#Review - Translation State by Anne Leckie

Translation State (Imperial Radch)

Ann Leckie

Orbit, 8 June 2023

Available as: HB, 432pp, audio, e

Source: Advance copy

ISBN(HB): 9780356517919

I'm grateful to Orbit for providing me with an advance e-copy of Translation State via Netgalley, to consider for review.

Translation State is a delicious serving of SF, taking place in a universe so odd I don't how Leckie imagined it, let alone made the story into something as coherent and compelling as it is.

The main protagonists are Qven, Enae and Reet. We meet Enae at the start of the book. Enae has just attended the funeral of a  grandmother (henceforth referred to as the "Blessed Deceased") and there are surprises as the estate is divided, a division that ultimately leading to Enae taking up a new life as a diplomatic troubleshooter. Enae is a fascinating person, who has spent an entire life under Grandmother's thumb and who isn't sure now what to feel about being free of that. There's a convincing portrayal here of Enae's mixed feelings - grief and loss but also resentment at somebody who seemed capricious and manipulative. Nevertheless Enae is intelligent and inventive and soon succeeds in solving a diplomatic mystery which had been left to fester for centuries, tracking down a fugitive who make or may not be a danger to the order of things.

Qven has an even stranger background, being one of a number of siblings genetically engineered to be Presger Translators. The Presger are aliens, indeed, unimaginably, indescribably, alien, and their Translators mediate between them and humanity, especially on matters concerning the vital Treaty whose existence protects all. Qven, destined for a high place in the clade, has been dishonoured by another juvenile Translator (who suffers a terrible fate as a result) and is now threatened with being forcibly "matched", a fate that Qven fears.

Reet, in contrast, is trying to live a quiet life. An orphan raised by foster parents, Reet has been singled out by a cult of exiles as the descendent of their revered leader. Having never previously felt any great sense of belonging, Reet is somewhat flattered by their attention - but will soon be presented with quite another potential origin...

All of this rapidly leads to a Big Mess with diplomatic implications (that Treaty!) and the fates of individuals seem likely to be sacrificed for political expediency - until some determined foster parents, Enae (regretting good intentions that messed up others' lives) and a clutch of ingenious lawyers, take the whole matter to the highest authority and demand justice.

I had great fun reading this book. It isn't, for the most part, full of drama and action: rather the plot is driven by the unrolling of Enae's, Reet's and Qven's feelings and their gathering understanding of themselves and of the universe around them, and by the politics and horse trading that others insist on tangling up with those things. All three are sympathetically drawn, with emotional depths and a growing awareness of themselves and their own desires. It doesn't hurt that Leckie has a wicked sense of humour (I would quote but you need to read this for yourself) and a real appreciation for social interaction and structures. So for example, here you'll find painfully-familiar prejudices against minority communities, putting them on guard against manifestation of the law; stereotypes used unthinkingly even by the apparently well-intentioned, sometimes followed by a quick apology, sometimes not, and that painful dance where people are trying to do what they think others want or need without either asking them or being honest about their own feelings.

Also, a glorious complexity of genders.

I love this kind of story where the stakes are high both at the personal and the global level, with the ostensible threat - here the future of the Treaty - really just getting in the way of resolving deep personal issues. Leckie's resolution of the two strands is little short of genius. 

Strongly recommended.

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

#Review - Jamie Hallow and the End of the World by AV Wilkes

Jamie Hallow and the End of the World 

AV Wilkes
Cemetery Gates Media, 11 July 2023
Available as: e  
Source: Advance copy
ASIN: B0C4C5ZPG4 

I'm grateful to Cemetery Gates Media for sending me a copy of Jamie Hallow and the End of the World to consider for review.

AV Wilkes' new novella introduces us to Jamie, a young person living a dreary life post nuclear war in a sealed bunker run by the Legion. The Legion is a paramilitary cult that saw the advantage of making certain preparations...

Raised from an early age in a Legion foster home, Jamie is however far from being a devoted acolyte. As we see more of what the Legion is and does, we will begin to understand why - and it's more about repugnance at the nature of what the Legion worships than actual disbelief in it (albeit Jamie self-describes as "atheist"). The full explanation would be spoilery, but it's enough to state that (1) the Legion's god is real (2) the horror that this implies actually makes a spot of global nuclear war seem almost cosy by comparison.

The action of the story focusses on a number of excursions from the bunker undertaken by the Legion's Taskforce (comprising teenagers anxious to prove themselves) during which the bunker dwellers encounter "Rats", humans existing in the radioactive wasteland outside and who are regarded as less than human by the Legion. These expeditions force Jamie to question everything about the bunker, the Legion and the Taskforce.

In a quite short book - my ARC copy is 112 pages - Wilkes has to rely on a degree of established lore, and does so rather successfully, invoking a Lovecraftian universe blended with well known post apocalyptic tropes and, more surprisingly but very effectively, introducing a group of teenagers (referred to as the "three witches" - and yes they really do have supernatural abilities) for some "mean girls" twists. Taken together, the three aspects very powerfully convey just how alone Jamie is (not just isolated in the bunker but with nowhere to run to) and underline Jamie's teenage disaffection with the Legion (even before you consider LGBTQ aspects of the story which in this militaristic and cultish setting are not a good way to be accepted).

It's a fun and engaging read establishing Jamie as a vivid protagonist and hinting at all sorts of future mayhem. I'd very much like to read a sequel.

For more information about Jamie Hallow and the End of the World, see the publisher's website here.  You can order or preorder the book from Amazon US here or Amazon UK here.

#Review - Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson

Neon Roses    
Rachel Dawson
John Murray Press, 25 May 2023 
Available as: HB, 304pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 1399801929

I'm grateful to John Murray Press for an advance e-copy of Neon Roses via Netgalley to consider for review.

Rachel Dawson's novel is an absorbing and eventually uplifting story of some very hard times. It's a book that acknowledges dark things, but refuses to despair, a story that showcases the need for solidarity, for friendship and always, for finding hope and a way forward.

It's 1984 and in the Valleys of South Wales a young woman, Eluned, is committed to supporting the miners' strike. In this she and her community are lined up against the cruel Thatcher government and its supporters in the media and the police (the latter personified by the unpleasant Graham, boyfriend of Eluned's little sister, Mabli). It was a very polarising time which as a teenager (not in a mining area) I remember well, I saved up pocket money to donate and I still have my Coal Not dole stickers in my scrapbook. 

As the only person in her family with a wage (she works as an assistant in a show shop) Eluned plays a key role, although it is a precarious one (who has money for shoes during the strike?) and as the months roll on, we see things tighten for the miners, with the eventual end of the strike and, in prospect, the end of the coal industry and of whole communities like Eluned's. But a time of change is also a time of opportunities and new horizons, and the solidarity of the strike has introduced Eluned to members of LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - who have been fundraising and organising. In turn, that leads her to explore her own sexuality, and when she sees her way to a department store job away from home in Cardiff, to form new relationships.

I was struck by the portrayal of Eluned. Dawson avoids cliche - Eluned isn't a naive young girl astonished to learn the ways of the world, so much as a smart and curious person discovering who she is and what she wants. Resourceful and compassionate, there is a real warmth to the character, with her love of music, her kindness to her landlady in Cardiff (a fascinating woman who surely deserves a novel of her own) and above all, her desire to experience the world - which makes her the reader's eyes and ears in Dawson's depiction of LGBQT culture in 1980s Cardiff and in London (and, eventually, Manchester). That depiction is done with a great sense of vibrancy, not dwelling on the darker things - Section 28, AIDS/ HIV - although they are acknowledged, with the notorious James Anderton, head of the Greater Manchester police, playing a role - but stressing the power of resistance and the potential of human connection.

I always hesitate to use "coming of age novel" as a description of a book, because it seems to stick a huge label on a process that properly is nuanced and drawn out, but I'll mutter it here in passing - and then hurry on to stress that this is a very subtle, very nuanced book. Yes, at times Eluned gets in over her head - both for good and bad: at one stage she takes up with a woman who is controlling and manipulative - but she soon gets out of that and it's beautiful watching her relationship with June quicken and deepen.

The book captures the 80s atmosphere well, I think, both through incidental things - like the copious smoking, the sisters sharing a Walkman, the music - and the fact that Eluned is fairly easily able to get that shop job - retail hadn't been gutted by online sales). The only detail I could spot that didn't quite work was the reference to a videographer at a wedding in 1973. It's good on atmosphere, evoking both the Valleys towns and June's London squat with its raucous, supportive sisterhood, and it doesn't try to tie everything up, leaving things on a note of hope and mutual support but definitely unresolved.

This is one I'd recommend strongly. And finally, no this is not "Pride - The Novel" - it goes deeper that that - though if you have seen that film there will inevitably be some crossover events and themes.

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