#Review - Beyond the Light Horizon by Ken Macleod

Beyond the Light Horizon (Lightspeed Trilogy, 3)

Ken Macleod
Orbit, 16 May 2024
Available as: PB, 400pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356514826

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

In a complex and satisfying conclusion to Macleod's Lightspeed trilogy, we see the consequences for Earth politics and development of the discovery of faster-than-light travel, and of planets inhabited by other species, become clear.

On a near future Earth, there are three main powers: the Union, a post-revolutionary society run as an "economic democracy" which has originated from the European Union, the Alliance, comprising much of the anglo world, and the Co-ord, bringing together authoritarian Russia and China. The focus is on the Union, which has just caught up with the (secret) FTL capability of the other two powers, and especially on John Grant, a somewhat restless and buccaneering member of the Revolutionary class known as the responsables. It was Grant who sponsored the creation of the Union's first FTL craft, opening a bewildering array of opportunities which he's determined to exploit.

Many of the possibilities flowing from that raise challenging ethical questions - I nearly typed "new" before that, but actually they're not - about the impact of settlement and colonisation on indigenous populations. The flora and fauna in the new planets being explored are so different that the humans are slow - perhaps deliberately slow - in identifying sentient life. They need a lot of help from Iskander, the AI that enables society in the Union, to do this and Iskander's role is, to my mind, somewhat ambiguous here. At least one player, Marcus Owen, the English robot agent, regards it as dangerous to humanity. Equally ambiguous is the alien race known as the Fermi. It may be planning to defend life on, for example, Apis but in the meantime a great deal of damage is being done.

I found it - what's the work - bracing? salutary? - how deftly Macleod portrays realistic outcomes from this situation. The Union is not, for example, a society of self-denying socialist co-operators, at least not until Iskander channels and directs their activity, so there is a very enthusiastic response to the call for colonisers and pioneers without a great deal of thought as to the consequences. Grant and his circle react in a similar way, at one stage proposing a somewhat hare-brained plan to introduce a sort of whaling industry on an untouched world.

Equally impressive is the sheer breadth of imagination shown here in the range of life and of planets supporting it, which all have complex and vibrant histories. Wise societies, some of them, which have accepted natural limits to expansion: restless ones, others, which want to press on and outwards. There is perhaps a bit of s sense of a whistlestop tour at times, because with so much in the background to this trilogy there isn't time to visit most of it. Characters and vessels come and go, trading patterns emerge rapidly and some of the individuals we have been following through the three books are perhaps slightly overshadowed by the pace and scale of events. That is, I think, inevitable and Macleod still manages to give everyone a satisfying resolution, aided in one or two cases by the judicious use of temporal paradoxes (although I lost sight of Owen in the end and couldn't help thinking he was off somewhere engaged in mischief).

Macleod's writing is always engaging, whether it's dropping references to other classic SF with similar themes, such as to 'intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic', to wider SF (a 'hero of the Revolution' who rather decries her public image as 'Red Sonia of [the] Rising', a mention of 'Union Space Marines') or nodding to the agenda of a left-wing meeting with its essential 'any other competent business'. The latter illustrates a distinct point about these books - their mental furniture steers clear of assumptions of a wholly capitalist future (without though adopting the Utopianism of Start Trek). The Lightspeed trilogy is rooted in a very different and distinct conception of future history, making the outworking of the story especially interesting and valuable to me.

All in all, a fitting end to this trilogy which has challenged, intrigued and instructed. Great fun, and never less than thought provoking.

For more information about Beyond the Light Horizon, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken MacLeod

Beyond the Reach of Earth (Lightspeed Trilogy, 2)

Ken MacLeod

Pyr, 18 July 2023

Available as: PB, 328pp, audio, e

Source: Advance copy (UK edition)

ISBN(PB): 9781645060659

Warning - there are spoilers here for Book 1 in this trilogy, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, which I'd strongly advise you to read first. (If you haven't read it, or are hazy about the details, there is a helpful precis in Book 2, but the first book is so much fun, you really ought to read it).

In a clever sequel to Beyond the Hallowed Sky, MacLeod returns to his near future world (the book is largely set in the 2070s) dominated by three blocs - the Alliance (Anglosphere including rump UK), the Union (ex EU, including Scotland) and the Co-ord (Russia and China). The Union is particularly interesting, embodying a post-Revolution society and therefore viewed with especial suspicion by the other two (this is hilariously illustrated in some spoof tabloid headlines that crop up towards the end of the book).

MacLeod is very good, as we've seen in other books, at plausible just-over-the-horizon politics and societal development - indeed his portrayal of societies and their relationship with their citizens is one of the things I always look forward to. As a subject it's as fascinating and important as the future tech in these books. Or perhaps I should say that unlike many SF writers he appreciates the interplay between both: the societies influenced by the tech, the path of the tech driven by the science, and all deeply enmeshed with strong, relatable characters who just belong in their background. 

Above and beyond that, this book has a deeply satisfying, ramified plot involving espionage, slightly scary AI (I really want to know more about Iskander, the universal intercase to the Union's predictive/ assistive AI which attempts to preempt the needs of its citizens - but also, it's hinted, serves other goals besides) and a more than slightly scary robot. For me, all that made Beyond the Reach of Earth very enjoyable to read.

A spirited rendition of The Internationale didn't go amiss either, performed here when some Union settlers arrive on the newly discovered planet Apis, albeit escorted by the perfidious Alliance English who have shuttled them there for obscure reasons in their FTL spacecraft. And indeed the settlers bring their own distinct approach to Apis, refusing to fall into the "homesteader" mode urged by their hosts. Politics are never far beneath the surface here, whether the politics of superpower deterrence, threatened by the discovery of FTL travel and restored by the strangest of means, politics between the constituent entities of the "economic democracy", the Union, which come into play when the state gets its own FTL craft though the ingenuity of a small shipbuilding firm and a causal loop, or the attempts by the various powers to deal with the enigmatic Fermi, aliens of unimaginable power who occupy outcrops of rock on Earth, Venus... and Apis.

And if aliens incarnated in rocks shaping the future of humanity sounds familiar to you, it's an idea that MacLeod himself has fun with, some of his characters spotting the parallel to a certain bestselling SF series of the late 20th century. (This being Book 2 of 3 we don't get to find out how close a parallel that will turn out being).

In summary, this is smart, well-written SF, great fun to read and every bit as good as Beyond the Hallowed Sky. It's a middle volume of a trilogy that builds on the first, rather than just marking time waiting for the conclusion - which nevertheless I'm really looking forward to. I'd recommend.

You can purchase Beyond the Reach of Earth from Amazon here.

#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 - Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken MacLeod

Beyond the Reach of Earth (Lightspeed Trilogy, Two)

Ken MacLeod

Orbit, 23 March 2023

Available as: PB, 368pp, audio, e

Source: Advance copy

ISBN(PB): 9780356514802

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance e-copy of Beyond the Reach of Earth via Netgalley to consider for review.

Warning - there are spoilers here for Book 1 in this trilogy, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, which I'd strongly advise you to read first. (If you haven't read it, or are hazy about the details, there is a helpful precis in Book 2, but the first book is so much fun, you really ought to read it).

In a clever sequel to Beyond the Hallowed Sky, MacLeod returns to his near future world (the book is largely set in the 2070s) dominated by three blocs - the Alliance (Anglosphere including rump UK), the Union (ex EU, including Scotland) and the Co-ord (Russia and China). The Union is particularly interesting, embodying a post-Revolution society and therefore viewed with especial suspicion by the other two (this is hilariously illustrated in some spoof tabloid headlines that crop up towards the end of the book).

MacLeod is very good, as we've seen in other books, at plausible just-over-the-horizon politics and societal development - indeed his portrayal of societies and their relationship with their citizens is one of the things I always look forward to. As a subject it's as fascinating and important as the future tech in these books. Or perhaps I should say that unlike many SF writers he appreciates the interplay between both: the societies influenced by the tech, the path of the tech driven by the science, and all deeply enmeshed with strong, relatable characters who just belong in their background. 

Above and beyond that, this book has a deeply satisfying, ramified plot involving espionage, slightly scary AI (I really want to know more about Iskander, the universal intercase to the Union's predictive/ assistive AI which attempts to preempt the needs of its citizens - but also, it's hinted, serves other goals besides) and a more than slightly scary robot. For me, all that made Beyond the Reach of Earth very enjoyable to read.

A spirited rendition of The Internationale didn't go amiss either, performed here when some Union settlers arrive on the newly discovered planet Apis, albeit escorted by the perfidious Alliance English who have shuttled them there for obscure reasons in their FTL spacecraft. And indeed the settlers bring their own distinct approach to Apis, refusing to fall into the "homesteader" mode urged by their hosts. Politics are never far beneath the surface here, whether the politics of superpower deterrence, threatened by the discovery of FTL travel and restored by the strangest of means, politics between the constituent entities of the "economic democracy", the Union, which come into play when the state gets its own FTL craft though the ingenuity of a small shipbuilding firm and a causal loop, or the attempts by the various powers to deal with the enigmatic Fermi, aliens of unimaginable power who occupy outcrops of rock on Earth, Venus... and Apis.

And if aliens incarnated in rocks shaping the future of humanity sounds familiar to you, it's an idea that MacLeod himself has fun with, some of his characters spotting the parallel to a certain bestselling SF series of the late 20th century. (This being Book 2 of 3 we don't get to find out how close a parallel that will turn out being).

In summary, this is smart, well-written SF, great fun to read and every bit as good as Beyond the Hallowed Sky. It's a middle volume of a trilogy that builds on the first, rather than just marking time waiting for the conclusion - which nevertheless I'm really looking forward to. I'd recommend.

For more information about Beyond the Reach of Earth, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Cold Water by Dave Hutchinson

Cold Water

Dave Hutchinson

Solaris, 10 November 2022
Available as: PB 417pp, audio, e   
Source: Purchased

ISBN(PB):  9781786187222

Cold Water is a return to the world of Hutchinson's Fractured Europe, some time after the events of Europe in Autumn, Europe At Midnight, Europe at Dawn and Europe in Winter.  It doesn't assume any familiarity with those, although if you are you'll be rewarded by posting some referencing and of course you will have a head start in understanding the background. This is a world devastated by a viral plague; a world where the states of Europe have fragmented into statelets, free towns and pocket republics; and a world interpenetrated by alternate, pocket universes.

Against that background, we're given a twisty, tense and involving thriller mixing espionage, crime and derring-do. Carey Tews, a woman from the Republic of Taxes, has retired from the shadowy network Les Coureurs. She reckons she's getting too old for the work, and besides, her cover blown by what happened in Hungary (don't talk to her about Hungary!) But like Smiley of old, she's invited back to carry out One Last Job when her recruiter, mentor, and sometime lover, Maksim, gets himself killed in a little Polish town that's winding up to declare independence.

The story also follows Krista, a young Estonian police woman, whose investigation into a gangster's operations in Tallinn is rudely interrupted by scandal from the past, by way of Russian agents, a drunken journalist, and a crew of juvenile hackers and forgers who get you any credentials you might need. As always with Hutchinson's books the detail and plotting is meticulous, creating set-ups and pay-offs that are just so good, they could hang as works of art in any museum. There are mysteries here - so I am being vague about what actually happens - and they're fiendishly nested mysteries, so that while I spotted one or two points coming, the how and the why of their fit with the wider story absolutely took me by surprise.

There are some superb characters here too. Carey is just magnificent, a richly portrayed, complex woman who - whatever she believes - is at the top of her game. I love reading stories in which competent, experienced people meet difficult challenges head on: books where you have a sense that there is just so much happening - real danger combined with plausible, calculated courses of action... which don't always come off.

Depicting all that background doesn't make the story slow, not at all - there is plenty going on here from the start, which opens with a clandestine meet that wouldn't be out of place in the (old style, TV) Mission: Impossible, to the conclusion - a tense, high stakes confrontation at a deserted border post. The pace never lets up, with the parts dealing with Carey's history actually adding tension because - as we empathise more and more with her - we see just how impossible is the task she's undertaken (and why she didn't want it).

(In passing, I was particularly impressed by the way that is able to leverage the experience of covid to locate his story even more sharply in the imagined future (middle of the 21st century?) His "Xian 'flu" isn't covid, it is even more devastating - and it was mentioned in the earlier books. Still, the experience of lockdown, of helplessness as friends and loved ones succumb and the reality that things have changed, is deep in the DNA of this book making very real speculative fiction).

Vastly enjoyable, fun, and sharply observed. Read it.

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

#Review - The Knave of Secrets by Alex Livingston

The Knave of Secrets
Alex Livingston
Rebellion, 7 June 2022 (UK), 9 June (US)
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781786186072

I'm grateful to Rebellion for an advance copy of The Knave of Secrets to consider for review.

This book simply wowed me from its opening - in which cardsharp Valen Quinol and his crew cozen a rather nasty aristocrat who tried to turn the tables on them through sneaky tricks - to its dramatic, world-shaking ending, by way of compulsive world building, bitterly sharp social commentary and a determination on the author's part not to let the mysterious sect of magicians we see here be the secret hand that rules everything.

There are perhaps many ways to crystallise and make real a fantasy world. It's commonly done through warfare - actual or threatened - religion, or, of course, magic. While these factors are certainly present or threatened, much more important to Livingston's island of Valtiffe and to its surrounding lands though is something else.

Gambling.

The rich culture of these nations and territories - caught up as they are in a kind of old Mitteleuropa struggle of divided loyalties, languages and origins - is drawn in the games played at table in casino, club and tavern. Or aboard ship, on the dockside, or in back alleys. The book is saturated in accounts of epic card duels, descriptions of the different games, the ways of cheating at them, the different suits of cards, varieties of dice, of boardgames, tactics and of the danger of sharp play. The sources quoted use their accounts of gaming to illustrate or allegorise everything from decent conduct in Society by a "gente" to politics to history to the cultural traits of the various nations and peoplkes that play a part in the story. The maps which are included label each city and town according to the games that are popular there, and - I was delighted to see - the review copy even came with a set of cards and rules (see picture).

It's a cultural milieu in which Valen and his friends Ten(eriève) and Jay, and his wife Margo, are perfectly at home. This group of cheats and sharps are so perfectly well described and realised - Valen and Ten who were turned out of wizard school, Margo the daughter of stolidly middling merchants who despise her raffish husband, Jaq the sailor. Their lives take place not in the stone halls and snowy fells of stereotypical fantasy but in a sort of bourgeois, trading-and-politicking world redolent of ancien regime Europe, though with added magic.

Because this is a fantasy, make no mistake. Valen's first vocation was to magic, from which he was exiled due to something almost like theological differences. Valen wants to develop it to serve him at the gaming table, though he's having little success - but the magic here is always channeled, limited and definitely in the service of distant, vaguely glimpsed political games.

All of this - gaming, magic, politics, spying and more - comes together when Valen receives Ann offer he can't refuse from one of the local mobsters, the chief of the Naughty Knaves: play in the Forbearance Game, the biggest, most notorious, contest in the city, or - well, as I said, there isn't really an alternative.  Not one he'd like, for Margo, or for his friends. Thus unfolds a definite Caper subplot, which is great fun.  Of course that leads to Trouble, to being pursued by all sides, desperately trying to work out what precisely is going on, before the sky falls in and Valen's comfortable, safe life spirals right out of control. 

Livingston gleefully adds to the mixture obscure spymasters and double agents, a cool, aristocratic lady called Ria who may be playing both ends against the middle and a vengeful, deadly force of unknown origin.

It's gloriously readable, whether you enjoy card games or not, a book to savour, not to rush through (so you may have to read not twice - once at a gallop, then more slowly) and one where our heroes may be threatened but the stakes for the world or indeed the universe are pleasingly low.

Until they're not.

Great fun, and I hope I'll be invited to this table again soon...

For more information about The Knave of Secrets, see the Rebellion website here.

#Review - The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

The Justice of Kings
Richard Swan
Orbit, 24 February 2022
Available as: HB, 413pps e, audio
ISBN(HB): 9780356516424

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of The Justice of Kings to consider for review.

Well. this is one of those books that's hard to review, I'm very tempted just to say READ IT, but that wouldn't be very useful, would it?

So I'll try harder. The Justice of Kings is a type of fantasy I don't often read - an epic, sprawling depiction of a world filled with magic, armies, politics and strange names. I think the reason I read few of these books is less that there aren't brilliant ones around, there are, it's more a feeling that this kind of thing has been done so much I will either be let down by a book being derivative, or by it trying too hard not to be. Does that make sense?

Fortunately, I also receive some excellent recs from a certain person at Orbit and when Nazia tells me to take notice, I know I should listen. So here we are and here's The Justice of Kings, a book that for me felt refreshingly different while not visibly straining to do that. 

This is helped immeasurably by the viewpoint. The story is seen from the perspective af young woman - Helena Sedanka - who is employed as clerk to an itinerant judge. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is a sworn upholder of the Common Law, travelling endless muddy backroads from village to village and town to town with just Helena and his assistant, Dubine Bressinger. This is a group of well-realised characters: the rebellious and slightly bored Helena, Sir Konrad, an ex-military man and the slightly mysterious Dubbing who's devoted to Sir Konrad and at times, treats Helena quite harshly when she seems to display and lack of respect for his master. The three know each other really well, and the blurred relationships here - colleague, boss, friend - and endless journeys create a lot of scope for both sympathetic understanding and for drastic misunderstanding. Helena and Dubine are, for example, often forced to share a bed in a scatty inn or leaky manor house, but nothing "happens" between them. A running gag has Helena desperate for something to eat on arrival, cold and saddle saw, at a stopping point but ordered instead to Sir Konrad's chamber to discuss an arcane point of law or politics. This girl really needs to eat, I found myself saying many times as I read the story.

Setting things up for a trilogy always takes a good deal of work, and I think the opening here is as goods as I've seen anywhere. A judge, of course, provides a way in to most parts of society - as part of the apparatus of an Empire, Sir Konrad has a function that allows him to ask questions, even of the functionaries of that Empire - and the nature of the role means there will be varied opportunities to do this, the larger part of this story focusing on one, the murder of a noblewoman in a trading port.

At the same time, Sir Konrad's powers aren't unlimited. They're bound of course by the law itself, but also by a standoff between state and religion, the latter being a vital part of the bonds that hold together a fairly young Empire. They're also limited by the dynamics of that society, formed from many separate, conquered nations (the wars are still fresh in many minds, causing resentment, prejudice and all kinds of frictions). That makes his job hard at times, as in this story where the murder investigation - this book is very much a "whodunnit" -  will tread on many sensitive toes, exposing political and religious schemes and leading in the end to a minor war.

Wider political turmoil is also prefigured from the very start, in Helena's introduction - she makes clear that she is writing this account from the viewpoint of old age, and that unspecified disasters have overtaken the Empire, so while we're assured that she will make it through this book (though not necessarily unscathed) there is a sense of coming darkness over everything, and Sir Konrad's role as the upholder of law and justice seems increasingly menaced.

In short, there's a lot going on in this book but the necessary scenesetting is done very skilfully and always supports the needs of an involving an ingenious immediate plot, while providing the groundwork for a much wider story. The depictions of authorities - whether legal, political or religious - is convincing and subtle and I enjoyed the book's recognition of the dark side of Empire as the characters here deal with the aftermath of war, the absorption or appropriation of natures and cultures, and with discrimination (in an apparently multicultural State) between peoples and groups.

The Justice of Kings was a joy to read, a properly immersive story that demanded attention but also a decent amount of time: there's a lot happening, the text is rich, the characters are well-rounded and don't always do what you expect or want (at times, teenage Helena is quite whiney, but I did sympathise) so the story takes time and attention, not skimming of fast reading. 

To learn more about The Justice of Kings, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross

Quantum of Nightmares
Charles Stross
Orbit, 13 January 2022
Available as: HB, 356pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy provided free by publisher
ISBN(HB): 9780356516936

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of Quantum of Nightmares to consider for review.

Quantum of Nightmares is the immediate sequel to Dead Lies Dreaming, both stories being set in Charles Stross's Lovecraftian version of the present in which advanced mathematics and computer science are, in effect, magic and can be used to summon unhallowed creatures from beyond the walls of the world. In the main sequence of novels, this danger is fought by an occult arm of the British Civil Service known as the "Laundry". It's a fight the Laundry has been slowly losing, resulting, before Dead Lies Dreaming, in a hostile takeover of the Government by an undead eldritch god whose regime is  referred to euphemistically as "The New Management". 

This isn't just background to Quantum of Nightmares and Dead Lies Dreaming, rather both books very much examine, from below, the state of things given this premise. An actually existing Dark(ish) Lord isn't therefore just a fantasy trope, but a political fact to be endured - with the inevitable satire that allows, given the state of Uk politics in the early 20s. 

To this end the two books have their own cast of characters which is quite distinct from those of the Laundry books (whose protagonists have over their own history levelled up quite a bit and don't provide that plebs-eye view of the world). There are the Lost Boys - Imp, Game Boy, and Doc - basically a pack of well-intentioned  rogues occupying a crumbling mansion in Kensington, who in Dead Lies Dreaming had a bit of a Peter Pan thing going on. There's Del, the Deliverator. She's the getaway driver. Mary MacCandless, a professional thief and grifter trying to keep up with her dad's care home fees any way she can. Mary (who has a magical bag) in this book sweeps into the life of the Banks children and takes them on a wild adventure. (Where have I heard those names before?) And there's Eve, Imp's sister, a high-flying executive who may just have exiled her cultist boss Rupert behind those same walls of the universe and taken over effective control of the Bigge Organisation. And finally there's Wendy (Deere, not Darling), Del's girlfriend, an ex-cop and now private thief-taker, just getting by in her single room apartment, who's been employed to look into some shady goings-on at the supermarket chain Rupert was planning to take over.

The world of The New Management is a grim place if you're not on top. Criminality is far form discouraged, indeed it's recognised with a host of new offences, because criminals make excellent sacrifices, an important consideration when the country is governed by one of the Dark Gods. Skull racks abound, both on motorway gantries and on the new structure at Marble Arch, or perhaps I should say Tyburn. (Not, NOT an artificial mound...) The book has a distinct 18th century vibe, as a Mr Wilde, the 'thief-taker general', operates in a grey area between the law, private enterprise and his own pocket and as the unfortunate 'de-emphasised' underclass (think "hostile environment" applied to those economic units that have no obvious utility) disappear in the night to reappear as... well, you'll have to read the book to find out about that.

It's a perfectly pitched story that portrays a nightmarish near future that may be based in part on cosmic horror, but reads as equally plausible speculation about where the unrestrained business methods of our private equity overlords, and their tech-solution pushing hirelings, may go. Truly, the real horror is less the dictates of the New Management than the depths of what humanity may do. Kidnapping, murder and control of others by whatever means are the games here, with everyone enmeshed in different ways into the system that will surely in the end grind them up for feedstock. Eve in particular faces an even more gruesome future under the spell of Rupert, who's taken to sending emails from beyond the grave.

It's hard to convey in a review the sheer texture of taint in Quantum of Nightmares, the sense of daily corruption and collusion with mundane corporate structures aligned to mind-warping evil (I did always have my doubts about HR...) Fantasy yes, but there is a sense in which it very much reads as being about these times. It's also witty and laden with references and cultural echoes. Really, you just have to read this book - and you will surely want to do if you have been keeping up with the Laundry. If you haven't, I'd begin with Dead Lies Dreaming first).

For more information about Quantum of Nightmares, see the publisher's website here.

 

#Review - The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

The Untold Story (Invisible Library, 8)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan, 9 December 2021
Available as: PB, 400pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781529000634

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Untold Story via NetGalley.

So, after eight volumes, The Invisible Library sequence reaches an end. Or a pause. While I would gladly read a new instalment in this series every year until the last syllable of recorded time (I think I may have fallen just a teeny bit for Irene, Librarian, Thief, Spy, and Assassin) an author will understandably want to explore new characters and themes. All good things come to an end.

In the case of The Untold Story, though, they come to a good end. The books have always been balanced between Irene's derring-do retrieving (stealing) books for the Library - which, in traditional style, we see more of as this instalment  opens - and wider Libraryverse politics, which dominated more as the series grew longer. Cogman cheekily makes this shift the hinge of The Untold Story: haven't you noticed, various characters mutter darkly, that the Librarians have been more and more involved with treaties and talks, and doing less actual book stealing? Why might that be?

This sets the scene for what was always bound to happen - an adventure that doesn't deal with an external situation but instead delves into the ancient secrets of the Library itself, its origin and purpose and what the guiding hand is that keeps it on course. In a moment of crisis, there is dissent among the Librarians. Irene's mentor, Copelia, is dangerously ill and others - whom Irene likes much less - are giving the orders. Who is she to trust? In a real sense we see Irene growing up here, forced to make her own decisions not just about how to fulfil a duty assigned to her but about her values and her loyalty and how far she is prepared to go for them.

The book focuses, more than any adventure to date, on Irene's own past and her connections to Alberich, the greatest traitor in the history of the Library. Its tone is, I think, subtly different to the previous stories - less of a heist, less of a trail of chaos through the worlds (though, be assured, there is plenty of action) and more introspective, more tricksy, perhaps. The landscape is shifting, ancient truths coming under question, and the Library's justification for its existence is somewhat wanting.

Against this background, of course Cogman gives us lashings of what we've come to expect: here is Vale, the Great Detective, ingenious, methodical and deeply moral; here is Kai, dragon prince and Irene's lover, impulsive, and struggling as ever with the tension between personal life and family duty; and here is Catherine, Lord Silver's Fae niece, with her own mysteries (actually perhaps I thought she might have done a little bit more here, but she's still very young). And of course Silver, that archetypal seducer and all round cad, plays his part too, to my great satisfaction.

All in all, this book rounds off the series so far with great flair and it will delight everyone who has been following the series. If you haven't, this isn't the place to start, you need to go back to The Invisible Library and read them in order, but doing that will be a treat, not a chose. Maybe*, like me; you'll read the first book on the Eurostar to Brussels and get glitter all over your business suit and not care? Or maybe you'll read it at home after your family have decided your cryptic hints about what present you want? 

Either way, the important thing is to read it, and to read the other six books, and then to read The Untold Story.

For more information about The Untold Story, see the publisher's website here.

*Possibly not, as trips to Brussels are probably less likely now because of Your Know what and also the other You Know What? And for all I know the publishers have managed to make the covers less glitter shed-y? I hope not though.

#Review - Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod

Design by Duncan Spilling

Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Lightspeed Trilogy, 1)
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 25 November 2021
Available as: PB, 336pp, audio, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356514796   

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Beyond the Hallowed Sky to consider for review.

Ken MacLeod is an absolute master of near future SF thrillers that intelligently reflect politics and society as well as science. So Beyond the Hallowed Sky is securely rooted in a not so far off* Scotland, part of a multi-nation Union that has undergone revolutionary transformation but in a low key way (the 'Cold Revolution'). It's set against the Alliance, an array of anglo powers who have recently restored democracy, and Co-ord (China and Russia). 

There's a lot of stuff about defections from one to the other (which seem fairly easy) and a glimpsed history that involves some nuclear exchanges, though I don't think all out war. But many here, including one of the main protagonists, John Grant, aren't keen on recalling history too much, either what they did (Grant is a responsible, a key figure in the Revolution) or what happened more widely. Macleod rather brilliantly portrays this future society through small details and hints, not outright description, so making it more of a living and breathing thing that if there were lengthy passages setting out what had happened or how things are structured.

A central theme of the story is, I think, one of technological change and transformation: what becomes of this world when a crazy, impossible idea - faster-than-light travel - turns out to be attainable (and actually, rather easy to realise). Evoking such upheavals as the launch of Sputnik-1 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, MacLeod shows how such an event - despite not having a direct impact, or much impact at all, on the ordinary lives of many people, might still play with the psychic moorings of a society, its sense of worth and purpose. He has I think further shocks in store for the folk of the 2070s because in another thread of the narrative we see attempts to come to terms with a truly alien sort of alien, one which seems intimately linked to our planet and its history and to be capable of great harm.

The way that this book brings together great themes - Space exploration! Aliens! FTL! - with the little details of individual lives - a boy and a girl meeting while out hiking, a trip on a ferry that will change lives, an evening spent in a bar listening to traditional music, the rhythms of life in a workplace - was for me one of its strengths. I enjoyed that this isn't for the most part "zappy" SF, although MacLeod shows himself more than capable of that when the story calls for it, as it does in the final quarter, when some concepts arise that - if I could name them here which I can't because of spoilers - would seem absurd in cold pixels. In context, however, and arising from the very ordinariness of much of the earlier story, they just makes sense and work.

Another theme, which is worth looking out for because it's so well integrated and embedded that it almost seems a matter of course, concerns the place of AI in these future societies. In Beyond the Hallowed Sky, it shows up incarnated in a sort of super-Siri virtual assistant available always and everywhere and charged with meeting needs before they're stated (the kind of thing I think that visionaries might hope could replace the action of markets?)  It also figures embodied in robots, given a remarkable amount of latitude, you might think, and there are some intriguing conversations about consciousness, conscience and freedom here which perhaps aren't quite so integrated into the narrative but were thought-provoking.

All that may make Beyond the Hallowed Sky sound over-ideasy, perhaps, but that would completely wrong. I love ideas in a book but more I love believable, quirky characters, especially the bad guys, an active and twisty plot, and being kept guessing about where everything bis going. And Beyond the Hallowed Sky scores very well on all that, and more, as well as being an engaging and complex opening to a trilogy whose subsequent volumes I'm already looking forward to reading.

To read more about Beyond the Hallowed Sky, see the publisher's website here.

----

*If I live to be 100 I'll be contemporary with the events of this book.

#Review - Invisible Sun by Charles Stross

Invisible Sun (Empire Games, 3)
Charles Stross
Macmillan, 30 September 2021
Available as: PB, 400pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781447247593

I'm grateful for an advance copy of Invisible Sun to consider for review.

Invisible Sun sees Stross's multiple timeline story of politics, economics and development reach a potential conclusion, and also reach six books by the New Reckoning or nine Old Style (the first six, the Merchant Princes arc, were revised into three satisfyingly chunky volumes). In the course of its unfolding, the story has mutated from portal fantasy to SF, with a distinct technothrillery edge.

In Merchant Princes, Miriam Beckstein, who thought she was an ordinary young woman from Boston, struggled to come to terms with the reality that she was a world-walker able to cross between timelines, and a member of an other-Earthly aristocracy from a medieval kingdom. In the course of that narrative arc, Stross explored ideas about development, the functioning of states, the corruption of democracy and the interplay between family and the wider world - Miriam's cousins in the Clan, world-walking smugglers who put their abilities to good using trafficking special cargoes under the noses of officialdom, being great fans of Family. 

Eventually Miriam took refuge in a nuclear-armed, revolutionary-democratic state, the New American Commonwealth, which occupies the American continent in another timeline. And so, in this last (at least for now) instalment, we see the Commonwealth squaring up to a paranoid security-state US. Paranoid, because it was attached with nukes by the Clan,  who have now fled to the Commonwealth. It's a complex, game-theory driven situation, a para-time Cold War liable to go hot at any moment even before throwing in revolutionary ultras, a runaway Princess and independent-minded intelligence operatives who don't always think to clear their ploys though the chain of commend.

Elsewhere, though, a much worse threat to the future of the Earths (all of them) has awoken (giving Stross the opportunity to use 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' as a chapter title).

The title of the present book, Invisible Sun, picks up the "family" theme, viewing the effect on great events of family and personal connections as being like that of a great, gravitational mass moving through a solar system, warping space around it and producing unforeseen disturbances in the heavens at odds with the expected orderly progression. Notoriously, there's no exact mathematical solution to the dynamics of such a system (the famous many-body problem). So we see here the existence of not only the Clan, but another hidden family, one made rather than born, driving events in this book. (And in the author's Afterword we see the same theme occur again in real life as he explains why this book took longer to reach your hands than you might have expected).

I really, REALLY enjoyed seeing that second family, the Wolf Orchestra, in action. An old-style East German spy ring composed of sleeper agents in the US, they are now stranded with no home to return to, nobody to broker prisoner swaps with or offer diplomatic cover. But they are tuning up to play one last symphony, pitting their classical spycraft, their dead-letter drops and lamplighters, but more, their discipline and their loyalty to one another, against a modern panopticon state armed with endless cameras, massive compute resources and virtual hegemony in the West. 

Virtual, not quite total. An entertaining subplot here features a Berlin police officer who insists on following the rules to the letter while his gang-ho DHS opposites stew in frustration. Also, those EU data protection rules which prevent the raw take from the exported to the US for processing.

I also enjoyed seeing the imaginative creation that Stross has made of the Commonwealth, not a perfect place by any means (indeed in some respects a rather deadly one) but an attempt, perhaps, at a sketch of a better nation. It's one that reminds the members of the Orchestra, in atmosphere if not in specifics, of their vanished home, but also allows them to see a perhaps more perfect version of that. Their status also leads to some moments of genuine, if grim, humour; 'It's not kidnapping: they asked us for political asylum... They're not doing so as American citizens but as citizens of the German Democratic Republic. If you don't like it, you can take it up with Erich Honecker's ghost.'

This book is, as I've come to expect from Stross, slick, thought-provoking but above all, fun with rapid-fire deployment concepts from science, engineering, espionage, defence, politics (of all sorts: within families, within organisations, between arms of a State, between nations, between timelines, you name it) and much, much more. (I loved JUGGERNAUT). Want to see how a princess from an ancien regime, Diving Right of Kings monarchy might behave when she escapes into 21st century Berlin? Look no further. How about a perspective on the accelerating defence technology of a rapidly industrialising revolutionary polity with paratime espionage capability? Here it is. Would you like to to know how that paratime capability might have come into being, and what it means? It's here.

Yes, in this book, we finally see the veil lifted on the origin of the Clan's ability, and how it fits with that other threat, the one that the US and the Commonwealth have been ignoring as they manoeuvre and jostle for advantage. It could be that is a BIG mistake as the book pivots fully into apocalyptic SF... 

I would STRONGLY recommend Invisible Sun. It brings epic closure to the Empire Games arc, revisiting many much-loved characters as well as exalting in the doings of new ones such as Rita Douglas and Liz Hanover who are both EXCELLENT and should get more coverage SOON. 

I could also swear I saw hooks for followups, despite Stross's protestations about this in the Afterword. Maybe once he's got over writing something longer than War and Peace, he might change his mind?

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

#Review - Radio Life by Derek B Miller

Radio Life
Derek B Miller
Jo Fletcher Books, 21 January 2021 (HB), 2 September 2021 (PB)

Available as: HB, PB, 477pp, audio, e

Source: Advance HB copy 

ISBN(PB): 9781529408614

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of Radio Life to consider for review.

There's a lot I could say about Radio Life. Beginning with the basics, we are firmly in post-apocalyptic territory, though not a hopelessly bleak form of that as there is some organisation, there is trade, one may make a way of life. Some four hundred years from now (no-one is really sure, it was a pretty thorough apocalypse) a community calling itself The Commonwealth survives in the west of what is now the USA. Occupying the stadium from an Olympic Games held towards the end of the 21st century, they see themselves as seekers after the lost knowledge of "The Ancients", sending out "runners" and "raiders" to scavenge what they can from the ruins of the "Lost World". They store up knowledge in Archives, and work to understand what they've found - from musical scores to cryptic, and dead, electronics. The process of analysing these, lacking even basic knowledge, can seem bizarre, with both broad, top-down generalisations and shrewdly observed, detailed analysis.

Pitted against the Commonwealth are the Keepers, mysterious newcomers who believe that the old world is best left to itself. Surely it's dangerous to explore too far ('Trying to make the world better is what killed the Ancients') since this would only lead to a repeat of the earlier collapse - from which, this time, humanity might not survive?

The story is seen mostly through the eyes of Commonwealth people (citizens? members?) 

There is Elimisha, a young Runner on a routine journey across the towers of the Lost World who stumbles into danger - and upon a treasure that no-one knew existed.

Lilly, in her 70s, who is one of the greatest thinkers of the Commonwealth - indeed, her discoveries led to its system for categorising all knowledge under six headings: Geography, Entertainment, History,  Arts and Literature, Science and Nature, and Sports and Leisure

Teenage Alessandra is the daughter of Graham and Henry, husband and wife and the Commonwealth's two most celebrated Raiders (at the start of the book they return to the Stadium having found Knowledge under all six headings - an almost unparalleled feat). The dynamic between these three is central to the book: Henry and Graham's deep understanding of and communion with each other, their love for each other coupled with recognition of where their service with the Commonwealth might lead, Alessandra's urge to match them. 

It's Alessandra and Elimisha who perhaps most exemplify the Commonwealth's view of what it is and how it should be: stumbling on an incredible treasure of Knowledge ('Trove'), Elimisha quickly fixes her response to that in Commonwealth Protocols centred on the need, above all, to retrieve it and to protect it from others. This is now the central Archive of the Commonwealth and she is its Chief.

However, Elimisha is isolated, injured and trapped and can do nothing else but begin to analyse the information she has found, learning so much more about the world than any of her people, and inevitably meeting moral dilemmas in doing that. Throughout this book, I felt that Miller's depiction of the societies here - and in particular the Commonwealth - as being shaped, or perhaps I should say limited, by the information they held, was one of its great strengths. 

Take warfare, for example. In the course of this story, the Commonwealth goes to war, and understandably their attitude and approach to this is shaped by the texts they have available, by what information randomly came down to them from Before: descriptions of Hannibal's campaigns, and Thucydides' histories, apparently some limited knowledge about various Twentieth Century wars (but as we will see from Elimisha's horror when as he learns more of the truth, this is very partial). Isolated from any tradition of scholarship or commentary, will these undeniably very bright people make anything useful of that knowledge or will it mislead and confuse them? 

Similarly, when we come to the larger question apparently posed in this book - the great difference between Commonwealth and Keepers over whether to hunt for old knowledge or let it die - both factions are passionate about their point of view, but also very limited by not knowing what led to the catastrophe. It's hard to accord their dispute much respect when it is all based on speculation and generalities, but Miller helps us here by dropping the answer relatively early on, so we soon know the immediate cause. That might make the reader rather lose sympathy with one faction here, but it shouldn't - there is actually more going on in Radio Life than a simple conflict between an enlightened, civilising group and a bunch of destructive nihilists. To hint at this without being too spoilery: both of the societies here are limited by what they don't know, by what they don't see. Both are cramped by the biased and partial nature of what they do know. But isn't that always the way, for humanity? Isn't it just as true for us? What might we be missing which - in Miller's imagination - could lead us over the edge?

This is a very thoughtful, philosophical book, no less so for its arguments being dramatised in the conflict between the two societies and also in the internal politics of the Commonwealth (where firebrand Lilly often rails against the organisation and personnel she helped shape). Questions abound. Is all knowledge equally worthwhile? Are there truths which should be hidden, forgotten, or even suppressed? How to compare the value of a beautiful flower and a musical masterpiece? Which is more important? Can a society flourish if built on lies? 

Miller makes all these, and more, into important, alive and, above all, open questions (the answers found by the protagonists being partial, provisional and possibly wrong). 

The book is gloriously readable from its opening sentence ('Two riders trace the ridge of the sand sea, miles from the Commonwealth and the protecting walls of the Stadium') to the very end ('"Begin the Crossing" she says') and deeply involving - you care what happens to these people and their society! To that end, Miller hurls ideas, arguments and action at the reader, such an abundance of all three that I could imagine other writers deciding to make this a trilogy. There is one particular section, describing, in a few pages, epic events over a period of two years, which could have been a book itself, but rightly wasn't, I think. While more detail of what happens would be fun to read, the direction, the hard choices and the sacrifices have been made before this point, and they are what matters. The sheer density of material - the maelstrom of ideas we're exposed to - is part of the joy and challenge of Radio Life, and I loved it. I just loved it.

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

#Blogtour #Review - Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North

Notes From The Burning Age
Claire North
Orbit, 22 July 2021
Available as: HB, 403pp, e, audio 
Source: ARC kindly provided free by the publisher
ISBN(HB): 9780356514758

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance review copy of Notes from the Burning Age to read and consider for review.

Before I start this review I should probably declare a bias - I adore Claire North's books and I've been loving her novels exploring individuals with weird abilities, or curses. Notes from the Burning Age is a little different, featuring ordinary people albeit in a weird future, but I still came to it expecting brilliance and I wasn't disappointed. 

Fiction reflecting and commenting on the environmental catastrophe being visited right now on the planet has never been more important... or harder to do.  Given the scale of what is happening, there is a sense in which all future, or near future, set fiction must be climate/ environmental fiction. But authors face challenges. Make it unremittingly gloomy, and readers might stay away. But implying it's a trivial problem, easily solved, would be reckless and unrealistic.

In Notes from the Burning Age, North finds an ingenious solution. The book is set some way in the future - hundreds of years - in an era when people can look back to our "burning age" and judge it. From that perspective, they can report the catastrophe, but without living it. We can also see that, despite losses, humankind has found ways to mitigate its impact on the planet, limitations to prevent a repeat of the disaster. The book is full of fascinating detail about these, from dependence on bicycles and electric vehicles and use of solar, wind and tidal power, to building techniques using reasons instead of cement to a system of religion and ethics intended to stress interdependence with nature. This is propagated by the Medj priesthood, who 'bowed to each tree in turn and made libations to the kakuy whose gift they were receiving'.

This elusive concept of the kakuy is key to the civilization depicted here. Perhaps gods, perhaps demons, perhaps innate spirits of the forests, the mountains, the seas, the kakuy may be a pious myth, a real and ferocious force that rose in anger when humans defaced the earth, or a personification of the chaos and harm that came from that defacement. The Medj teaching is focussed on not rousing them again - if gods, they are gods who have no regard for Mankind, regarding us an irritant at best. Ancient religions flourish alongside this cult - at one point a character is rescued and sheltered by a Jewish community, and the domes on ancient mosques and churches still stand over the city of Isdanbul - but they are peripheral. 

Ven, the main character in Notes from the Burning Age, is a disgraced former member of the Medj, but hedges his bets about the kakuy. Others, ambitious men (mostly) who chafe under the limitations imposed following the Burning, do not believe, or actively despise the idea. Humanity is paramount, they insist, and only harm can come from denying that essential fact. The book, then, looks both back - at our burning age - and forward - at a potential future one, as humanity, like a dog returning to its vomit, forgets lessons learned and plots harm again. We see this as environmental destruction, seemingly undertaken to demonstrate human mastery, gathers pace. The story, from one perspective, is therefore a set of notes from the "future" burning age, to ours.

Located in Central Europe, the story depicts a loose federation of seven provinces supposedly united under a Council to ensure that "heresies" (the use of destructive, historic technologies) stay suppressed. It isn't clear whether similar conditions obtain elsewhere - there are brief mentions of the 'Anglaes islands' and their 'purity laws' and of an 'Amerika' with 'militia forts'. The the province of Maze is however flexing its strength, overturning the laws adopted for safety and to prevent the kakuy rising. Ven is close to that process, having fetched up as personal assistant to Georg Mestri, the power behind the Brotherhood, a social and political force dedicated to human potential (and to founding an empire with Maze at its head). 

Despite his background in the Medj, Ven comes to admire Georg, for whom he translates ancient documents, stolen by the Brotherhood, describing banned technologies (and including a lot of other rubbish scoured from ancient hard drives - Ven's background has given him some skill in recognising what might be useful). More "notes", this time from our "burning age" to the future one. From this position Ven's able to describe the rapid slide of Maze into militaristic dictatorship and then war, and the progress of espionage between the two sides, espionage that may make the difference in an otherwise uneven war. The book has plenty of excitement, with a mole hunt going on, conflicted loyalties, and a lot at risk on either side. That makes it a pacey and exciting read, even as North refuses to skimp detail of the environmental damage done in our time, and which is starting up again. Her descriptions of shrines made from ancient, sea-washed plastics, of part-ancient, part reconstructed buildings or of simply Medj shrines, and always arresting and often beautiful.

Hovering over everything in Notes from the Burning Age are moral choices, the foremost of which is perhaps, how much damage must one accept to preserve peace? In this book the environmentally sensitive way of life of the other provinces is threatened by Maze's revanchism. Will the other provinces receive enough warning? If they do, will they be willing too act?  Indeed, how can they act when they believe that warfare will wake the kakuy and bring ruin again? Again, placing the action in the future makes the story more palatable since it isn't finger-pointing at us, here, now - even if in reality we face similar dilemmas.

Notes from the Burning Age shows how these choices are inescapable, and perhaps, that there are no good options. It's chock full of ideas, and North is able to paint even her villains as sympathetic (in a certain light) and her heroes as distinctly tarnished, ambiguous types. The dialogue is often brilliant (it always is in this author's books, but even so, here it's superb) with several layers of subtext to the conversations, and the action-y parts of the book (of which there are many) have the urgency and pace of a thriller. 

In short, I think Notes from the Burning Age is a joy to read, and shows North evolving as an author to address difficult themes as well as serving up a rollicking good story. I would strongly recommend it.

For more information about Notes From The Burning Age see the publisher's website here or any of the stops on the tour poster below.

You can buy Notes From The Burning Age from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - a strange and brilliant light by Eli Lee

a strange and brilliant light
Eli Lee
Jo Fletcher Books, 22 July 2021 (HB), 17 February 2022 (PB)
Available as: HB, PB, 292pp, e, audio
Source: Advance review copy kindly provided by the publisher
ISBN(HB): 9781529407754 (PB) 9781529407747  

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of a strange and brilliant light to read and consider for review.

Sometimes, to see plainly, to understand just how strange things have becomes, you have to step back a bit. 

That, I think, is what Eli Lee does in her riveting SF(ish) novel about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effect on society - or perhaps, society's effect on society, because nothing is inevitable, it all depends what WE do.

The book is set in a recognisably modern world with laptops, the Internet, cars, trains, coaches - and poverty. Teenagers meet for parties in the sanddunes and do slightly naughty things. There are coffeeshops and trades unions, venture capital startups, conglomerates, and meditation retreats in the mountains.

But it is not OUR world. The geography, place names (Dhont, Mejira) and countries are clearly different, as is the history (which is alluded to but never explained - this book is very good at involving its readers without a great deal of exposition). There is no made-up language but Lee coolly uses comprehensible but not familiar English words such as 'unancestral' to hint at unseen depths, at concepts and structures shaping the visible narrative. Most tangibly, the different cultures we meet here have their own cuisines, with meals - both traditional and intercultural - described in, frankly, delicious detail. Overall, the effect is to distance the reader slightly from the locations and action, so that we question what is being shown and think about what is happening (and what we're taking for granted).

In Lee's imagined society, we are on the cusp of AI automating most of the work hitherto carried out by humans. The focus is on a chain of coffee shops, Slurpees, where "auts" are being introduced to replace human staff - early on we meet Lal, who is about to transfer from her job as manager of one such shop to a more senior position in the company, where she will be helping to plan future automation. This transformation is proceeding, at pace, without much thought being given by Government or there conglomerates to the consequences - that is, how people will make a living. Things are, I'd say, closer to the edge than in our world - but it's a matter of degree.

As the story moves on, Rose, one of Lal's team, takes on the managership. More concerned than Lal at what is happening, she attends protest meetings, falling in with the surprisingly uncharismatic Alek who leads the group but doesn't seem to regard the members as having much to contribute apart from their numbers. He might be a radical and agitator, but he's making the same mistake as the big corporations in discounting the input of actual humans, reducing even the activity of process to an assembly-line of placards. (Perhaps they could get auts in to do that, too?)

Alek knows what he thinks the solution is - something he calls 'source gain', what we'd describe as universal basic income, an entitlement for all to part of the fruits of automation, enabling a minimal, tolerable lifestyle. Rose seems less committed and more questioning of this concept - late in the book she lights on the idea of ownership, by the people, of the means of production (the auts). So, yes, there's Socialism in this alternate world - and indeed we get a good description of the alienation of the workers from their labour. But there are other ideas in the mix, too - wider elements in the protest movement are taking direct action, smashing the auts. 

I thought that Rose's and Alek's protest meetings might be highlighting the dangers of an unstable society becoming more authoritarian, as they seem to occur clandestinely in a remote abandoned warehouse - but this is not really followed up and on the whole I don't think a strange and brilliant light is meant as a novel of political action. It's rather one where the wider forces in society are played out between a few characters and within their families. This comes across most strongly in the third central character, Janetta, who completes the picture by giving an insider's view on the progress of AI itself.

Janetta is a PhD student at a prestigious university (contrasted with the local college which was all Rose could afford to attend, despite having higher aspirations) worked on making AI empathetic, considered a key step to developing conscious artificial intelligence. She's also going through emotional turmoil, having split up with her girlfriend. Lee has a twist of fate link Janetta up with the founder of one of the top AI start-ups, so allowing a dialogue between Janetta's approach to the AI problem, informed by her loss of Malin, and Taly's more functional attitude.

The relationships between the three women, their wider families and the workplace, played out over job changes (a particular grim description of Lal's arrival at a dream corporate campus, the antithesis of all her hopes and dreams), holidays and meet-ups, creates a fascinating tapestry of life which, yes, serves to illustrate the dilemmas and risks of the new technology but at the same time is simply riveting to follow. The process of automation is marked by the progressive elimination of people from Slurpees, while Lal's supposedly favoured management position becomes more and more dehumanising and Janetta finds her progress frustrated by relationship entanglements and doubts over the ethics of what it's doing.

In what is actually quite a short book, Lee gives the reader a massive amount to ponder as well as delivering a brilliantly written and absorbing story about some very real people.

I would unreservedly recommend a strange and brilliant light.

For more information about a strange and brilliant light, see this blogpost by the author, explaining the inspiration behind the book and the publisher's website here.

#Review - A Radical Act of Free Magic by HG Parry

Cover by Lisa Marie Pompilio

A Radical Act of Free Magic
HG Parry
Orbit, 22 July 2021
Available as: PB, 495pp, e
Source e: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9780356514710

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy A Radical Act of Free Magic to consider for review.

Following last year's A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, A Radical Act of Free Magic completes Parry's Shadow Histories dualogy, taking us back to the early 19th century, to revolts by enslaved people in the Caribbean, debates over abolition in Britain, and revolution in France. Again we meet William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister, and William Wilberforce, abolitionist and simply the nicest man in fiction. And Fina, who has freed herself and joined the revolt on the island of Saint Domingue. And - a newcomer - Napoleon Bonaparte, who is about to take a hand in French affairs.

And, of course, the Stranger. The Enemy. The puppet master pulling everyone's strings, shaping events, offering help here and there only to withdraw it again when he's got what he wants.

The atmosphere is, I would say, darker than the first book. The revolt led by Toussaint Louverture on Saint Domingue met with success, but was then opposed with unmitigated savagery by the British. The British are nevertheless being driven back, but Fina's dream of spreading freedom to Jamaica seems as forlorn as ever. In Britain, the efforts of the abolitionists are making no progress. Pitt's health is failing, his enormous workload and magical affliction undermining his constitution. The French Revolution, which seemed to herald liberty for the oppressed magicians of Europe, has drowned its makers in blood. 

Against this background, realpolitik plays out, idealistic dreams compromising with raw power. There are betrayals, disappointments and fresh dangers as war sweeps Europe. And worse, the friendship between Pitt and "Wilber" seems to have broken down under the weight of those betrayals. That friendship, at the heart of the first book, had sustained the two men in the darkest of times and Parry's portrayal of it crumbling - her sympathy for both, and her account of their estrangement - is actually very moving. It's part of the delicate dance she does with history, preserving, as far as I can see, most actual events while giving them a whole new significance. So for example, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar was not a defeat of an actual invasion fleet carrying troops but of a naval force that might have joined and led such a fleet. And no, the French and Spanish fleets didn't have the supernatural support of a... well, no spoilers, you'll have to read on to find out what. 

A story that involves magic and monsters can, obviously, take liberties, but the human stories here - whether about Pitt and Wilberforce, or enslaved people taking their liberty in their own hands - are still true and affecting, a reminder that history is about people and that those people aren't simple.

It's also, and perhaps this is more important in the end, a thumping good tale, one that holds the reader's attention throughout. Even when the ostensible subject is two middle aged white men in an office, every sentence, every word builds up a rounded portrait of their relationship, dramatising the tension between different notions of duty, between the needs of friendship and the needs - perhaps - of country, of wider humanity. It it as much a moral narrative as one of events, as it should be, because in fantasy, as in life, the ultimate questions come down not to cleverness and skill but in the end to morality, good and evil, strength of will and courage - which are strange characteristics, you might think, for middle aged white men in an office but which matter here a lot.

Above all, in re-presenting this period of history, Parry has brought so many things together. At a time in history when slavers' statutes are falling (I hope they will continue to fall!) and British history is being challenged to retell its darker stories, the two books in this duopoly show how global events weave together, how the Napoleonic Wars are about more than "hearts of oak", Nelson and the Duke of Wellington (actually, he's not on the scene yet). In doing that she does a real service to the truth, even though in fiction.

In summary - gosh, this was good. I could read more instalments of this story, if parry were to write them, but I suspect it will stop here, and that's probably right. I'll watch eagerly, instead, for what she does next.

For more information about A Radical Act of Free Magic, see the publisher's website here.