#Review - Simul by Andrew Caldecott

Simul (Momenticon, 2)

Andrew Caldecott
Arcadia (Jo Fletcher Books) 18 January 2024
Available as: HB, 384, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529415476

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Simul to consider for review.

Simul is the second part of the story that began in Momenticon. Almost impossible to summarise, it features a near-future world destroyed by pollution. Only small islands of inhabitability survive amidst the Murk - a toxic substance that erodes pretty much anything that isn't heavily protected - or very lucky. 

These protected zones tend to have been engineered, in particular the domes operated by two companies - Tempestas and Genrich - organisations with different ideas about how to preserve humanity. In Momenticon, the story started in another dome, one built to house a museum of art, and we met Fogg, its Curator, who rather drove that story. He plays much less of a role in this book, although he does appear as do many of the characters from that earlier book.

Others of the protected areas appear to be fortuitous, the result of freakish weather patterns or other features

The cast is extensive. Though the author provides a handy list, it took me a little time to work myself back into knowing who was who - that was perhaps made harder because many of the characters don't come across as very different people, and the story, told in short chapters, flits between them and between locations (travel is possible on airships, though perilous). As I've said, Momenticon was much more focussed on Fogg, so at first I did feel a bit more adrift among new people, scenes and plot developments (there are a few flashbacks). It's rather one thing after another as these people - some loveable, some roguish but nearly all very archly peculiar, if that makes sense - race to achieve very different objectives. 

To do that they will need to unpick an extensive history, since almost nobody here really understands what is happening (or has happened) and why. A new threat has emerged as Nature - infuriated by the way she has been treated, or perhaps merely irritated by this gallery of eccentrics - strikes back, carrying out new attacks on both flesh and on metal. It is a threat that nobody expected, but to which all respond in ways one would expect. Some try to co-opt the menace as a new weapon, others to find a defence, still others, a means of counter-attack. Crossed with all the conflicting motives, hatreds and misunderstandings that were set up in Momenticon and develop in the first part of Simul, that makes for a pretty exciting conclusion where - I don't think this is a spoiler - the villains (more or less) get their comeuppances and the heroes (more or less) their just rewards (although a few fall by the wayside). 

It is maybe a bit less satisfying the more you try to understand what's going on and exactly how it came about. There are so many rabbits pulled out of hats that Watershed Down could well be in production somewhere in the background. However I don't think that most readers will worry too much about doing   that but will rather be enjoying the rush of events, and the particular, peculiar atmosphere of a Caldecott novel.

The cover design, illustrations and map (by, respectively, Leo Nickolls, Nick May and Nicola Howell Hawley) are evocative and intricate.

More information about Simul is available at the publisher's website here.