#BlogBlast #Review - Momenticon by Andrew Caldecott

Momenticon
Andrew Caldecott
Jo Fletcher Books, 12 May 2022
Available as: HB, 362pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529415421

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for an advance copy of Momenticon to consider for reviews and for inviting me to take part in the social media blast.

If, like me, you are a fan of Caldecott's Rotherweird series and eager to get another the fix of that slightly out-of-kilter world, then your wait is over - while Momenticon is set in a different (and in many ways darker) world, there is more than enough kinship between this book and the eccentric characters, contrivances and convolutions of the earlier series to satisfy. Momenticon is, thoug,h rather more direct about what's going, making it generally tauter with a greater sense of peril from the start.

We are in a post-apocalyptic world, some years after the "Fall" (but not so many that it has passed out of memory). Fogg, to whom we're introduced first, is the curator of a museum which contains many of Earth's greatest artworks. Shielded by a chitin dome to keep out the caustic gases that have destroyed most life, the museum is isolated, and has no visitors. (There's a digital counter, just to make sure). Three years into this role, Fogg has settled into a routine, taking his meals as paste from the "rearranged", doing exercise under the stern eye of his AI personal trainer, and inspecting the exhibits. Nobody comes, and nobody leaves, and Fogg doesn't enlighten us about his history.

Until Morag appears.

Fogg's and Morag's meeting provides an excuse for them both to tell their stories (or bits of them), explaining more about the world they're in which is dominated by two organisations, Tempestas and Genrich, broadly working in the arts and the sciences respectively; about its dependance on dwindling stocks of chitin and tantalum; about the array of strange characters they've met and who have directed them where they are now. It's a complex, desperate story full of loss and abandonment, co-option into others' plans, ambition, and revenge. The upshot is that the scattered communities which have survived the Fall are in danger, but also that a faction or factions are placing Fogg and Moral in danger. They must leave the Museum Dome and find a way to live outside.

That's the cue for a series of breakneck adventures, including journeys by airborne ships (not airships, proper ships but flying), encounters with the enigmatic Lord Vane, head of Tempestas, and his disturbing son, Cosmo; flights from danger into danger and a deeper and better understanding of art. I really mean that - just one of the threads here is the "momenticons", little pills which allow the taker to be present at the creation of a work of art, briefly ("moment icon", yes?) Building further on this idea, there are villages and town set up to recreate paintings from Fogg's museum and roving characters taken from books (especially, the Alice books). Fogg's perfect memory for every last detail of those artworks will prove important - as well as a ragged and committed band of holdouts who are opposed to Vane's, and Lord Sine's (of Genrich) plans... whatever these are.

What else? lost parents. Families where all is not what it seems. Arcane machinery. Postcards. And, at every turn, those spillovers from Alice - not only characters, but themes such as the Looking Glass chess-world that Alice moves through and, most of all perhaps, an air of puzzle-ality, if I may invent a word, to everything - a layering of mysteries and challenges where, just as one is about to solve a riddle, another pushes it aside, leaving a nested series of conundrums which it is vitally important to understand. (Not so easy when you're being pursued by mechanical huntsmen, minions with crossbows, or actual slithy toves).

Quite simply, Momenticon packs an enormous lot in, keeping its protagonists (and the reader) on their toes througout, if rather dizzy, and taking both into a deeply strange but also deeply compelling world. 

I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about Momenticon, see the publisher's website here. 

You can buy Momenticon from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

 

Blog Blast - Lost Acre by Andrew Caldecott #LostAcre #RotherweirdTrilogy @JoFletcherBooks

Lost Acre (Rotherweird, 3)
Andrew Caldecott (illustrated by Sasha Laika)
Jo Fletcher Books
25 July 2019 HB, e
2 April 2020 PB
496pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of this book via NetGalley and for inviting me to take part in the blog blast.

So, in this third book we're back in the town of Rotherweird, a place that is very much Gormenghast-on-Thames: a fantasy town with its own history, traditions and proud independence, set among the rolling fields and woods of Southern England and peopled by an amazing collection of egos, eccentrics and barrack-room lawyers. Much of the charm of these books is, for me, the gradual revelation of the town itself - with its aerial walkways, oak-framed buildings, curfew, ban on historical records, Guilds and semi-autocratic Mayor.

Against that background, focussing attention on an actual story might seem a tall order but it's one that Caldecott delivers with gusto, having spun two episodes so far of what is really one continuous narrative and served up with a lot of oomph.

As this is the final part of the trilogy, you might expect me to say you really need to have read the previous parts first. I am sometimes ready to dip into Book 2 or even 3 of a trilogy, but this isn't one that will work for - so if you haven't read Rotherweird and Wyntertide, GO BACK AND DO IT. Indeed even if you have, a reread would be appropriate - while Rotherweird and Wyntertide had a bit of breathing space between them, a little conceptual platform to allow the new reader to acclimatise, here there is no such mercy. Lost Acre picks up pretty much where Wyntertide left off, with a catastrophic election for Mayor of the town, the Guild of Apothecaries bidding for power and the sinister Wynter appearing on the scene.

And with a plethora of characters in motion, outside, inside and under the town (and in Lost Acre itself). Some have experienced loss, some are running, others are baffled by events, or trying to turn them to their own advantage. It's a teeming picture, full of movement and action, but an easy way in it isn't. As a returning reader, I'd recommend you just plunge in and surf the first part of the book, reatuning to the Rotherweird atmosphere, which is here in spades. I'd been a little afraid that the returning Geryon Wynter, or the manner of his return, would be such a shattering experience that the books lost their ambience, with, effectively, a Dark Lord looming over the town. But I needn't have feared - while the tension cranks up to 11 here with the return of the town's most notorious son (but, of course, the history ban means the citizens don't know that) it is a very Rotherweird situation, a matter of the town's Regulations, the manoeuvrings of the Guilds, the rivalry between Rotherweirders and Countrysiders - as well as the myriad schemes, hidden features and tangled relationships that the previous two books have exposed.

So, it doesn't matter too much if you don't follow an allusion to something from Book 1, thrown in as two characters try to work out what's going on. The gist (the Journeyman's Gist, even) is pretty clear. Wynter is trying to reestablish authority - including establishing a very sinister "Rotherweird Defence Force" complete with smart uniforms and armbands - but he isn't wholly in control of events.

We meet the same cast of characters as before (there is a helpful list) and they are still trying to fit the pieces together (remember, some of these people have multiple identities that they're hidden over the years). Vixen Valourhand is still daring and resourceful, Snorkel treacherous, and the Polks ingenious. But there are surprises too: far from being an all-powerful villain, even Wynter isn't sure what is happening (can it be he's really being played?) - and many secrets still lie hidden.

Overall, I enjoyed that this book dips much less into the past than its predecessors. Caldecott has been gradually revealing how the (forbidden) history of the town relates to its present, showing us events in Roman times, in the medieval period and under the Tudors. While there are a few such episodes here the story is set firmly in the present day, which I felt gave it slightly more drive - which is important, as the significance of Rotherweird itself to the wider world and universe, and the threat it embodies, become central.

In summary: an excellent close to this trilogy but don't try to read this as a standalone.

(I'd also commend the illustrations by Sasha Laika - they are moody, allusive and add greatly to the atmosphere).

For more information about the book see the publisher's website here.

You can buy it from your local bookshop - including via Hive Books - or from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon.