#Review - Simul by Andrew Caldecott

Simul (Momenticon, 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#Review - The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle by TL Huchu

The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle (Edinburgh Nights, 3)

TL Huchu
Pan Macmillan, 27 July 2023 
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529097726 

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance e-copy of The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle to consider for review.

In this, the third book of the Edinburgh Nights series... Edinburgh doesn't feature! Rather, ghostalker Ropa Moyo and her friends and enemies are attending a magical conference at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye. The duties are irksome, and Ropa's still not actually being paid for her work (she's an intern) but she plots a bit of casual larceny to help support her, her grandmother and her sister. 

Before Ropa can carry that out, however, everything goes wrong. Despite the presence of some seriously powerful and significant guests in the magical world - England's Magician Royal makes an appearance, allowing Ropa to explain a lot that was previously hinted at about the position of Scotland and its magicians in relation to a revanchist England - a serious crime is committed (no, not by Ropa) leaving her with limited time to sort things out before her world, and that of her boss, Sir Callander, implodes.

I enjoyed this change of scene for Ropa. While she has allies at Dunvegan - especially Priya - she's away from her home turf and has fewer resources to draw on, especially as she is, more than ever, under the eye of the snobbish, entitled masters of Scottish magic. That means she has to be even more ingenious than usual - as we know, Ropa is a formidable person and no respecter of the puffed up and self-important. She doesn't care what feathers she ruffles, and it's magnificent to see her cut a swathe through her lords and masters and right a few wrongs as she does.

The mystery here is also intriguing and apt to be solved through a close understanding of Scottish magical society, the sort of understanding that Ropa has had to develop to ensure her own survival. So her commentary on events and persons has a sort of subtext, paving the way for an eventual solution.

Behind that, though, I had a sense that things are getting more serious in Huchu's magical world. There is a big postcolonial theme in this story, with a stolen artefact from abroad at the centre of things and unhealed wounds from the past a main issue. That arises in a number of ways: the treatment of non-Western societies, but also the basis and roots of Scottish magic. We now learn this is grounded in the dispossession and even imprisonment of the Fae of Skye, those who came before, making the whole enterprise essentially a colonial one. There seems to be a historic injustice there which Ropa won't tolerate for long, but what can she do about it?

The bargain that Ropa has made with the principalities and powers of Edinburgh magic is already strained - their fault not hers, she's only trying to do her job and investigate what's gone wrong - but that cuts little ice. It was always an unstable situation and now seems to be coming apart with loyalties tested and Ropa's future in doubt. If that wasn't enough, alongside the plentiful action there's a bubbling drama that will surely eventually come to the foreground of these books concerning Ropa's history, her future and the survival of magical society. 

Huchu is definitely shaking things up - this series shows no sign of bedding down and becoming formulaic, and I'm on tenterhooks for what will come next.

For more information about The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, 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.

#Blogtour #Review - Infinity Gate by MR Carey

Infinity Gate (Book One of The Pandominion)
MR Carey
Orbit, 30 March 2023 
Available as: HB, 512pp, e, audio   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356518015

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Infinity Gate to consider for review, and to Tracy for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

It feels a long time since the last new book by MR Carey, but Infinity Gate was certainly worth waiting for. Set across multiple Earths, and mainly in various instances of Lagos, the book delves into the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - that every time something can go two ways, it goes both, splitting the universe into a structure with countless branches. The twist here is that on some of those worlds at least, that reality is understood, and travel between universes - or at least Earths - is regular.

In contrast, we're introduced to Hadiz Tambuwal, a scientist on our Earth (or at least one very like our own) where climate change, pollution, and warfare are close to destroying civilisation. Working at a research institue which has brought together the best minds on the planet to find a solution, she stumbles on something that may well help - but is it too late?

I loved this book's bold, very classically SF approach to the possibility of other Earths, other worlds, first hitting us with a Big Idea then dismantling it by showing the consequences. The stars themselves may be massively out of rich - but given the prospect of boundless resources less than an atom's breadth away, surely all our problem are solved? If the problem is shortage of stuff, rather than its distribution and management, everything will be alright, won't it? 

No it won't, is the answer that Infinity Gate provides. Behind the veil of the many worlds, we see a society plagued by the same problems as our own - in particular, a colonialist, grasping perspective that sees anything strange as Other and to be overcome. The Pandominion, a network of parallel Earths that have discovered one another and more or less federated, miscalculates spectacularly when it meets a society that is very Other indeed. That is a special irony when its "humanity" is composed of multiple species, from multiple worlds, many of them with a different evolutionary history than H. Sapiens. The Pando thinks of itself as the ideal, most evolved society there can be but it still relies on a massive armed force to secure its ends, it fights endless wars, and oh, when you have a big hammer, what does every problem look like?

We are led from Hadiz's very particular, very personal difficulties to a wider perspective. She is first presented as a sort of Robinson Crusoe figure, left marooned on a dying world, albeit provided with an abundance of resources (abundance and scarcity are central concepts in this book) and with an inkling of how to build a life-raft. As a somewhat introverted scientist who's already more or less cut herself off from friends and family, she doesn't have too much problem with being solitary, but then, as one can see coming, she will also have to cope with the multiverse being less solitary than she expects.

How she copes with that is one strand in this book but Carey follows other characters too - there's also Essien, a rogue (so-called here) who grew up in the harsh Lagos slums and bears their scars, and Topaz, a schoolgirl from a planet populated by rabbit descendents. Much of this story shows how the chain of events that Hadiz sets going influences all three. It's a story of intelligence and adaptability set against crushing forces, of cross and double-cross, of desperate combat and last-moment escapes. On the way we see the brutality of the military, grinding poverty, and bureaucratic cruelty as well as courage and solidarity. 

I particularly enjoyed how the story juxtaposes "big" themes - politics and the futures of worlds - and petty, self-serving ones. Also, human frailty and stupidity.

It is a gripping and imaginatively bold novel, a magnificent start to a series and I hope I can read the next part soon! 

For more information about Infinity Gate, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Infinity Gate from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin

Emergency Skin

NK Jemisin

Amazon Original Stories, 17 September 2019

Available as: Audio, 1 hour 4 mins, e

Narrators: Jason Isaacs

Source: Audio subscription

ASIN: B07X4JS37T

Emergency Skin is a remarkable novella, not least for the fact that Jemisin tells a story in which we never hear directly from the point of view character.

He - though the pronoun is moot, for reasons developed in the story which it would be spoilery to give here - is on a mission back to planet Earth (or "Telos" as we're told it should be called) to collect biological samples needed by the distant colony which is his home. Earth is expected to be a hostile wasteland, given that the colony in question was established to house those who had fled environmental destruction.

We're given this in formation by a narrator who is apparently an AI designed to assist the protagonist with this task. We only hear the AI's side of the conversation, together with the voices of one or two people he meets on earth (no, it's not a desert). The AI is a marvellously querulous and elitist construct, reflecting, of course, the views of its masters and betraying their own elitist and blinkered thinking. It's lovely to hear this consciousness come up against the conundrum that Earth simply seems to have flourished ones its makers - supposedly the best, brightest and most innovative of humanity - shoved off.

Again, no spoilers, but Jemisin does gives us an object lesson here in thinking beyond the dreary and reductive worldview of the tech lords and their political lapdogs. It's an impressive argument, albeit necessarily compressed given the form (I would like to see it articulated at greater length, perhaps in a novel) - essentially a challenge to the economic orthodoxy that privileges immediate profit above all. And she shows how openness to alternative view points, and courage, can lead us to challenge even the most ingrained assumptions. That's a lesson needed now more than ever, I think.

In all, a thought provoking and satisfying novella, due in no small part to Isaacs' narration, which captures the cadences both of the smug AI and of several person whom the protagonist encounters on Earth. As I've said, we never hear his voice but the compelling dialogue almost makes you think you have.

I'd recommend. 

Review - A Boy and his Dog at the end of the World #Blogtour #FollowGriz

Cover by Lauren Panepinto

A Boy and his Dog at the end of the World
C A Fletcher
Orbit, 25 April 2019
HB 384pp, ebook

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a free ARC of this book and to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

"Dogs were with us from the very beginning... Of all the animals that travelled the long road through the ages with us, dogs always walked closest."

So opens A Boy and his Dog at the end of the World, a story of the very end of things, not the very beginning. Humanity has collapsed. A century earlier, babies stopped being born, save to a rare few. The population aged naturally and died off, and now only a few thousand people remain across the entire planet.

Griz is one of these. Growing up on Mingulay, off the coast of Scotland, Griz is part of a family of six (plus the dogs) who maintain some kind of way of life farming, fishing and prospecting ("viking") for useful things in abandoned houses across the islands. Later on in the book, we learn a little more about the origins of the family in the declining years of humanity and there are hints of wider history and attempts to deal with the crisis but I won't say anything about these - there is a stern warning at the beginning of the proof copy about spoilers, and it is absolutely right, not just a matter I think of giving away key plot details but of allowing the reader to approach the story in a certain way.

What I can say is that Griz is telling (writing) this story, looking back, to a sort-of imaginary friend (a boy in a photograph found in one of those houses). It explains how Griz set out into the wider world after a charismatic stranger came by, bamboozled the family, and stole Jess, one of Griz's beloved dogs. Griz pursues the stranger, Brand, into a world far away from everything familiar, a weird, dangerous and at times even beautiful world that has been left abandoned by humanity. The book meditates on the reasons for this pursuit: it's not just to redress a theft, there's loyalty to Jess, representing a wider loyalty, a sense of self - if one allows that to lapse, what's left? - but also - Griz is honest enough to admit - a desire to travel beyond the near islands, to experience the world.

And indeed Fletcher's depiction of this confusing, familiar yet strange world is entrancing, masterly, and evocative, giving a real sense of emptiness, of isolation. It's as though some places have been waiting for decades for a visitor. The imagined apocalypse wasn't sudden warfare, disease or alien invasion but a gradual, even orderly, falling off. There was plenty of time to tidy things up, and some people (the "neatists") even dedicated themselves to that. Without violence and with so few remaining humans, things are largely intact, apart from what nature has achieved in one hundred or so years of growth and attrition. Fletcher's shows us ourselves through a stranger's eyes. That sometimes brings out beauty that we would miss, for example the curved support arch of a concrete motorway footbridge floating high across a cutting. It is also though very dark at times - this is often not a happy story, and the departed humans did many bad things.

Griz comprehends "our" past world to a large degree, having read a lot of books. But not exactly, and this story is filled with questions and speculation addressed to that anonymous boy, questions about what it was like to be among crowds or what certain things were for. There are also some enormous gaps, Griz not knowing one commonplace fact about travel in the UK which I won't state because, again, spoilers, as well as hilarious misconceptions (for example, that a statue of a footballer labelled "Best" is simply of the best player) because Griz has book knowledge of our world, but not experience. And that book knowledge is all of what happened before the crisis. There are no records, only family rumours, of the more recent past so crucial knowledge is missing about current dangers that will have to be faced. Fletcher is good at implying some of these, in an almost eerie way, without making them too visible.

Griz is though much better equipped for survival in the future world, with skills such as being able to sail a boat alone, catch and prepare food, treat injuries with a plant-based medical kit, find clean water, navigate and when required fight using bow and arrow. Griz can also show caution (apart from dashing off to rescue Jess) "Things die and things rot. And you don't always have to go poking at them". Remember, this is a story of someone brought up post-catastrophe, not of someone from our generation undergoing that catastrophe - and of someone who's seen accidents and the fragility of life. The practical details are well thought out, as well as the potential dangers and crises that can arise at a moment's notice and the consequences of what would be to us a minor scrape or accident. (Many of these dangers are prefigured with Griz hinting at catastrophes to come - I found this slightly jarring to begin with, but be patient, there is a reason for this: I can't say what it is, but it does all make sense within the narrative).

This being a depopulated world, there isn't scope for a huge number of characters but there are others here besides Griz. His great enemy, Brand, is much more than a thief in the night - we learn more about him and he is a complex, contradictory and troubling person. And there are others I won't mention. Griz's remaining dog, Jip, makes up for any lack of humans - the relationship between the two is wonderful. Jip being a bold dog, a terrier, who never knows when to back off, his safety is a fear throughout not only for the reader but for Griz too, who will be left completely alone if anything were to happen to Jip.

Overall, I simply loved this book. It's definitely one of my candidates for best this year, and I think does something very different, very unsettling and in the end very truthful with the post-apocalyptic genre. (Not least because in a rather meta way Griz is aware of such books, having read many of them, and isn't above pointing out where they got things wrong).

I have seen comparisons with Station Eleven (which I also loved) and I think these have elements of truth - especially the part of that book set long after - but A Boy and his Dog seems to me much more intimate, as well as being both less hopeful about our future - so few humans left - and (perhaps) more hopeful about the future, with its depiction of the processes, almost happening before our eyes, that will erase the damage we have done to the world and leave it waiting for... who knows what?

A great read, STRONGLY recommended, albeit do keep some tissues to hand. My only real criticism would be that I really wanted more of Griz and more of Griz's world...

The blogtour for A Boy and his Dog continues with stops at many outstanding blogs - see the poster below for more details. If you want to find out more, the publisher's page is here. You can buy the book from your local bookshop (including online via Hive) from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon or from lots of other places.

Review - Shelter by Dave Hutchinson

Shelter (Tales of the Aftermath, Book 1)
Dave Hutchinson
Solaris, 14 June 2018
PB, 304pp

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

I've always been fascinated by the period in British history that used to be known as the Dark Ages. That name is used less now as it's been accepted that chaos didn't descend when Roman rule ended. Nevertheless there were huge changes - the loss of manufactured goods, of widespread trade and of currency.

Set a hundred or so years after the destruction of modern civilisation by an asteroid strike known as "The Sisters", Hutchinson's new book takes a look at what one might term a modern "Dark Ages". As in the 5th century, we see here little bands of survivors eking a living among the ruins, keeping farming going but with no modern manufacturing. Here, as then, there are surviving patches of control and order where military formations survived, and others where local strong men establish little kingdoms.

It was the age of Arthur...

...it is the age of Adam.

Adam is - what? A spy? An explorer? - for Guz, the realm, polity, city-state, call it what you will, that emerged from Portsmouth naval base. In this book he's sent on a mission across country to investigate a rather nasty warlord who has established himself in Kent. Adam is a resourceful sort, self reliant, careful, tough, and me makes a good viewpoint character as we see what our world has become, six or seven generations on.

Hutchinson is good at letting his story unspool, showing us the territories Adam is going through and the character of their residents. As well as Kent there's an agricultural enclave on the Berkshire/ Oxfordshire border (there's some kind of trouble further north in Oxford and the Cotswolds, we never find out exactly what) where much of this story takes place. It's not, though, an idyllic, Hobbiton sort of place. Rather, The Parish is rent by jealousies and grudges and ready to erupt in civil war. Inevitably Adam becomes involved in this but I won't say any more about the detail because that would give away rather too much.

This part of the story shows off rather effectively, I think, the "nasty, brutish and short" lifestyle which we all fear will befall us should civilisation stutter. The way Hutchinson chooses to animate the conflict here almost made me gasp - he's certainly not sentimental about his characters, and what happens shows, perhaps, that the term "Dark ages" really does describe this world.

If that's the bad news, the good is that there will be more books set in this universe - the next, Haven by Adam Roberts, is due in August. Hutchinson and Roberts are clearly having fun - as well as an Adam in this book the second has a "Forktongue Davy". Roberts, of course, has form in depicting apocalyptic, futuristic versions of Berkshire (see for example his New Model Army) and Hutchinson's Fractured Europe sequence (I think it's now a five book trilogy) shows a continent divided into petty states and autonamous holdings, so together they seem almost destined to produce something like this.

Very thriller-y, very violent, pretty dark and with hints of wider developments - whether it's the inherited nukes of Guz, the strange "Spanish fleet" moored off the coast or those mysterious goings-on to the north - I sense a lot more to come fro this world, and I'm looking forward to that (not least because I think I live in the path of one of these roving war bands and I need to know what's going on!)

For more on the book see this review at The Eloquent Page

Review - Hunted by GX Todd

Hunted (The Voices, 2)
G X Todd
Headline, 31 May 2018
HB, 496pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Hunted (and - full disclosure - the previous book in this series, Defender, quotes my review).

Todd's previous book, Defender, was an outstanding example of post-apocalyptic storytelling - scary, searing and convincing. Hunted manages - and I don't know how she did this - to be better still. The story corps effortlessly from passages of grim realism, almost miniature documentaries on the breakdown of society under the onslaught of the "Voices", to dreamlike sequences threatening carnage and pain or moving passages showing how even in an upside-down world, love still endures.

The Voices brought death and destruction because they urged killing or self-killing. Those affected, even if they didn't commit violence, are deeply mistrusted by the survivors, tracked down, tortured and murdered. If you have a Voice you try to hide it.

Across a landscape of a ruined United States, we follow three groups of survivors trying, in their different ways, to live in this new, changed world. Posy leads a group of hunters, tracking the elusive woman Red. There is something a bit... off... about Posy, about his relationship with his own Voice, and with the terrible Flitting Man. He drives his ragtag team unmercifully, but his goal is obscure.

Albus and his group of survivors live at the inn by the Sea, hinted at in Defender. His abilities allow him to locate and save the lost and wandering, building a team that can travel in the nightmare world of these books - but again, why and for what purposes?

Lacey, Alex and Addison featured centrally in Defender and are in a sense the hinge of the book, fleeing across a cursed landscape (but escaping what? And going where?) They have made enemies, their friends are dead, but the three (two women and a girl) are coolly competent, survivors. They take some time to make their appearance, Todd holding back these most familiar - and most relatable - figures from the first book almost till the middle of Hunted and dwelling instead on Posy and Albus.

The stories of these groups are woven together into a complex timeline that isn't afraid to dip backwards and forwards. As a result there's a somewhat mythic sense, a distancing effect, through much of the book - seeing the aftermath of an awful event before the event itself both reassures (you know that everyone survived) and appals (when the event itself begins you know it will be bad because you've seen the post-trauma). At the same time, the dreaminess and a creeping understanding of the Voices (not complete, not yet, by any means) adds to the overall sense of gathering dread.

Todd is a brutal author. She holds little back when it comes to heaping suffering on or killing off her characters. Even the ordinary lives depicted here - I use that word advisedly - are bleak; doomed, starved, hopeless people shuffling through a withered, hopeless world. It isn't a zombie apocalypse by any means but the depth of suffering, the wrongness depicted here, is much, much worse making that almost seem like a cosy genre.

And as we see in Hunted the madness and destruction is not over, rather it's getting worse. More akin, perhaps, to Lord of the Flies than anything else I've read, the story takes a dark view of a humanity released from social conventions and tormented by apocalyptic, teasing, haunting visions.

While there are grains of hope here, the book can make for hard reading at times, but it is also at these times it's hardest to put down.

I know this book will stick with me. I'd strongly recommend you read it.

For more about Hunted see the publisher's webpage here. G X Todd's page is here.

Review - Blackfish City by Sam J Miller

Cover by Ellen Rockell
(see http://samjmiller.com/uk-cover-for-blackfish-city/)

Blackfish City
Sam J Miller
Orbit, 19 April 2018
HB, 326pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of Blackfish City.

One might expect the coming (it's probably more accurate to write actual) climate apocalypse to influence the field of speculative fiction, both in a "what is happening and what the blazes do we do" sense and also as a backdrop to anything set in the future.

Blackfish City is I think an example of the latter. Some 100 years in the future (it's not completely clear) this is a story of life on (aboard?) Qaanaaq, a vast water-borne community named for a shore settlement and built in the shape of an asterisk (a central hub with eight arms). It's clear from the history given that climate change and pollution have caused havoc in this wold - there have been wars, states have fallen and huge populations of refugees are on the move, so one of the most precious resources on Qaanaak is space. The most fortunate have apartments: the merely lucky have a "nook", enough space to sleep, the rest simply have to take shelter where they can. And there is a hierarchy among the Arms.

It is a polyglot, multicultural place filled with traditions, history and languages, a thick broth of a society which the protagonists sample in very different fashions. It's also diverse in other ways, with gender fluidity (one character is referred to throughout as "they") and a key thread in the story built on the missing mothers of another of the characters. Against this jostling background, Miller spins a dazzling story of gangsters, political operators, family, and revenge, all catalysed by the arrival of a woman: "people would say she came to Qaanaak in a skin towed by a killer whale harnessed to the front like a horse. In these stories... the polar hear paced beside her on the flat bloody deck of the boat."

The woman is Masaaraq, and soon all of Qaanaak is agog at her arrival. Where has she come from? What does she want? Is she really "bonded" with the orca - or the bear - surely all those people were massacred years before?

The story shows how Killer Whale Woman's arrival impinges on the lives, hopes and fears, and schemes of a cross section of Qaanaak's people, with chapters following each in turn. There's Fill, heir to one of the comfortable fortunes of Qaanaak as grandson of a Shareholder. There's Kaev, a reliable pro in the world of illegal all-in beam fighting, who has links to up and coming gangster Go. Ankit, part of the political machine for an Arm Manager seeking re-election. And Soq, skate messenger, who's looking to advance himself by working for Go.

All of these characters are pretty much flung at the reader early on, with little overlap (at first). It does take some time to orient and begin to follow the distinct strands, but once you've established who is who and what they're doing there is a firm narrative here as well as a rich sense of place, with the story exploring some of the the distinct strands in Qaanaak society. We hear from City Without a Map, the cryptic broadcast(?) exploring the past, present and future of Qaanaak and whose whispered hints both comment on and direct events. And we are told about the incurable disease known as The Breaks, which overwhelms suffered by feeding them memories of those who infected them, and of those who infected them, and so on. This condition will have a central place in the story, both as a motivation and as a mystery to be solved. the scraps and hints of Breaks-mediated experiences tell us more about how the world came to this pass.

I could happily have lingered much longer enjoying all this (and the hints of catastrophe behind the presence of the different races, tribes and peoples - in particular a fragmented narrative of the fall of New York.) but this is a fairly short book and Miller soon begins to bring his main characters together. I did feel that when this happened, things slowed down at first, rather than sped up. This was first because the characters come with radically different interests and objectives so a bit of work is needed for them to establish any common cause and secondly, due to the story rotating between all the point-of-view characters. (Miller keeps giving chapters from the perspective of the different characters even once they have teamed up and are working together).

But. BUT. Then the book powers on to a nail-biting final third involving plenty of action and with a real sense of jeopardy till the very end, due to precisely those different aims and alliances. These lead to so many possibilities and different futures that it did feel by the last page as though the real story was only just beginning and the book left me wanting more.

An impressive debut novel which was great fun to read. I'd eagerly read a sequel (though I don't sense that's on the cards).

Review - Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

Spare and Found Parts
Sarah Maria Griffin
Titan Books, 6 February 2018
PB, 416pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of Spare and Found Parts.

In an unnamed country, in Black Water City, Penelope - Nell - lives with her father, a maker of artificial limbs and body parts, which are much in demand in a future scourged by epidemics as a result of which many of the citizens are missing them.

In this post-apocalyptic future, all must "contribute" to society. The time for Nell's Contribution is fast approaching and she doesn't know what she will do. A skilled apprentice to her father, she hasn't settled on what to make - and time is running out. This sense of coming life, of young people wondering what their place in society will be, how the world will value them, where they fit in, what their tribe is, is palpable this book with plans being made, futures considered and accepted, bargained over, rejected, is palpable. With no social media, not even landline phones for anguished, hour long calls, it all happens out in the open. Secrets come to light.

And as Nell spends her days combing the detritus of what was evidently Dublin, her mechanical heart - designed by her father - ticking faster or slower to mark her level of excitement or fear, we also gradually learn more about what happened a hundred years ago, and why computers have been driven from the country (while not completely clear, this doesn't seem to be true elsewhere in the world: some of those youthful plans are dreams of leaving the island and connected with that banned culture: this seems a self-imposed internal exile).

We learn that there were there were electromagnetic pulses. That there was a destructive virus that seems not only to have consumed humans but to have eaten walls, ceilings, floors. It's not clear whether this is being blamed on the actions of the machines, or was done to, in some fashion, control or destroy them, but either way, they are treated as responsible.

So Nell's wakening desire to construct a sentient, mechanical man is a dangerous obsession. As the storm grows and lightning flashes, we are clearly somewhere in Frankenstein territory with the story a heady mixture of coming-of-age tale, warning, and ethical fable about the duty we owe to our creations.

It's a very driven story, seen largely through Nell's eyes (there are a few sections that step aside to other viewpoints for a few pages) and it's also very linear, content to follow her story, say what she does and let her shape events. The other characters are all very much in support - even Nell's friend Ruby, and the odd (somewhat creepy) boy Oliver - and this isn't a book about political machinations in Black Water City, the future of its society or indeed wider events. That may sound as though it might be claustrophobic but the reverse is true, in taking the time to explore Nell's life, her relationship with her father, the mystery surrounding her past - and her fears over her future - the book has more than enough to deal with and the singled-mindedness of its focus gives it clarity and, as I said, drive.

One of the stranger books I've read recently, I greatly enjoyed Spare and Found Parts and its rich, slightly gothic, slightly steampunk ambience. It's a wonderful, lyrical read, about the joy of making - the cover brings together Ruby's needlework and Nell's growing obsession with computers - of exploring, of life. The most wonderful moment for me was perhaps where Nell, blundering into a secret cell of computer geeks, discovers the joys of music... something Griffin pays tribute to elsewhere in the book - if you remember your binary and your ASCII you may be able to decode her message.

An impressive debut from Sarah Maria Griffin.

Review - Raid by K S Merbeth

Image from http://www.orbitbooks.net/

Raid
K S Merbeth
Orbit, 27 July
PB, 350pp

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

Merbeth returns to the world of Bite with another  story set in the Wastes. Years after the bombs fell, this part of the US (and, we infer, the world) is a barren, scorched landscape where nothing will grow. The survivors are either “townies”, huddling together in desperate attempts at defence, or “raiders”, stealing from the townies.

The worst of the raiders are "sharks", who see townies and raiders alike as nothing more than meat. (Yes, this book contains cannibalism).

In this world, a bottle of clean water or a tin of food is wealth, as is a knife, a good gun or a stash of ammunition. Clementine is good at getting all of these: a bounty-hunter, driven by the pursuit of revenge against the raiders who burned her town and killed her parents, she works for desperate townies, taking out the worst of the raiders - for a fee. And she's very good at what she does.

The story follows straight on from the events described in Bite, but it's not really a sequel and features a very different protagonist from Kid, Dolly Tank and Wolf. Focussed on Clementine, it's more single-minded, getting under her skin and exploring the effect on her of a hard life and showing what that life has made her.

In this story, Clementine takes on a commission to hunt down the worst, most feared raider king, the famous Jedediah Johnson himself, about whom many tales are told. Acting on inside info, she finds a way into his base. But has she bitten off more than she can chew? Can she get out again - and if she does, is there anyone who would dare pay out on him, and can she find them before Johnson’s vengeful crew track her down?

And - most puzzling question of all - who wants Jedediah taken down?

A bloodstained roadtrip through the Wastes beckons, featuring some memorable violence, gut-wrenching betrayals and one of the most nihilistic settings I’ve ever come across. It’s basically a Western but with everything dead or waiting to die. Great reading if you aren’t worried about there being hope, and Clementine is a spiky, scary protagonist who can – just – make the reader sympathise with her, despite the things she does.

It’s best, I think, not to dwell on the logistics of Merbeth’s world – with (presumably) a finite amount of food, water and ammo left from Before, life here (and death) really is a zero-sum game, what’s left of humanity basically a pack of rats fighting over dwindling stocks. “You’re all dead” the reader may wish to shout at the characters when the action slows “what’s the point?”


But the action doesn't slow often, and the sheer pace and zing of the storytelling carries you through on the rare occasions when it does. A breathtaking read, best done in one go. (Just take a careful look the next time you eat a nicely cooked bit of meat...)

Review - The Boy on the Bridge by M R Carey

The Boy on the Bridge
M R Carey
Orbit, 4 May 2017
HB, 390pp

Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy. 

The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world.

To where the monsters lived.

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me a copy of this book, which is one of my most anticipated of 2017, following up Carey's The Girl with all the Gifts.

Like Girl, it's set is a world after the Breakdown. In order of events, you'd read this first because it takes place 10 years or so before Girl. However, I think that - especially if you haven't seen the film - you should read Girl first, because otherwise the revelations in that book, and the way it builds tension, will be slightly spoiled (not least, what the Breakdown was, who the children in Girl are, and what their fate is).

Similarly, don't read this review if haven't read Girl as spoilers for it will arise.

The basic setting of Boy is the same, with fungus-infected Hungries roaming Britain and the last remnants of humanity either holed up in Beacon base, somewhere on the South Coast (a nod to The Day of the Triffids where the human survivors make their stand on the Isle of Wight?) or roaming around as "junkers" - Mad Max extras in battlewagons, pillaging and raping as they see fit. Some of the relationships between the characters feel similar too: an adult mentor to a troubled child, a dislikable researcher, down to earth soldiers who turn out not to be quite so down to earth.

The actual characters in the two books don't, however, really cross over much: Dr Caldwell is mentioned by name here but never appears, and the main continuity is provided by "Rosie" - the Rosalind Franklin, a vast, armoured and tank-tracked mobile home/ laboratory in which the main characters live and work. They're on a mission to find a cure for the Cordyceps plague, yet it's a tense life, holed up in a tiny living space, beset by Hungries and junkers and with - frankly - no progress made.

Rosie turns up, of course, in Girl (she was found abandoned in London) so it's a fair bet that the mission here doesn't go well, although the timeline means we don't, can't, know till the very end of this book precisely how badly. But it does look pretty bad. There seems to be a traitor on board: despite the severity of the situation, Beacon is divided by selfish ambition as the civil and military sides jostle for power (as though being lord or lady of a giant prison camp surrounded by zombies was a prize worth having) and the divisions are reflected on Rosie too with split command, mistrust and hidden agendas.

Against this background, Carey draws the crew with compassion and insight, especially Stephen, the Boy of the title, and Samrina Khan, his mentor and rescuer. Stephen is young, a gifted scientist but clearly has some difficulties with relationships and social settings (he can't be touched, is unable to lie and is barely tolerated by most of the crew). It's not clear whether Stephen is - as his colleagues believe - on the autistic spectrum, or whether he has been traumatised by the loss of his parents to the Hungries, but what does come through is the bond between him and Khan as well as Stephen's obsession with defeating Cordyceps - obsession to a point that may endanger the lives of the crew: the corrosive effect of private agendas, even well intentioned ones, and of a lack of communication, is one of the themes of this book, seen also in the friction between Dr Fournier, the leader of the science team, and Colonel Carlisle, the military commander.

Fournier is probably the least sympathetic character here, essentially a bureaucrat who adds nothing to the mission, who often knows what he's doing is wrong but does it anyway because he's told to, while Carlisle - Carlisle is an enigma. He burned half of Southern England for, essentially, the same reason, who's despised by his men (and women) for it, but who seems to be something near a genius at ensuring the survival of the mission.

Carey makes these, and the other members of the crew, fully alive and their rivalries, jealousies, resentments and gifts create an atmosphere in the lab which you can almost taste. Rosie moves slowly, negotiating a safe route among abandoned cars, roadblocks and other obstacles, with the continual risk of ambush or pursuit: but it's as dangerous inside her as outside, with the need to avoid any of those tensions flaring into open conflict and to keep the mission alive even once Beacon falls silent.

The reasons for that silence and the nature of Cordyceps - at which Stephen steadily chips away - are the main mysteries lurking behind the events of this story, but it's the humanity of the crew, and the humanity - or not - of the 'feral children' who we met in Girl, that drive the book towards a dramatic and emotional conclusion.

Boy is a prequel/ companion that fully lives up to the promise of Girl and which may even indeed be slightly better - for me, the characters were better realised and fact that this was the second book allowed their backgrounds to be painted in more detail (we know more about Stephen's origins than we do about Melanie's, for example) and the wider cast also gave more potential for interactions between them. It also adds to or completes something already in Girl - a discussion about hope for the future: whether it's to be found in doggedly preserving what we have (as the Beacon authorities try to to) or in accepting change and development, even at the cost of enormous loss, and letting something new and different be born.

That's the choice that, in different ways, the characters here all face and again is is a theme that resonates with classic SF in many respects. this is, at heart, a novel of ideas - as well as being a compulsive read, especially in the second half: I only put it down very reluctantly when I was 17 pages from the end but we had to go out!

In summary, I'd strongly recommend this book - but advise you have a few tissues ready as you near the end.

Review: Defender by GX Todd

Defender
GX Todd
Headline, 12 January 2017
HB, 450pp

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

What if the voice in your head didn’t belong to you?

What if it had a purpose of its own?

And if it asked you to kill. Would you?

This is the story of 16 year old Lacey and of Pilgrim, a man who stops his motorbike one day at her lemonade stall and agrees to do her a favour in return for a drink. Together they leave Lacey's cosy house and set out on a trip to find Lacey's sister and niece.

So begins a book that will, I think, beg comparisons with post apocalyptic masterpieces such as The Road. In Lacey and Pilgrim's world, Voices appeared seven years ago. Whispering their sweet corrupt stories into human minds, they provoked sprees of sabotage, murder and suicide, quickly bringing civilisation down. All that's left are scavengers rooting through the detritus - and hunters, preying on the weak.

So Lacey's decision to leave her house with Pilgrim is a great act of trust, reminding me of Robert C O'Brien's haunting Z for Zachariah in the strength and tension of the central relationship as well as in the resourcefulness of Lacey and of Alex.

It's not a book for the fainthearted. Apart from the grimness of a ruined America - burned out shopping malls, corpses stacked up in heaps by the side of the road, dogs roasted whole and unskinned, grim accounts of the killings brought about by the Voices - there is some pretty direct and horrific violence from those human predators, who are ready and willing to capture, torture, use and kill anybody they take a fancy to.

And, in turn, from Lacey as she is forced to defend herself.

As if that isn't enough, Pilgrim has a Voice....

I just loved this story. Lacey, especially, is a fantastically well realised character and her relationships with Pilgrim and with Alex, a woman they meet on their journey, are well portrayed. That with Alex is especially well written and tender, but the writing is of a high standard overall, whether describing a costly battle, the transition from desert scrub to the greener land by the river, or a magnificent ruined city which Nature is quickly reclaiming.

Here's a scene that readers everywhere will connect with, I think. While on the run, Pilgrim has stopped the team at a library to look for books. He doesn't know which ones, but he'll know them when he sees them .

Lacey is aghast: "'You're kidding me, right? You don't even know which books you're looking for?'"

Pilgrim is relaxed. "The mustiness of old books wafted out to greet him, and he inhaled deeply..."

I think we've all been there...

Todd manages to move between little moments like this, extreme violence, and the developing relationship between the characters without missing a beat. She also begins to drop hints of a bigger purpose behind the Voices - and some of their hosts - which I'm sure will be revealed in future books - something to look forward to!

At times, perhaps, Lacey seems to know a little too much for her age and upbringing - raised from age 9 by her grandmother in an isolated house, she's been sheltered from much of the destruction but also from much of modern life, so I think she is occasionally used to provide context she wouldn't have - but that's a small point really.


Overall, this is a great read and promises to be the start of a wonderful series. A superb debut novel.

Review - The Tourist

The Tourist
Robert Dickinson
Orbit, 20th October 2016
HB, 283pp
I'm grateful to the publisher for an an advance copy of this book.

The future is another country: they do things differently there.

Spens is a tour guide, shuttling visitors around an unnamed northern town in 21st century England. While they spend most of their time in the private "resort" (a domed hab - think of Center Parcs only much more so) to which they've travelled directly, the clients also want to see a bit of the country, fascinated even by mundane trips to the shopping mall or the promise of a minor road accident.

After all, the clients are from the 23rd century. Some way into the 21st there has been a "near extinction event" (NEE) which leaves civilization in a parlous state. Despite the ruinous effect of this - which are implied rather than described: people are afraid of being under the open sky, rain is dangerous, wild animals unknown and life hard - Spens's people have discovered time travel. The book takes this premise and runs with it, bringing in rivalry in the future between the "number cities" - to which Spens is affiliated - and a hostile place known variously as City Two East and Kat. This spills over into espionage and eventually, we may infer, war. It's very hard though to separate what is assumed to be already history (in some sense) by the characters in the book and the consequences of what they actually do.  It reminded me of something I once read, "time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once".

Much of the activity of Spens's people is devoted to recovering caches of vital materials that they've secreted in the 21st, before the NEE, and presumably dont have access to afterwards (for example they rely on adapted tech purchased in the 21st rather than having more advanced versions themselves). It's never clear whether the tourism is actually just a cover for this activity, which is central to the taut espionage thriller which the book becomes when one of Spens' clients goes missing. He has to decide whether or not to report this: his boss consults the archives - patchy records sent back from the 25th for reasons unexplained (the 25th are like that: a bit aloof) - and concludes that, no, he didn't report it - so he doesn't. Thus the thread of reality is spun - this is a relatively simple example of how characters loop back and forward. It's a bit like one of those Stephen Moffat wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey episodes of Doctor Who where events precede causes and you'd value a diagram.

It is a compulsive read, but you have to either keep very focussed or just let it all wash over you. Or both. The book proceeds at a rattling pace, touching on drug trafficking and the deteriorating political situation in the UK with riots against the time travellers and a threatened military response by Spens's people against the past - their past - (is this conflict perhaps what brings on the NEE? Records of that are vague...)

At the centre the espionage plot involves a woman who, in (mostly) alternating chapters, begins (ends? normal tenses hardly serve) in prison back in the future but is then released to carry out a last mission. She, Spens, his 'Safety' Hayek (the security chief at the Resort) and a mysterious chap called Riemann weave in and out, crossing and recrossing each others' paths and setting up and resolving temporal paradoxes until the reader's brain almost begins to bleed. It would be difficult to give more of a plot summary than this because (spoilers aside) you'd have to decide first what order events happen in - and that depends on whose point of view you follow. I did a physics degree and spent a great deal of time working through the paradoxes of relativity - where the order things happen depends on who you ask - and that was hard enough to grasp, without time travel.

I had mixed feelings about all this. The typical conspiracy thriller can be baffling enough but at least you know - or can assume - that there is actually an answer, even if you don't discover it. Time travel brings its own layers of confusion. I've nothing against being confused, being in the middle of a book, thinking "hang on, what just happened?". Indeed, to a degree every book starts like that and many continue that way for most of the story. But for me there needs to be assurance that there are answers and stuff isn't just being rammed in as the author's mood dictates. At times, reading this book, I wondered. I think that in the end Dickinson sticks to the deal, he does explain what's happening and why, and simply leaves a healthy dose of mystery for the reader to take away (the airport scenes, for example, that mysterious sealed box that keeps popping up, and the role of "Geneva"). But your view may depend on your personal threshold for this kind of mystification.

If that all sounds confusing, read the book: it's great entertainment, if you accept the twin premises of time travel and that - it seems - everyone in this book is being manipulated by somebody else and we never quite find out what.

Throughout it all, Spens brings the story a touch of human tragedy. He is I think something of a sad figure. He lost his parents at an early age to an accident - details of which were then suppressed which seems to be standard practice - and wants nothing more than to travel back to the early 19th century to hear Beethoven's music. He falls into the events of this book through no fault of his own, trying to do his job scrupulously (unlike all the puppet masters and players around him) and still performs well as an investigator for Hayek, but he doesn't get any reward and certainly comes no closer to his dream.

A well written, and fun, high-concept thriller - but you might not get on with it if you like things clearcut and neat.