Review: The Corporation Wars - Insurgence

Image from http://www.orbitbooks.net/

The Corporation Wars: Insurgence
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 1 December 2016
HB, 309pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book. (Full disclosure: I also have a signed copy on order...)

Insurgence is the second volume in a science fiction trilogy, with Dissidence published in May and Emergence due next year. It kicks off  pretty much where Emergence finished, in the middle of a space battle between reanimated human-piloted mechanoids and newly self-conscious robots. In fact there isn't really a gap, you might just as well call this a single book in three parts as a trilogy.

It's hundreds of years in the future. Humanity has been shaped by a war between the forces of progress - the Accelaration, aka The Axle - and those of reaction, the Rax. After these insurgents have fought each other to a standstill, the authorities harvested the minds of the Axle combatants from their bodies and sentence them to perpetual death. Now, finally, there's a chance for salvation. Carlos 'the Terrorist' and his Axle comrades have been revived, retrained and re-embodied in fighting mechanical suits to meet the threat of those newly emergent robots.

Unfortunately, some Rax have also been preserved...

This is classic hard SF, set in a distant star system where rival corporations (all of them AIs) are trying to claim habitable territory for humanity. The robot uprising and Rax infiltration complicate matters, as do the cloudy motives of Earth's ultimate authority, the Direction (also an AI). In fact, there are wheels within wheels within wheels here, delicate layers of organisational, personal and ideological motives, directed and constrained by the limits of resources, legal freedom and above all, physics (gotta be careful with that reaction mass!) MacLeod provides a couple of pages of summary to bring the reader up to speed on events of the first book, but after that we're into a murky world where - as Carlos finds - nobody is to be trusted.

It's all done, though, as in the most satisfying thrillers, in a completely convincing way - which is some achievement given that most of our characters live (when not fighting robots) in one of two simulated worlds: either a pleasure planet or a pseudo medieval gameworld complete with dungeons and boggarts. Any distinctions between the different levels of 'reality' are soon lost as the book moves between viewpoints and Carlos, his comrade Taransay, Newton the individualistic Rax agent and Beauregard, a former Military Intelligence man who seized control of one of the sims at the end of the last book will pilot their way through the myriad complexities posed both by physical conflict with the larger body of reawakened Rax cadres and the suspicions, hostilities and misunderstandings sown between them.

We see less of the robots in this volume, which is perhaps a shame, because for me their dry wit is one of the best aspects of these books. MacLeod very cleverly leaves them robot enough to be alien, human enough to be sympathetic in their revolt against what is basically slavery. (Remember, none of the human factions show any pity to the robots, not even the 'progressive' Axle. They may be included in tactical alliances but these alliances - as between the human factions themselves - are simply following Machiavelli's advice, to combine against your strongest enemy then turn on your allies.) As the pretty ancient factions of Rax and Axle play out their slightly absurd, centuries out of date conflict, there is a much more current issue of justice at stake. One of the great things about MacLeod's writing is always this ethical, humanistic dimension to SF. Yes, it's ROBOTS! And LASERS! And BANGS! But also an intricately constructed and deeply politically aware story of the interplay between property, personhood and oppression and this gives the story real bite.

There's also some madcap invention, from a user interface based on painting and drawing, to an Old Man of the Mountains who seems to have developed the ability to, unwittingly, control one of the sims, to an all too plausible conjecture as to how robot consciousness could arise.

I suspect that even as we think we know what's going on, there may be a hidden hand at work somewhere. How much of what's happened might, actually, have been planned - or at least foreseen. And by who? Something reminds me of Asimov's Second Foundation - perhaps appropriately in what is also known as the Second Law Trilogy.

There are certainly a number of other shoutouts to SF classics (a reference to The Songs of Distant Earth, the remark than any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology, and more). This is a book, like the very best SF, in dialogue with the genre's past, with speculation about what robots might and might not be allowed to do, with plans for directing future civilizations. And as in many of those tales the real fun arises when things go wrong and the unforeseen happens. That's certainly where we get to by the end of the book when things are again left very much up in the air. I can't wait for the final part.

(Before I end: I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but I just want to point out what gorgeous little hardbacks these are. Just take a moment to admire the design by Bekki Guyatt.)

Slipping by Lauren Beukes

Slipping: Stories, Essays and Other Writing
Lauren Beukes
Tachyon, 29 November 2016
PB, 288pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

I mostly knew of Beukes as the author of smart, twisted SF or fantasy - though it was clear from The Shining Girls that she was also a committed journalist - and I certainly hadn't read any of her short fiction. So this collection was enlightening in a number of ways.

The book collects 21 short stories, written over a decade or more both before and around Beukes' 4 published novels, and 5 pieces of non-fiction. There is also a glossary which may be useful if you're puzzled by some of the South African language used here.

In one of the non-fiction pieces, 'Adventures in Journalism', Beukes sets out what you might take as the manifesto for this collection: '...my job sent me careening around the city from rough-hewn Bellville (cellular chip technology, kiteboarding) to an exclusive boys' school in leafy Rondebosch (teen sexuality) to the low-income apartheid estate Bonteheuwel (graffiti artists, taxi drivers).' Driven by her desire to learn, to understand and to communicate, she flits around, taking in all the breadth of human life (and death).

Similarly, this book explores the boundaries of the weird, the fantastical, the outrageous, from an obsessed stalker who's invaded her girlfriend's home ('Dear Mariana') to an occupying army carrying out torture on captive aliens ('Unaccounted') to a fraud perpetrated by 419 scammers ('Easy Touch'). In some of these you can see ideas developing that resulted in full length novels - part of the background of 'Zoo City' was those same scammers, and 'Branded' reads like backstory to 'Moxyland'. Others are standalone (or haven't resulted in full length books yet...) or experimental: a collection of microstories written as tweets ('Litmash'),  the story of someone calling random numbers and trying to impose a structure on the results ('Dial Tone'), a tale ('Algebra') told in 26 sections, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Not all the stories have elements of the fantastic or the SFnal: many are naturalistic, at least on the surface: in 'Parking' a parking attendant burns with desire for one of the women who regularly leaves her car in his area. Or is he a threatening stalker? In 'Slipping' a mysterious figure adopts multiple identities online - but why? Perhaps there's a sense that Beukes herself is, here, slipping: all those journalistic assignments, all those different themes - trans-human athletes competing in a kind of reality TV show, a fairytale in which a princess finds happiness somewhere she had never looked, stories of edgy art creators and architecture students who meet ghosts - seem to be her sampling possibilities, trying on ideas, and reporting back.

Sometimes, as I've said, things coalesce in themes or ideas that relate to the novels - both in the fiction and the non-fiction, where there is a discussion of the themes behind The Shining Girls, specifically the man who hates women so much that he wants to snuff out something special that he sees in them.

That idea - the twistedness behind the way things are - is a common motif, many of the stories touching on themes of, especially, race (how could they not) but generally obliquely. There's the determined woman who makes her living selling 'smileys' (cooked sheeps' heads) who has a spot of bother with a veteran of the Struggle. There are references (again in both the fiction and non-fiction) to the different districts, often close beside each other, the vastly different yet intertwined lives. Safe and dangerous places. But it's more I think about atmosphere and influence than straight reporting - a chilling account of a surveillance state run in the name of law and order, or that torture prison for 'aliens' (they're 'not human' so can they be dehumanised?) So many themes, so many ideas - reading this book is like turning a Kaleidoscope round and round.

Some of the influences may be hinted at in the origins of the stories - written for a wide range of publications (an erotic collection here, the Big Issue there, by way of annuals and themed anthologies). But - unless I'm missing something - Beukes hasn't let her vision be unduly trammelled by the such commissions.  There's a unity of vision and tone that builds through the volume, despite (or because of?) the wide ranging nature of the material

An engaging collection, whether or not you're read the novels, and I hope hinting at still more strangeness to come soon from this most compelling writer.

Review: After Atlas by Emma Newman

Image from http://www.enewman.co.uk/

After Atlas
Emma Newman
Roc, 10 November 2016
PB, 365pp

Source: Copy bought from Forbidden Planet at author signing (see below)

Emma Newman continues to impress me with her smart, slightly twisted takes on SF - in this case, she asks "what about those left behind?"

The earlier book, Planetfall, set in the same universe as After Atlas, focussed on human settlers to a new world some 20 years in. It showed how they had been drawn there by almost religious fervour, and what happened next - with a startling twist. The concept reminded me of classic Star Trek except for the deep, empathetic portrayal of the main character and her weaknesses which gave the book so much heart.

Now, we're back on Earth at the same time (I think) as the Planetfall events. We see the awful place earth has become, which the colonists on Atlas wanted to escape. The remorseless march or corporatism has swallowed governments, which have become "gov-corps". Everyone is surveilled all the time, most people have chips embedded and there seem to be no human rights, only contracts - and some are trapped by those contracts into something not far off slavery.

Carlos is one such. Owned by the Ministry of Justice in the UK, he's been trained and formed ('hot-housed') into the perfect criminal investigator. He will work to 80 or thereabouts to repay the cost of his purchase with any failure, any rebellion punished by extra years on the contract. Yet as we find out later he has an easy time compared to some.

Carlos is brought in to solve a high profile case involving the leader of a religious sect - the Circle - from the US. The Circle consists of the people left behind when Atlas flew - one of whom was Carlos's mother (Newman makes a telling point that there's more blame heaped on the mother who left her child than the many fathers). he used to be a member of the Circle so he's ideally placed to understand what happened in a remote hotel in Devon. (The case also gives him the chance to enjoy real - non printed - food: Carlos's love of good food is an enjoyable diversion against a fairly grim background).

The book then adopts the mode - if not the normal setting - of a police procedural, with forensics, pathology, the search for evidence and a rising sense that something is off, someone isn't playing by the rules. We gradually come to sympathise with Carlos more and more, not least the grief and anger which he is clearly bottling up - assisted by the lessons from his hot-housing. He's an awkward, slightly spiky character and so, so alone.

Then - things change. I can't say too much about this for fear of spoilers but the book moves into a different mode. Something awful happens to Carlos and the stakes are suddenly much higher. Then Newman redoubles the jeopardy yet again, boosting things both to a new level of danger but also changing the sort of book this is in a heartbreaking conclusion. I was left standing in the dark on a cold railway platform so that I could read the last few pages before I drove home - it's that compelling. This is, in short, a compulsive and disturbing read. As well as sheer, relentless story we get to see the lives of those shut out of the glamorous space adventure described in Planetfall. Of course we know how that turned out - they don't, and many are damaged: Carlos's father, driven to grief and despair, for example. That's an angle on space-faring and the Final Frontier that you don't normally see.

It isn't perfect - I wonder if perhaps that first twist might come a bit sooner, as there is relatively little time then to explore the consequences? Things then seem a bit rushed at the end. But it's a testament to the power of the writing that I'm only saying that in hindsight: when you're in this book you just want it to keep coming and coming.

The best thing of all is, though, that there surely MUST be more books to come now in the Planetfall universe? It can't just end like this, can it? Please Emma?

The author reading from After Atlas at Forbidden Planet London
(12 November 2016)

The Lost Child of Lychford

Image from http://www.paulcornell.com/

The Lost Child of Lychford
Paul Cornell
Tor.com, 22 November 2016
PB, 130pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy via NetGalley

It’s December in the English village of Lychford – the first Christmas since an evil conglomerate tried to force open the borders between our world and… another.

Which means it’s Lizzie’s first Christmas as Reverend of St. Martin’s. Which means more stress, more expectation, more scrutiny by the congregation. Which means… well, business as usual, really.

Until the apparition of a small boy finds its way to Lizzie in the church. Is he a ghost? A vision? Something else? Whatever the truth, our trio of witches (they don’t approve of “coven”) are about to face their toughest battle, yet!

I am NOT Paul Cornell. Like him, however, I am married to a Church of England priest and live in a small community in Southern England. So I am loving this series (see here for review of The Witches of Lychford) as much for its depiction of the joys and frustrations of life in such a community, as for the supernatural spooky stuff.

The supernatural, spooky stuff is, is though, magnificently done, truly eerie and frightening. Lychford seems to be something of a spiritual front line, its streets carefully oriented to defend the town against incursions from outside and a trio of 'witches' - Lizzie, the new Vicar, Autumn, proprietor of the town's New Age shop and Judith, more of a traditional witchy type - on guard against incursions. The  supportive grumbling between the three women is one of the nice points of this story.

Like the previous previous book, this is short, a novella but - with the setting and characters now established - more of it can focus on plot and building tension, so it perhaps works slightly better in this length than Witches did - not to say that wasn't a great read, but you perhaps get more story here.

Again, Lychford is under attack but it's a more subtle, almost snide kind of attack and some of it has clearly taken place offstage, as it were. We're left - for a bit - to divine just what's going on, as Judith continues to care for her revenant husband, Autumn looks after her shop and Lizzie devotes herself to the rush of Chtistmas activities, supplemented by a couple from Swindon who want their wedding on Christmas Eve. (If there's ever a suggestion of a Christmas Eve wedding here me, my son and the dog will take drastic measures, up to and including organ sabotage). Is there a bad case of the midwinter blues (plus overwork) going on here or something sinister? This being Lychford, we can guess the answer...

Cornell gradually ratchets up tension, keeping the reader guessing about just what is going to happen (and about the place of that little lost ghost in it all). Then he springs his trap and all seems hopeless. In the darkest part of the year, the dark seems to be rising...

A wonderful, chilly tale, whether you treat it as a Christmas ghost story or a slice of cosmic horror. The author is clearly having fun with Lychford - and the Church! - and I hope there are more of these coming.

Blogtour - The Finnish Invasion: The Exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto

The Exiled (Anne Fekete 3)
Kati Hiekkapelto (trans David Hackston)
Oranda Books, 15 November 2016
PB, 295pp

I'm grateful to Orenda for a review copy of the book.

I've never taken part in an invasion before, let alone a Finnish one, so it's exciting to take my place in the ranks of this truly epic blog tour (see banner at the foot of the post) reviewing both Kati Hiekkapelto's new Anna Fekete books, and in a few days, Antii Tuomainen's The Mine. 

That said... Finnish? Well, as readers of Anna's earlier adventures will know she's not Finnish. Well, not exactly. Inspector Fekete is of course a Finnish citizen, but she's from Serbia, originally, a refugee from the civil war that broke up Yugoslavia. And in this book, she's home for a holiday. (Needless to say, things don't go smoothly). To add a wrinkle to things, Anna is ethnically Hungarian - that's her mother tongue - and the book makes passing references to the use of Hungarian rather than Serbian at times. So - just to be clear - I'm reviewing the English translation of a book written in Finnish about a woman from Serbia who has settled in Finland but is also Hungarian.

I think that's rather wonderful. At a time when strutting idiots are doing their best to stoke hatred and divisions and draw neat little boxes all around us, here is a book celebrating the wonderful, true messiness of life in Europe.

Of course, as you'd expect, it really does get messy for Anna. One of the themes of the book is precisely her lack of roots. While she's happily settled in Finland, it isn't home, any more than Kanizsa, the village she originally came from, is home. Or perhaps both are? With a father who died when she was a girl, and a brother killed in the war, she spends much of this book considering her identity - mainly through the lens of the Serbian culture: the casual attitude to life, from things like eating, drinking and smoking to not wearing seatbelts or indeed, when on the river, lifejackets. Small things, but significant. Caught between the culture she grew up with and that of her original home, Anna's ready to follow anything that promises to root her.

So when she stumbles on a mystery surrounding her father's death, we know she won't follow the wise advice of everyone around her and leave well alone.

That's not just down to mere curiosity of course: as in her previous cases we see a doggedness in Anna - she won't be told what to do, pursuing first the thief who stole her bag then the murderer who killed him and, finally, the little girl left alone and unprotected by that death. One rather pities anyone who gets in Anna's way.

Like the last book in this series, The Defenceless, The Exiled is preoccupied with the refugee crisis facing Europe. (It's interesting how one's natural instinct is to phrase this as a problem for Europe - when of course the point is that it's at worst, a minor problem for Europe but a catastrophe for the unfortunates who have had to flee their homes). Hiekkapelto dissects attitudes to the refugees and shows normal people being variously heroic, inhuman or just unheeding about it all. She also rather deftly displays the workings of society in Kanisza - the local political fixer, the police, the priest, the Romani who were treated as bottom of the pile until the refugees came along. It's a far from ideal society, perhaps, but it's a place Anna understands deeply, even if she couldn't live there, and being 'home' for a while only adds to her sense of alienation.

In many ways this is then as much a book about belonging (or not) as it is a straight crime story. At times the theft/ murder plot almost vanishes to be replaced by this study in (dis)location, illustrated not only through the refugees but also in Anna herself. A recurring motif is Anna's stolen passport which of course she needs to get back to Finland at the end of her stay. She keeps forgetting to report it and collect a new one. What does that say? Yes, Anna is busy with her informal (yet still pretty sophisticated) investigation - but there seems a little more to it than that. And the local boy with whim she has a brief fling (to her mother's disapproval. Real love, lust, or - perhaps - a need for something solid in her life (despite angry words when her mother urges her to settle down).

It's difficult to say. We'll have to read more about Anna and find out.

An excellent further instalment to this series which only deepens the reader's understanding and sympathy for Anna (even though she can be a bit awkward at times...)

Sherlock Holmes and The Shadwell Shadows by James Lovegrove

Image from titanbooks.com

The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows
James Lovegrove
Titan Books, 15 November 2016
HB, 448pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

It is the autumn of 1880, and Dr John Watson has just returned from Afghanistan. Badly injured and desperate to forget a nightmarish expedition that left him doubting his sanity, Watson is close to destitution when he meets the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, who is investigating a series of deaths in the Shadwell district of London. Several bodies have been found, the victims appearing to have starved to death over the course of several weeks, and yet they were reported alive and well mere days before. Moreover, there are disturbing reports of creeping shadows that inspire dread in any who stray too close. Holmes deduces a connection between the deaths and a sinister drug lord who is seeking to expand his criminal empire. Yet both he and Watson are soon forced to accept that there are forces at work far more powerful than they could ever have imagined. Forces that can be summoned, if one is brave – or mad – enough to dare…

I love a bit of Sherlock Holmes, so was delighted when Titan offered me a copy of the first book in this new series by James Lovegrove.

In his preface, Lovegrove relates the unlikely tale of hos his hitherto unknown family connection with HP Lovecraft led to the receipt of three yellowing typescripts, the work of none other than Dr John Watson, recounting the true story of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes. Are they real? Are they fake? Is the rarefied world of Holmesian scholarship about to be unset? or are even worse revelations in store?

I enjoyed this foray into an almost MR Jamesian world of lost manuscripts and unspeakable horror. Because of course, as the title proclaims, what we have here is the fusion of two great pantheons of popular literature. Holmes and Watson are supported by Mrs Hudson, Gregson, Lestrade and Mycroft - in their world of 221B, fog and hansom cabs (there's a hilarious bit where Lovegrove shows off his knowledge of clarences, growlers and who knows what else wheeled conveyances). Lurking underneath, though, are Elder Gods, tentacles horrors, sanity-blasting books and obsessed cultists.

In the hands of a less skilled writer this could have been a real mess. These two worlds have very distinct rules. While Holmes adventures may have a touch of the sensational and even Gothic, that's only to show off Holmes's superb rationalistic deductive power. And while some of Lovecraft's stories do permit a (temporary) success in driving back the cosmic horror, that's only to counterpoint the cold, bleak despair of what is surely coming to devour us.

Yet Lovegrove does a superb job in combining these immiscible essences, allowing the Great Detective and the Good Doctor to discover sinister horrors and reason themselves in ton accepting them as the only explanation - once the impossible has been removed - for the horrible deaths stalking Shadwell.

On the way, we're treated to a good pastiche of a late Victoria shocker: opium dens, vice ridden dives in the East End and so forth. Of course Lovegrove is writing for a modern audience and he properly contextualises the 'sinister Chinaman' stereotype, making it clear how the opium trade began with the British Empire and dwelling on the horrors inflicted on China. They aren't, of course, cosmic, but one can compare the results of colonialism with the eager, hungry desire of ancient gods to come and consume humanity.

It's all great fun, very smartly done, and with enough enjoyable Holmes references - Watson explains that his earlier stories were distortions, intended to make the truth - to keep the keenest Baker Street Irregular on their toes.

Two further volumes are promised and I look forward to them. My only criticism - and it's a bit of a picky point - would be that in my mind, the classic Sherlock Holmes tale is a short story, Conan Doyle only having written a handful of full length novels. The short story is suited to an incident, a satisfying episode or a minor crime and to highlighting Holmes's methods and world. The novel requires a more spectacular resolution and when you're dealing with Cthulhu and his ilk for 'spectacular' read 'life limiting'. So I'd welcome some short stories set in this world as well, if Mr Lovegrove could oblige...?

Sherlock Holmes and The Shadwell Shadow by James Lovegrove

Image from titanbooks.com

The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows
James Lovegrove
Titan Books, 15 November 2016
HB, 448pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

It is the autumn of 1880, and Dr John Watson has just returned from Afghanistan. Badly injured and desperate to forget a nightmarish expedition that left him doubting his sanity, Watson is close to destitution when he meets the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, who is investigating a series of deaths in the Shadwell district of London. Several bodies have been found, the victims appearing to have starved to death over the course of several weeks, and yet they were reported alive and well mere days before. Moreover, there are disturbing reports of creeping shadows that inspire dread in any who stray too close. Holmes deduces a connection between the deaths and a sinister drug lord who is seeking to expand his criminal empire. Yet both he and Watson are soon forced to accept that there are forces at work far more powerful than they could ever have imagined. Forces that can be summoned, if one is brave – or mad – enough to dare…

I love a bit of Sherlock Holmes, so was delighted when Titan offered me a copy of the first book in this new series by James Lovegrove.

In his preface, Lovegrove relates the unlikely tale of hos his hitherto unknown family connection with HP Lovecraft led to the receipt of three yellowing typescripts, the work of none other than Dr John Watson, recounting the true story of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes. Are they real? Are they fake? Is the rarefied world of Holmesian scholarship about to be unset? or are even worse revelations in store?

I enjoyed this foray into an almost MR Jamesian world of lost manuscripts and unspeakable horror. Because of course, as the title proclaims, what we have here is the fusion of two great pantheons of popular literature. Holmes and Watson are supported by Mrs Hudson, Gregson, Lestrade and Mycroft - in their world of 221B, fog and hansom cabs (there's a hilarious bit where Lovegrove shows off his knowledge of clarences, growlers and who knows what else wheeled conveyances). Lurking underneath, though, are Elder Gods, tentacles horrors, sanity-blasting books and obsessed cultists.

In the hands of a less skilled writer this could have been a real mess. These two worlds have very distinct rules. While Holmes adventures may have a touch of the sensational and even Gothic, that's only to show off Holmes's superb rationalistic deductive power. And while some of Lovecraft's stories do permit a (temporary) success in driving back the cosmic horror, that's only to counterpoint the cold, bleak despair of what is surely coming to devour us.

Yet Lovegrove does a superb job in combining these immiscible essences, allowing the Great Detective and the Good Doctor to discover sinister horrors and reason themselves in ton accepting them as the only explanation - once the impossible has been removed - for the horrible deaths stalking Shadwell.

On the way, we're treated to a good pastiche of a late Victoria shocker: opium dens, vice ridden dives in the East End and so forth. Of course Lovegrove is writing for a modern audience and he properly contextualises the 'sinister Chinaman' stereotype, making it clear how the opium trade began with the British Empire and dwelling on the horrors inflicted on China. They aren't, of course, cosmic, but one can compare the results of colonialism with the eager, hungry desire of ancient gods to come and consume humanity.

It's all great fun, very smartly done, and with enough enjoyable Holmes references - Watson explains that his earlier stories were distortions, intended to make the truth - to keep the keenest Baker Street Irregular on their toes.

Two further volumes are promised and I look forward to them. My only criticism - and it's a bit of a picky point - would be that in my mind, the classic Sherlock Holmes tale is a short story, Conan Doyle only having written a handful of full length novels. The short story is suited to an incident, a satisfying episode or a minor crime and to highlighting Holmes's methods and world. The novel requires a more spectacular resolution and when you're dealing with Cthulhu and his ilk for 'spectacular' read 'life limiting'. So I'd welcome some short stories set in this world as well, if Mr Lovegrove could oblige...?

The Shadow of What Was Lost

The Shadow of What Was Lost: Volume 1 of the Licanius Trilogy
James Islington
Orbit, 10 November 2016
HB, 693pp
Source: Review copy gratefully received from Orbit

The North is full of tangled things, and texts, and aching eyes...

It's a while since I've got properly sunk into a real epic fantasy tome* so in some ways this book was like coming home. There is magic. There are swords, legions of faceless antagonists, mysterious visions - and shifty motivations.

The story opens at a school where the young (magically) Gifted are taught to control their powers. One the even of the test which will determine his future, young Davian is selected for a task which will take him far from Caladel. One of the things I soon appreciated about this book was the gentle air of menace surrounding pretty much everything and everyone. Far from being welcomed and revered, the Gifted are despised, barely tolerated, and forced to subscribe to the 'Four Tenets' that limit their powers. Even so limited, they are likely to be beaten up in the streets, spat at or chased out of shops. By absconding, Davian puts himself in danger of - at best - having his powers snuffed out, at worst, of being cornered by a lynch mob. (Ever watched one of those old horror films and wondered what it would be like to draw the attention of the pitchfork wielding villagers?) And the irony of it is that he has no powers that he can control anyway. So his mission seems doubly hopeless - as are all the best fantasy quests.

Of course there is more - a great deal more - to this story than that. For Davian, it's a growing up, as he - slowly - discovers what is special about him, and learns painful lessons about trust - giving and receiving it. Others of those he meets must recover memories to learn who they truly are, take their rightful place in the kingdom or come to terms with devastating personal change and loss.

Because in this book, nobody seems to be what or who they say they are. Much of the plot is about slowly peeling away the layers, revealing motivations - political, magical, prophetic - and seeing just how complex and entangled human nature can really be. At times things become so tangled that they resemble a PG Wodehouse plot and one longs for a stern Aunt Agatha to stamp her foot and command order. But the truth is that in the world of this book, no-one is in control. Not the King, not the Northwarden, certainly not the Elders of the Gifted. The Augurs, godlike beings who ruled the Gifted (and seem to have been pretty nasty, to be honest) are all dead - and Bad Things are happening.

It's an inventive narrative told at a galloping pace, the first in a series (obviously) so not many of those mysteries get wrapped up by the end (why one character miraculously survived a massacre, who the powerful tutor is who schools Davian (and why), who the leader of the Shadows really is) - we don't even learn the real motivations of some of the main characters. I suspect though that the crux is going to be the interplay between a pretty extreme form of predestination and a desire by many of the characters to decide their own way. That would give point to the series of visions described here and accepted by most of the protagonists as inevitable: to the backstories involving dreadful crimes by people who come across as quite decent (is there more to it? Surely there is!) and to the... how can I describe it... sense of gameplaying that sometimes seems to be going on.

So, if you appreciate fantasy I think you'll like what is a fairly straight down the line epic.  My only reservation would be that you need to pay close attention to those visions - the details matter once they start to come true - and if you don't you'll be flipping back and forward, as I was, reminding yourself exactly what was going on.

*Tome: A book of more than 500 pages in which magic happens. May or may not contain dragons.

Guest post by Alex Caan: Character takeover

I'm pleased today to welcome Alex Caan, author of Cut to the Bone, with a guest post.

Cut to the Bone, published on 3 November by Bonnier Zaffre, has been compared to THE FALL, Sarah Hilary and MJ Arlidge. It is a slick, dark modern thriller that deals with contemporary issues of privacy vs internet stardom - the paranoid world of tech and cyber-security.

Ruby is a vlogger, a rising star of YouTube and a heroine to millions of teenage girls. And she's missing. She's an adult - nothing to worry about, surely? Until the video's uploaded. Ruby, in the dirt and pleading for her life.

So... about characters then.  Do they “take over” (some authors says yes to this, some quite strongly insist they (the author) remain in control)? Over to Alex for his thoughts...

‘The character just took over…’ Erm ok. I often wonder about this process, does the writer become possessed by some creative force or spirit, that drives them on to channel a fictional entity, making them write things they never would? I sit there sometimes writing, and want this to happen. It would make my life easier and my procrastination/worrying would be pretty minimal. (I am writing ‘that’ difficult second novel atm so…) They don’t though. I need to tell them what to do and say.

Or do I?

When writing Zain for example, his Turkish heritage (my love of Istanbul), his passion for Puccini (my own) are mine. His fitness levels (Krav Maga anyone?) are what I’d love to do. So I’m giving him my own interests- but still he’s not me. When writing a scene featuring Zain I channel something. Not him exactly, but it’s a mindset. The front part of my brain feels loaded in a different way, and my senses seem to be extensions of his. So as I write, the words I use, the language, the patterns and ultimately the actions, are his. Or what I associate with him. Zain is a tortured soul, hot headed because he is so broken, secretive because his trust in everything is breaking, and pushed into a place where right and wrong often don’t figure in his version of what feels good. He’s essentially my version of an Ottoman vampire, only dressed up as a former Spook turned cop. And his life is going to get a lot darker and bleaker as the series progresses. Only, why would I set out to do that to someone? Especially one of my leads? So is he writing himself, is he demanding I be true to him, and write him the way he should be written? Then how does this equate with my notion that my characters are often idealised versions of myself? What I want to say or do?

The same happens with Kate. She is extremely intelligent, measured, but also has a reckless streak in her which she justifies in her own world view. Is this me? I think I do the same, especially when I don’t conform. Well hey I can write my own rules right? But the rest? When writing her parts she again was there, in that front part of the brain, and I was thinking and viewing the world in a way that was strange. How can that be? How could I possibly look at a situation and respond to it in a way that I never would? Is this a supernatural thing? Or am I simply a conduit and writing things I have picked up over a lifetime of experience? Everyone I’ve met, everything I’ve read and watched? All of it outpouring onto my pages? This seems more likely an explanation when writing. What am I giving Kate of myself? My love of New England, American law enforcement, the FBI and The X Files? A moral core I admire in others, wish I had, or have somewhere but never get to use? I crave justice, for myself and others, and Kate does that.

And then there’s the villains. How do you get into the head of the worst of people? People who think it’s ok to cross lines without any thought of others? Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ novels is a classic example. Alex Thorne in Angela Marson’s Kim Stone series is another. And I am itching to write a villain like that, really get under their skin. But can I risk having them in my brain? Will I be the same again? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to try. Because if there were no rules, and I was so inclined, how would I work?

Then again, both Kate and Zain have their own shades of grey, Zain in particular has A LOT of this. So possibly I’m unleashing my darkness through Zain, and using Kate as a balance?

So I think I’m confusing myself. I don’t believe that characters takeover. And yet I believe something happens when I write my own. Maybe characters are simply keys, they unlock in us our experiences, freeing them from the rooms and cells we keep them in? Things we don’t even know we have experienced in some form, but with the write character, the lock is broken and you find yourself bursting onto the page in ways that shock even your own sensibilities.

Whatever the truth, what I can say is that writing characters is the most fun I’ve ever had.

Thanks Alex!

Cut to the Bone is out now, available from the usual places - your local bookshop, here, here or here

The Hanging Tree

Image from http://www.gollancz.co.uk/

The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London 6)
Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz, 3 November 2016
HB, 400pp
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy via NetGalley.

This is the sixth outing for PC Peter Grant (in novel form - I'd strongly recommend the comics which fit between the books. not least as some of those stories are mentioned in this book - though you don't need to know the detail). Grant is the newest apprentice to enigmatic wizard - and Detective Inspector - Nightingale, whose task is to provide support to London's police when they encounter "weird bollocks" - essentially magic but also, inhabitants of the London demi-monde of fae, river gods, Silent People and genii loci.

Grant's back in the city after his excursion to Herefordshire (where he didn't meet a certain Church of England priest turned exorcist - so he can be excused here for not recognising the name of her singer/ songwriter boyfriend). I enjoyed Foxglove Summer but there's no doubt that Grant's true milieu is London and he's magnificent here in what's essentially a tricky police procedural (but with magic).

Lady Ty's daughter and a group of her posh friends run into a spot of trouble when a party gets out of hand and somebody ends up dead. Tyburn wants it tidied away quietly: Peter's stuck in the middle. From this starting point Aaronovitch spins a clever story involving drugs, stolen antiquities, a bunch of independent contractors who keep crossing his path, a clever fox and - of course - the Faceless Man who's been haunting this series from the start.

One of the things about Rivers of London that I enjoy most is the apparent authenticity of the police investigations. (I say 'apparent' because I can't judge, I don't know anything about it). This isn't Morse and Lewis strolling moodily around solving crime (much as I love Morse and Lewis) - even if Grant's and Nightingale's peculiar talent might justify that approach. Instead, they're clearly enmeshed in the modern police machine, with information collated by computer, "actions" raised in response to it and a whole background of hierarchies, review meetings and territorial support deployed as part of the story rather than simply an impediment to our hero.

Another thing I like is Aaronovitch's gentle but pointed tale on diversity:

"I was beginning to think that there must be a factory somewhere stamping out dangerously skinny white girls with good deportment and a nervous disposition".

"...the wrinkly brown chamois leather complexion that white people get if they spend their lives under a hot sun."

These and other similar (and similarly sharp) lines just sink the assumption that any character must be white unless the book says otherwise. Or take Guleed, who works with Grant through most of this book - just another police officer (though we find out a little bit about her background, courtesy of a story she tells... and of Lady Ty). Or again, the episode where Grant is stopped at nightie his car by two uniforms because he "looked happy" (he takes their lapel numbers... just in case). Or a senior police officer - she has, we are told in passing, a wife somewhere out in the suburbs. Maybe it shouldn't be noteworthy that an author is doing this, but there we are.

At this stage in the series Aaronovitch could be forgiven for sitting back and letting the plot and series arc rest. All he really has to do to entertain is to bring out Grant and his cronies, let us see and listen to them and lace the text with banter, deadpan humour and the cynical Londonist viewpoint:

"'That's a difficult question, Alexander,' said Nightingale.

'I know it's a difficult question, Thomas,' said Seawoll slowly.

'That's why I'm fucking asking it'".

... together with Aaronovitch's own engaging geekiness - both about the truly SFnal ("the spice must flow!" or a reference to Sir Samuel, patron saint of policemen) and about wider culture ("And where it all came from was a mystery, I thought. Like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea.")

It would be easy for him to relax and neglect the story, but he doesn't. This is a satisfyingly confusing and mazey story, fast moving and full of incidents which - despite the magic - essentially respects all the conventions of the crime story, of which it's a cracking example. Indeed I would say that on the level of story, this is one of the best of the Rivers series so far. It's a cracking read, and laugh out loud funny in places

My only reservation would be how the story relates to the titular Tree. In the London context, Tyburn Tree - the Triple Tree - was the gallows standing where Marble Arch now is. Condemned criminals were taken along St Giles High Street, past the present day site of Forbidden Planet where I've met Aaronovitch at book signings, and down what is now Oxford Street on their last journey. The title and cover art allude to this and indeed the site of the Tree is mentioned and a couple of other locations key in to the theme. But this doesn't really seem to be a central concern of the book, and that left me (slightly) waiting throughout for the other shoe to drop, which it never did. In terms of London lore there is more about, say, Jonathan Wild in here than the Tree itself (even if Mr Wild did end up dancing the Tyburn jig...) But that's a small point, really.

There is a great deal else here: the Faceless Man, Mr Punch, a mysterious, almost steampunk, device, a lost Third Principia of Isaac Newton, loads of death and destruction in Central London, a great deal of really smart dialogue, a cynical light on the doings of the London super-rich ("once you're past a certain point, the sheer weight of your money sucks in wealth like a financial singularity") and, of course, the marvellous Beverley Brook herself - without whom no volume in this series would be complete.

In all, probably the best of the series so far, showing Aaronovitch on fine form even six books (and several short stories and comics) in.

Europe in Winter

Image from http://www.rebellionstore.com/

Europe in Winter (Fractured Europe 3)
Dave Hutchinson
Solaris, 3 November 2016
PB, 320pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book.

It was hard to be certain who was running the world any more, although obviously it wasn't the people who thought they were.

This is the third book in Hutchinson's Fractured Europe sequence (I hope that it being a sequence not a trilogy means there is more on the way - I want to read more, and by the end of this book a great deal is left intriguingly unresolved).

It is the mid to late 21st century. Europe has devolved into its default condition for much of history - a collection of pocket states, principalities, duchies, free cities and territories, the EU a vestige of its former state (but with money!) the UK divided. (I'd love to borrow Mr Hutchinson's crystal ball, especially with reference to next week's Lottery numbers...)

The main transnational, unifying feature in this Europe was thought to be the Line, a railway running from Portugal to Siberia, which is itself sovereign. Europe at Midnight revealed another: a second Europe, hidden in old maps and accessible only where the topology is right. The Community was invented - laid out, surveyed - by an English family, beginning in the 19th century, and it has a certain tweediness: they can't make good wine there because such a thing wasn't contemplated by the Founders. But you can - if you know how - cross into the Community, travel through it, and come out somewhere else - making the Line somewhat moot.

The Community and Europe are now in an awkward state of detente, pre full Union - but it is a fragile state, beset by espionage, suspicion and sabotage.

Against this background, Europe in Winter is less a single narrative, a chunk of plot, but more but a series of vignettes, set in this time and place, slowly adding up to an impression of a story which Hutchinson avoids telling as a story. Instead, you have to infer it (although there is a bit of a recap at the end for anyone who's been a bit slow).

A reckless act of terrorism aboard a train. A cat and mouse game in the Warsaw Underground. Conspiracy theorists crossing with real agents in Luxembourg. Murder on an island off Estonia. A trail of money.

At the centre of it, as always, is the urbane Rudi, chef, member of les Courreurs des Bois and former infiltrator of the Community. He's a man equally at home amidst the clamour of a busy kitchen, and trading identities is the backstreets of London. We meet him at the start of this book on familiar territory, in Max's restaurant... but something isn't quite right here and when we know what it is, there's the first clue to what is going on.

Again and again he pops up, sometimes observing, sometimes acting - often in danger, usually in control. And each time, Hutchinson drops him into another little vignette, like a cooler version of George Smiley. There are so many situations (and Situations) here that it would be silly to try and list them all (as well as spoilery) and it would miss the point: it's the cumulative effect that counts. Not only the atmosphere that Hutchinson engenders - the subtle spycraft, dodging a tail in the snowy Luxembourg streets or arranging a meet in a deserted English parish church - but also the characters: he's endlessly inventive at making real not only the major players but all the little people - the tired nurse getting ready to go to work, the tunnelling contractor in his office, the woman doing a favour for a friend and in deeper than she realises.

And the language: the book is written in a cool, knowing tone ("It could have been any day, any year. Only the drunks changed..." "Not my circus; not my monkeys") that's well suited to the subject and well suited to, especially, Rudi's viewpoint - collected, and in charge, even when baffled by events.

Frankly I could read this forever. I don't care whether or not it ever converges to a definite plot, I just want to go on, seeing the layers peel away, shuffling the jigsaw pieces around, reading backwards and forwards to check details. Hutchinson's writing is almost interactive in the way it gives you and evolving problem to engage with

And it is a problem in every sense of the word. In a world already complicated enough, we see additional layers, whole aspects of reality that were previously unsuspected. It's an achievement to pull the rug from under your readers as thoroughly as Hutchinson does here, more so for the third book in a sequence when normally you might be expecting things to start resolving.

All in all, a gem of a book, easily as good as, possibly better than, its predecessors and promising so much more in this fractured world.