books with wide-ranging sensibilities, and Solo – with its account of a life that feels like a daydream, and a daydream that feels like life – is that sort of book.

5. Beside the Sea – Véronique Olmi

One of the great joys of book blogging has been discovering small presses. Peirene Press are one of the fine publishers who’ve emerged in the last couple of years, and Beside the Sea is one of their best books. Ostensibly the story of a mother taking her children on a trip to the seaside, darkness gradually emerges from behind the happy façade to build up a brilliant but tragic portrait.

6. Yellow Blue Tibia & New Model Army – Adam Roberts

Yellow Blue Tibia was the very first book I reviewed on this blog. I was wanting to catch up on some of the contemporary sf authors I hadn’t read, and my first Adam Roberts novel just blew me away. My second, New Model Army, did the same the year after – a novel that I can genuinely say did something I hadn’t come across in a book before. I can’t choose one of these books over the other for this list, so here they both are.

7. The Affirmation – Christopher Priest

Being surprised by an unfamiliar author is great; but so is reading an excellent book by a writer you already know. A Christopher Priest novel is a maze of realities and unreliable perceptions, and The Affirmation is up there with his best. Priest’s narrative shifts between realities, and his masterstroke is to make our world seem no more (or less) real than his fictional one.

8. An A-Z of Possible Worlds – A.C. Tillyer

You can’t explore the world of book blogs for too long without coming across books that you’re unlikely to hear of elsewhere. I first heard of An A-Z of Possible Worlds through Scott Pack’s blog, and it really ought to be better known. Lovingly produced by its publisher, Roast Books, this is a collection of stories in a box – twenty-six individual pamphlets, each about its own place. The stories are very fine, too.

9. Coconut Unlimited – Nikesh Shukla

Here’s another way of discovering books in the blog age: finding a writer to be an engaging presence on Twitter; then, a year (or however long) later, reading his or her newly-published book. That’s what happened with Coconut Unlimited, which turned out to be a razor-sharp and hilarious comedy. More interconnectedness: I met Nikesh Shukla last year at a Firestation Book Swap, which Scott Pack usually hosts (although he wasn’t there for that one).

10. The City & the City – China Miéville

The City & the City generated one of my longest reviews, and I can’t remember reading another book that had so many interpretations from so many different people. It’s a novel to argue with, and argue about. At the time, I hadn’t read one of Miéville’s adult books since The Scar; I remember thinking that The City & the City was good enough in itself, but too quiet to catch on as some of his earlier works had. Of course, I was wrong. It was fascinating to see how the novel was received beyond the sf field, and the book blogging community was a big part of that reaction for me.

David Logan,Half-Sick of Shadows (2012): The Zone review

16th July 2012 / / 2 Comments

The Zone are now carrying my review of David Logan‘s first novel, Half-Sick of Shadows. The book was one of the joint winners of the inaugural Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now First Novel Award. The curious thing about it is that, for a work of the fantastic, Half-Sick of Shadows is at its best in realist mode: Logan’s portrait of childhood in a remote part of Ireland is excellent; but, when time travel elements kick in properly at about halfway through, the novel starts to falter.

Click here to read what I thought about Half-Sick of Shadows in full.

Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo (2010)

9th July 2012 / / 10 Comments

Today’s the day when Simon and Gav of The Readers podcast focus on Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo in their Summer Book Club series. I joined them as a guest in the discussion part of the episode, which you can hear after an interview with Lord Gav’s and Simon’s own thoughts. And here’s a review of the book from me…

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Redemption in Indigo is Karen Lord’s interpretation/extension of a Senegalese folktale. We begin with the gluttonous Ansige tracking down his wife Paama, who had left him; after being tricked and humiliated three times by djombi (spirit creatures, ‘gods’), Ansige takes his leave. That’s where the traditional folktale ends. Lord then continues Paama’s story by having a djombi present her with the Chaos Stick, an artefact which can manipulate the small possibilities of chaos – and Paama uses it with some skill. But the Chaos Stick was stolen from another djombi, the indigo lord, who rather wants it back; he takes Paama on a journey to show her the dangers of the chaos stick – but ends up learning lessons of his own as well.

Lord’s novel is written as though being spoken aloud by a storyteller, and this unknown narrator frequently interjects to address the reader directly; as here, when a djombi (in the form of a spider) makes itself known to human characters for the first time:

I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit? My answer to that is twofold. First, you have no idea how strong spice spirit is made in that region. Second, you have no idea how talking animals operate. Do you think they would have survived long if they regularly made themselves known? For that matter, do you think an arachnid with mouthparts is capable of articulating the phrase “I am a pawnbroker” in any known human language? Think! These creatures do not truly talk, nor are they truly animals, but they do encounter human folk, and when they do, they carefully take with them all memory of the meeting. (pp. 20-1)

I just love this: it says to readers that they must accept the book on its own terms, must take the time to appreciate how it works. This kind of interjection would normally derail a novel completely, but it’s integral to the project of Redemption in Indigo; and, once you get into the rhythm of the book, I think it’s nigh-on impossible not to be carried along.

Redemption in Indigo balances traditional roots with what feels a very contemporary take on the folktale form.For one thing, Lord includes modern details – antacid chews, buses – in a setting that nevertheless seems timeless; it doesn’t feel forced or strange that she has done this – it’s just that the specific temporal markers are largely irrelevant. Redemption in Indigo also feels contemporary because it has underpinnings in quantum physics. That’s the level on which the Chaos Stick works, and the indigo lord is keen to show Paama that tiny changes can have far-reaching – and sometimes unintended – consequences. It’s an archetypal ‘character learns better’ scenario, but placed in a scientific framework.

So the plot of Lord’s novel is all about choices and having multiple options; but this theme is embedded even deeper in the text. The narrator is at pains to point out that this story has a moral, but rather less eager be specific what that moral is. The tale is left open, in terms of what we are to think about it (‘I have no way of knowing which of these characters will most capture your attention and sympathy,’ pp. 265-6) and its ending (‘Do I have more stories to tell? There are always more stories,’ p. 266) – but even that isn’t left to stand, as the epilogue brings a more novelistic conclusion. As in quantum theory, multiple possibilities exist within the text, yet to collapse into something definitive.

Redemption in Indigo is a novel of contradictions: written yet spoken; defiantly ragged but carefully controlled; a book that swears to your face it’s didactic whilst telling you to nothing but make up your own mind. It embraces yet subverts the folktale form by giving its comic beginning a certain dramatic weight by the end, and turning its characters (both human and djombi) into rounded individuals who can learn from and teach each other in equal measure. And it’s enormous fun to read; heartily recommended.

Elsewhere
Karen Lord’s website
Some other reviews of Redemption in Indigo: Simon’s review on Savidge Reads; Victoria Hoyle for Strange Horizons; Bibliophile Stalker; Culturally Disoriented.

Book notes: Shepherd and Lightfoot

21st May 2012 / / 2 Comments

Lloyd Shepherd, The English Monster (2012)

(NB. I can’t say what I want to say about this book without revealing a key plot development from about a third in; bear that in mind if you read on.)

Lloyd Shepherd’s debut novel takes as its foundation theRatcliffe Highwaymurders, a pair of multiple killings which took place near theLondonarea of Wapping in December 1811. As Shepherd presents them, these gruesome crimes are beyond the comprehension of most people; but John Harriott, magistrate of the Thames River Police, is determined that the culprit will be brought to justice. His watchman-constable, Charles Horton, has an unorthodox technique for fighting crime: the systematic investigation of evidence – ‘detection’, as Harriott calls it.

A parallel storyline begins in 1564, when we join young Billy Ablass as he’s about to set sail fromPlymouthin search of fortune. But the ship he has joined is on a mission to gather slaves, and its voyages lead Billy ultimately toFlorida, where he becomes the victim of a curse – never to die, but always to carry the burden of what he and his crewmates have done, a burden which will rot him from the inside.

As a crime story, The English Monster fairly rattles along; but, in the end, the mystery element comes to seem almost beside the point. What interests me most about the novel is its subtext, which is all about the the emerging modern world. The two narrative threads highlight key historical junctures and the tensions around them: a more ‘scientific’ approach to policing is emerging, but is largely viewed with suspicion; the Wapping docks are growing, but not everyone will experience the economic benefits; a world is being built on the trade of human beings. Against this background, Charles Horton and Billy Ablass could be seen as emblematic opposites: Horton as the positive force for progress, Ablass as the negative aspects of human nature which persist and hold us back.

I understand that Shepherd is planning more novels featuring The English Monster’s characters; the pace and subtext of this first one leave me very keen to see where he goes next.

Frederick Lightfoot, My Name Is E (2011)

Judith Salt, Abigail Sempie and Grace Powers are three deaf girls all born in the same Cumbrian village in 1945. Though unrelated, they meet each other as young children and come to think of themselves as ‘sisters’. Judith’s and Grace’s Grade II deafness is acquired, and they have some ability to speak and hear; but Abby is Grade III deaf from birth, and can utter only the single syllable ‘E’. It’s apparent from the beginning that something happened to Abby, because Judith (our narrator) returned to her home village aged twenty-five, intent on avenging her. Judith tells the intertwined tales of that time, her childhood, and her current life at the age of sixty.

I’m ambivalent about My Name Is E. On the one hand, Frederick Lightfoot creates a vivid portrait of the village community and its precarious social terrain; on the other, I find his prose style a little too dry at times. The mysteries of Abby’s fate and what the twenty-five-year old Judith with do are strong narrative hooks, though the resolution of that latter thread is less effective. I find myself remaining on the fence as far as this book goes.

Sheri S. Tepper, The Waters Rising (2010)

21st April 2012 / / 6 Comments

The Waters Rising is a loose sequel to Sheri Tepper’s 1993 novel A Plague of Angels (the two books share a protagonist, but pretty much stand alone). In a distant future where, after collapse, society has reverted to a medieval milieu, with added ‘magical’ phenomena (such as talking animals) courtesy of largely-forgotten science. Travelling pedlar Abasio and his wisecracking horse Big Blue arrive at the Duke of Wold’s castle, where the Duke’s Tingawan wife, Xu-i-lok, is ailing. Abasio meets Xulai, the young Tingawan charged with the traditional responsibility of carrying Xu-i-lok’s soul back to Tingawa, should the princess die away from her home country. Xu-i-lok does indeed die towards the start of the novel, and Abasio joins Xulai and guardians on their journey to Tingawa, where a solution might also wait to the rising waters which threaten to engulf the land – but, of course, there are those who would see Xulai fail in her quest.

Since I’m reading this book in the context of its Clarke Award nomination, I need to address the question of genre; because, for a novel which has been shortlisted for a science fiction award, The Waters Rising spends an awful lot of time looking like an epic fantasy. Yes, it’s set in the future; and, yes, its fantastications have scientific underpinnings; but they might as well be magical for all the difference it makes. Here, for example, is the evil duchess Alicia explaining the ‘curse’ she has placed on Xu-i-lok:

There’s no such thing as magic. No. My favourite machine makes lovely curses, invisible clouds of very small, powerful killers. I can make the cloud and keep it alive in a special kind of vial. Then, if I get close enough to the person and release the cloud, the cloud will find that person among all the peoples who may be near, no matter where the person is hidden, so long as I release it nearby! (p. 25)

What Alicia is describing here – though she doesn’t know the scientific words for it – is a nanotechnology weapon tailored to its target’s DNA; but it could just as easily be a magic spell. To me, his isn’t the sort of sf/fantasy bleeding that justifies considering a novel as science fiction. I’m not great fan of A Plague of Angels, but it was far bolder in the way it combined sf and fantasy: its characters moved knowingly between fantastical and science-fictional venues, and the novel held the two modes in tension. By The Waters Rising, enough time has passed that the science fiction is largely hidden behind the curtain of fantasy; and the odd intervention like Alicia’s nanotech ‘curse’ – or even the book’s final third, where the sf becomes more overt – is not enough to alter my perception that the beating heart of Tepper’s book is a traditional quest fantasy. That’s one reason why I’m annoyed that The Waters Rising has been shortlisted for the Clarke.

Another reason is that the book really isn’t very good, even as a quest fantasy. Structurally, the story is a fairly straightforward wander across the map, with occasional scenes joining the caricature villains (one even laughs, ‘Heh, heh, heh,’ at one point), who helpfully do much of their plotting out loud for our benefit. This might be fine in Saturday morning cartoons, but it reads very crudely in a novel. There are some diverting pieces of fantastication, such as the villagers of ‘Becomers’, whom Alicia has persuaded they must behave in a certain way (singing to each other, for example, or painting themselves blue) to receive the king’s favour.  But, like Declare on last year’s Clarke shortlist, too much of The Waters Rising is overstuffed with detail (the low point of this for me is a pages-long description of an abbey’s mealtime procedures).

As I mentioned earlier, the novel’s science-fictional aspect comes more strongly to the fore as we reach the final third, which is when the party reaches Tingawa, and solutions to humanity’s problems are mooted and implemented. But, even here, Tepper’s book frustrates. The Waters Rising has environmental degradation caused by humans in its background (‘Men were foolish and did foolish things [says one character], they did not respect the earth, they worshipped the ease machines and the world punished them by becoming barren,’ p. 200); but the immediate difficulties being faced in the novel have more fantastical origins, and the means of addressing them likewise. To my mind, this undercuts the book’s moral message, as well as its status as science fiction.

In sum, I really have no idea what The Waters Rising is doing on the Clarke shortlist, and can see no reason to recommend it.

This novel has been shortlisted for the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Click here to read my other posts about the Award.

Eastercon: Olympus 2012

14th April 2012 / / 5 Comments

It’s been a week since I went to Eastercon (the British National Science Fiction Convention), and I must conclude that it was the best convention I’ve ever been to. Olympus 2012 was my second full Eastercon, and one I was particularly looking to – partly because I knew so many more people there than I did two years ago, and partly because I was signed up to be involved in more.

Probably the most significant event from my point of view was the panel on mainstream-published sf and fantasy, where I took the role of moderator for the first time; joining me were critics Maureen Kincaid Speller and Damien G. Walter, author Nick Harkaway, and publisher Jo Fletcher. I was too busy concentrating on managing the discussion to really judge how it went; but the feedback I had at the convention was positive, and confirmed that we’d managed (as I aimed) to avoid the defensiveness which so often seems to come along in discussions of the subject. I’m glad that people enjoyed the panel; I certainly enjoyed moderating, and am already thinking about possible topics for future panels.

My second event as participant was Niall Harrison’s Fantasy Clarke Award panel, in which I and my fellow-panellists – Nic Clarke, Erin Horáková, Edward James, and Juliet E. McKenna – debated the ‘shortlist’ of UK-published fantasy novels from 2011 that we’d previously drawn up (namely Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes; Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake; Kate Elliott’s Cold Fire; Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s The Fallen Blade; Frances Hardinge’s Twilight Robbery; and Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr Fox). After a vigorous hour’s discussion, we had it down to The Heroes and Mr Fox, with Abercrombie’s novel ultimately winning out; which is not a bad result at all, in my view.

What this panel – and the traditional Not the Clarke panel, in which a group of former judges discuss the current Clarke Award shortlist – brought home to me was what a difficult job the Clarke jury (or the judges of any literary award, for that matter) must have in narrowing pools of books down. I might think I’ve reasoned out my opinions on the six novels in advance; but, bring them up against the equally-reasoned opinions of four other people, and it’s clear there is a whole lot more thinking to be done – and probably thinking on aspects of the books which I hadn’t even considered. Tough though it was to agree on which books we’d jettison when (and I’m sure all of us had moments of compromise), the Fantasy Clarke panel was also a rare chance to discuss a set of books face-to-face in some reasonable depth, and I could happily have continued longer. Afterwards, the consensus among the audience seemed to be that we should repeat the exercise next year, and I think it would be great if the panel became a regular occurrence.

It wasn’t all great, of course – not in a weekend which included John Meaney’s spectacularly ill-judged speech introducing the BSFA Awards. There’s nothing I can really add to what has already been said elsewhere across the internet; I was one of the people who walked out, and so missed the actual presentation of the awards. But my congratulations to Christopher Priest, Paul Cornell, Dominic Harman, and the team behind the SF Encyclopedia for their respective wins.

Socially, it was – as ever – great to catch up with familiar faces and meet unfamiliar ones for the first time (whether that’s the first time in person or in general). Those unfamiliar faces included Damien, Edward, Erin, Maureen, and Nick from the panels I mentioned above; as well as Nina Allan, Kev McVeigh, Ruth O’Reilly, Tom Pollock, Gav Pugh, Adam Roberts, and Ian Snell – apologies to anyone I’ve omitted to mention. The fluid nature of social interaction at a convention meant that I didn’t always get as much chance to speak to people as I’d have liked, but I hope that we will meet again in times to come.

My overall sense was of a convention that was great both within and beyond my personal experience of it. The event had that general atmosphere of a lot of people having a good time, whatever their particular interests in terms of programming or guests. I’ve long thought that a mainstream literary festival structured like an Eastercon would be fabulous; and Olympus only confirmed to me what a great format this can be for getting people together to share an interest in books (or what-have-you). I’m already planning to attend Eight Squared Con in Bradford next year; so let me say thank you to this year’s Eastercon committee, and good luck to next year’s!

Lucy Wood, Diving Belles (2012) – Strange Horizons review

30th March 2012 / / 1 Comment

Would you like to hear about the best book I’ve read so far this year? Here it is: the debut collection from Lucy Wood, a set of contemporary stories inspired by Cornish folklore. Wood is clearly going to be a name to watch out for in the future; to find out why, I’d invite you to read my review of Diving Belles, which is up on Strange Horizons today.

Click here to read the review.

Further links
Video interview with Lucy Wood
Wood reads from ‘Notes from the House Spirits’

Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker (2012)

27th March 2012 / / 3 Comments

Two novels into an author’s career might be too soon to generalise, but we have to work with what we’ve got. I’m coming to think of Nick Harkaway’s novels as battlegrounds between whimsy and cold, hard seriousness. The Gone-Away World combined mime artists and digressive prose with a desire to treat the effects of its reality-bending weapon matter-of-factly; Angelmaker embodies the conflict in its protagonist. Joe Spork’s father, Mathew was a master criminal – and no ordinary one, but a gentleman-crook of the old school. As a boy, Joe spent his days in the world of the Night Market – the kind of shadowy gathering which one assumes could only exist in fiction, whose changing locations is revealed only by clues hidden in newspapers. It’s crime that belongs in a heightened version of reality; but here it is in the world of Angelmaker, and Joe wants none of it; instead, he has followed in the footsteps of Daniel, his grandfather, and become a clockmaker. But his latest job makes Joe cross paths with Edie Banister, a nonagenarian ex-spy; and eventually he gets caught up in a plot to end the world with a swarm of clockwork bees – components of the Apprehension Engine, a device which would cause people to apprehend truth so clearly that it would render the universe static.

Like the criminal underworld of Joe’s youth, Edie Banister’s world of espionage is  more colourful than our reality should be able to hold – she was schooled in the ways of spying from an early age, aboard an artisan-crafted train and submarine, and has a ruthless arch-enemy who makes Keyser Söze look like a sissy – and Joe remains protected by a firm of old-school-tie types with seemingly bottomless resources. But Harkaway underlines that the passage of time has been squeezing out these ways of being: ‘The world was getting old and cruel. The great game [Edie] had played, the wild, primary-colour roller coaster, had become something harsher.’ (p. 347) That primary-coloured world is what Joe has spent his life trying to escape, but his story throughout Angelmaker is one of learning to balance his past and presenrt – just as the novel as a whole finds a balance between its outlandish and down-to-earth aspects.

Not everything in the novel works so well: Joe’s love interest, Polly Cradle, remains a little too close to the stereotype of super-competent totty; and I think Angelmakerasks its readers to feel more warmly towards its larger-than-life crime capers than I personally was able to. But then the novel treads its high-wire with nimble feet and gives us genuinely chilling scenes in which Joe has been seized and is tormented by his gentlemanly captors. It shows that Edie’s nemesis is no cartoon villain, but all too real and ruthless beyond belief. It causes the hairs on the back of one’s neck to rise with its fantastical hints of a world changed by the Apprehension Engine. It wrong-foots us with passages of genuine emotion in the midst of a deceptively light narrative. If Angelmaker pits whimsy against seriousness, the outcome is a stalemate; but the real winners of the fight are Nick Harkaway and his readers.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Click here to read my other posts on this year’s Award.

Elsewhere
Nick Harkaway’s website
Some other reviews of Angelmaker: John Clute for Strange Horizons; Emily St. John Mandel for The Millions; Matt Craig at Reader Dad.

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