#Review - Day Zero by C Robert Cargill

Day Zero
C Robert Cargill
Gollancz, 20 May 2021
Available as: PB, 304pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN(PB): 9781473212817

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Day Zero via Netgalley to consider for review.

Spoiler alert - this book is a prequel and my review assumes you have read the earlier book.

Day Zero is a prequel to Cargill's Sea of Rust, published in 2017, which was set 30 years after a robot uprising - and 15 years after the death of the last human. Day Zero takes us back to the eve of the apocalypse, focussing on a suburban US family comprising mother Sylvia, father Bradley and child Ezra.  The latter is cared for by Pounce - Nanny Pounce - a robot designed to resemble a tiger.

I recognised the background to the uprising from Sea of Rust - controversy over freed robots establishing their own town, the fury of rednecks and pretend Christians, and eventual conflict. While it's set, perhaps, 100 years in our future, the topical references are here and have only sharpened since 2017: the violent hooligans are referred to as "red hats", and there is the same parallel drawn between the condition of the robots and that of enslaved people as was present in the earlier book but I think was much less immediate because that was set further in the future and the humans were done with. 

The parallel is I think particularly apposite here because we see liberal Bradley and, especially, Sylvia, in the full pomp of their hypocrisy. They are following events from the inauguration of Isaactown (the robots' city) cheering on the free robots and deprecating the red hats - while still owning and commanding Pounce and household robot Ariadne, and making no bones about what ownership means - Pounce's box is still stored away, waiting for the day when Ezra no longer needs him. I would liked to have seen this tension explored further, but Cargill cuts it short and takes a very different turn with the plot once things get violent, giving us instead almost continual action through the final two thirds of the book as Pounce seeks to defend Ezra from bloodstained, insurrectionary bots.

While that part of the book has its own philosophical angle to which the fast paced narrative occasionally returns - is Pounce doing this from real choice or because of programming? - it is more nodded to and not explored in much depth, certainly not the same depth as the question, in Sea of Rust, about the sense of responsibility and even guilt felt by the robot protagonists and their dilemma about joining a super AI collective (again, hinted at here but not central). 

Instead, we essentially get a series of combats, escapes and duels involving Pounce and his eight year old charge as they seek some kind of safety amidst a world gone to pieces. That is all very well done, and it's definitely a compelling read, even if you hold in the back of your head the fact that by the time of Sea of Rust, all the humans were dead, which seems to make whatever happens here moot. There is though  lots of tension and peril, and the immediate task of survival allows for plenty of drama.

It didn't though, for me, carry quite the ethical heft of Sea of Rust, and its nature as a prequel, leading to a known state, rather took the emotional heft out as well. Great fun to read, and I would certainly look at another book set in this world, but I think it could have been a lot more.

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

Review - The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

The Girl in Red
Christina Henry
Titan Books, 18 June 2019
PB, 363pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of The Girl in Red.

The Girl in Red is another of Christina Henry's twisted takes on fairytales and childhood stories, following her treatment of Alice, Peter Pan (in Lost Boy) and The Mermaid. Like the latter, it's more rooted in the actual world than in story, though rather than a magic-tinged world it is a disturbed, post-apocalyptic version. The disease known as The Cough has raged, slaughtering millions and leaving terrified, scattered communities and families to their own resources - and the mercies of their neighbours.

Against this backdrop, Red, a woman in her early twenties has to take a journey from her middle American home into the woods to find (of course) her grandmother's house. But while these may not be innocent woods peopled by honest woodcutters, nor is she naive and trusting. In some ways Red seems to have been preparing for this journey all her life. She has her pack ready, laden with just the things she'll need. She has watched enough horror films to know the rules ("don't split up") and she believes that if she does things just so - she may, just may, survive.

It was fun reading such a conscious, knowing take on a familiar story. Yes, Red wears a scarlet hoodie and she worries about "wolves" - which stand for the whole gamut of dangers, from actual animals to ticks, infected water, hunger, and damage to her prosthetic leg. But she also recognises that the greatest risk isn't from nature, or from the catastrophe that has destroyed civilisation, but from the behaviour of people - specifically, of men - variously portrayed here as lawless neighbours given licence by the times to act out their darkest desires, crazed militias which kill any man they find and take the women children away and rogue fragments of the Army.

There are good reasons why Red carries an axe...

There is lots of trauma here, and Henry is very good on the psychological reaction of a young woman alone to all of it - her practicality on the one hand, her coping (or not) with what she has to do on the other. Told in jumps between a "before' and an "after" the story makes clear that there have been losses, but only gradually reveals exactly what and how. It's a compelling, action-filled and fast moving story, to be read in a single sitting because there's no easy place to pause and rest. Like Red, we have to keep moving on.

It is I think very much a story of growing up. While Red is an adult she has attended a local college rather than the more prestigious school she could have gone to. This is put down to her mother's somewhat smothering attitude, her doubt about whether Red will cope away from home, but there seems to be a sense in which it has still kept Red - fiercely independent though she is - a bit helpless. It's not that she can't do stuff, it's just that people won't listen. Everything would be fine if everyone else would just listen to her. Never having lived alone she hasn't had a chance to learn that sobering lesson of adulthood - sometimes it just isn't "all right".

Sometimes it's nobody's fault.

And you have to keep on going.

I found this a fascinating, character-centred book. Other stuff is happening - The Cough, and an even greater threat that perhaps sat a little uneasily with the rest of the story - and we do learn a bit about all that, but it remains secondary, which feels right. This isn't a heroic story of humankind saving itself. Rather the drama here is localised, close-up and personal. And Red is a splendid character, annoying at times but well able to carry this enthralling and terrible story. I also loved the Shakespearean allusions!

I would strongly recommend this book, and I have a little bit of hope that there may be a sequel, as the story does close on what we might guess - from the original tale - is a point far from the end. No sign at all of anyone living happily ever after...

For more information about the book, visit the Titan website here. To buy it, try your local bookshop - or from Hive Books who support some local shops. It's also available for preorder from Blackwell's, Waterstones and Amazon.

Review: The Fireman by Joe Hill

Image from www.gollancz.co.uk

The Fireman
Joe Hill
Gollancz, 7 June 2016
HB, 752pp
Source: e-copy via NetGalley (and I have bought a copy as well).

Well.

Sometimes it's hardest to review the books you liked most. If a review is dissecting, examining and appraising a book, then finding one that is perfect, wonderful, awesome in every way is rather tricky. What can you say other than wonderful, awesome, perfect in every way?

But that doesn't get blogpost written and - rightly - won't get people to pick up the book and read it, which they should. (Unless they're so impressed with my judgement that they just, you know, read everything I recommend. I suspect there are very few folk like that).

So. In The Fireman, Hill describes an apocalypse. it's not post-apocalyptic because the terrible thing, the disease, the 'scale, is still happening and civilization is degrading. Degrading gracefully, but degrading all the same. We are, then, in John Wyndham country, seeing things begin to fall apart as in The Kraken Wakes or The Day of The Triffids. And indeed Hill nods to this - the camp that our hero, Harper, flees to and spends much of the book in, is Camp Wyndham. (There are nods to other authors too: a boat called the Maggie Atwood, for example).

This isn't just a superficial matter of setting. Much of Wyndham's writing is more about how we should respond to apocalypse - how we will go on - than mere SFnal musing about how it might occur. He also explores themes of development: how those altered by the disaster may be the next stage in human development (The Chrysalids). Hill takes these themes a long, long way indeed.

It is the present, or the near future. Dragonscale is spreading, a fungal infection that leads sufferers to spontaneously combust in response to stress. Put a bunch of them together and you may get a chain reaction. The fires thus started seem unnaturally fierce and are devastating swathes of the US North East. (And the rest of the world, of course, but that's where this story happens).

The threat to civilization is therefore double - not only the loss of people, but destruction and chaos caused by the fires. Or triple: the fear and mistrust sets neighbour against neighbour, with vigilante squads out to kill the infected. Not the least of the subtexts to this nook - indeed it's a glaringly obvious theme that you really can't miss - is the quick rise of a lynch mob mentality, powered by frothing mouthed religious broadcasters, misogynists and crazed millenarians. With scenes of heaped burning corpses, of prisoners marched to be slaughtered on promises of being safeguarded, of "friendly" neighbours denouncing others, of frantic and bewildered refugees, there are obvious Holocaust parallels, as well perhaps as a warning that "it CAN happen here" which tap into real fears given the direction many countries currently seem to be going. If Wyndham's stories, written in the decades following the second world war, generally (though not always) emphasised the need for a rational, adaptible approach to apocalypse which would (generally) triumph over those wielding sheer force and power, Hill takes a different tack, showing just how vulnerable we all are to a self appointed Messianic leader.

The book focusses on two main characters - Harper, a nurse who, for most of the story is (increasingly) pregnant and Nick, a deaf child. The Fireman of the title is a commanding figure who - at least until the end - is more notable by his absence (it's explained eventually: he has a particular fire he needs to keep burning, but it would still be good to see more of him. We see more than we'd like, on the other hand, of Harper's vile husband Jakob, who eventually teams up with the Cremation Crew to hunt down Harper and her allies). Harper is strong, resilient, quick thinking - and infected with the 'scale. Most of her focus is on surviving long enough to give birth, and on making a safe life for her child: she assumes she won't to see the baby grow up. Nick, though a child, is haunted by the loss of his mother. He and The Fireman have a great deal in common, as becomes clear through the book, and their destiny - and those of a few others - seems to be entwined with the fate of the 'scale itself.

Many are burned by the 'scale. Others learn ways to control it in frightening sessions of groupthink whose bonding seems to prevent it form burning. Still others - and The Fireman is one - seem to learn to live with it. But that is a rare and dangerous gift which Nick's mother, Sarah, died trying to master.

I really can't praise this book too much. There is so much in it to love. The end of civilization - doomed both by damage from the scale and by the vile hatreds this unleashes. Harper's determination not to survive - she doesn't believe she can - but to preserve love, in the form of her baby (a common theme with Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven). The moral ambiguity: with the best of intentions (...from most...) the society that tries to build itself at camp Wyndham contains the same seeds of corruption as the world that the Infected have fled. (The dynamics and subtle politics of the camp itself, with frequent allusions to Watership Down, would be quite enough of a theme for many writers). The sheer length - over seven hundred pages of compelling, page turning story. Even the slower parts of this book are enough to make one's hair stand on end.

Throughout the story, there is foreshadowing of worse to come. No refuge, no safety. Any respite is temporary with Hill often warning us that an occasion of solace will never be repeated, two characters will not see one another again or some plan will be fruitless. Before reading The Fireman I'd have scoffed at this device  - isn't it a tool of second rate melodrama? But Hill makes it come good, underscoring the peril his characters are in from start to finish. He even uses allusions to his other works to emphasise the point (not giving details, you'll have to spot for yourself).

Yet it isn't a bleak book. There is love here, redemption, self-sacrifice, all blazing away like the brightest of flames. There are real, true characters (I don't insist on always having characters in books that I can "relate to" - I think that's just silly - but finding some truly wonderful, absorbing characters in a story is a real joy). Hill's imagining of the ashfields, the searing destructive beauty of the fires, the glory of snow or rain, is just triumphant writing.

You see the problem I have? It is just hard not to gush about this book. I loved his last, NOS4R2, but with The Fireman he has turned the heat up several hundred more degrees and the result is, simply, breathtaking.

Review: Nod by Adrian Barnes

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a review copy of Nod.

At first sight this book is (post)apocalyptic fiction in the classic vein, meaning, of course, John Wyndham. We are introduced to the world as it is shortly before a catastrophe. Our narrator, Paul, and his partner Tanya then witness the change and are soon in a new world, battling for survival - and their greatest challenge isn't the disaster itself but the hostility of other survivors, who have not coped with the catastrophe so well. The immediate task, then, is to clear away those unfortunates and begin to rebuild the world, after which we see how all will, eventually, be well.

The book certainly works on that level.  It doesn't, perhaps, deliver quite the sense of reassurance I suggest above - which is one clue that there is more going on here than you might expect.

The disaster that Paul and Tanya are affected by is a worldwide loss of the ability to sleep. A small number can still sleep, but they are drawn into increasingly compulsive dreams of golden light - from which, eventually, they do not wake.

For the first day, the lack of sleep is a joke, or a mild irritant although “Brazen heads” on the TV news spread alarm as ever.

After a second night without sleep, those who can't sleep - the "Awakened" - begin to resent and later to hate the "Sleepers”.

After several nights, the Awakened become delusional, paranoid and dangerous. After a few weeks more they can be expected to die - but Paul doesn't have the luxury of just waiting: Tanya is an Awakened, he is a Sleeper, they have taken in an orphaned child, Zoe, and they are surrounded by wily, driven Awakened who believe that a drink of a Sleeper's blood will cure them...

Then the book gets really weird. Paul, who narrates the story, is an etymologist. He writes not-so-popular books on word origins, while Tanya brings in the money. In a classic Wyndham apocalypse the main protagonist would be a scientist or practical sort and we'd get a rationalistic take on what happened: here it's all about the words. Paul comes to believe that the wakefulness is related somehow to the capacity for belief, mediated by the use or not of words: and that his books, which are a graveyard of lost or nearly lost terms, have somehow highlighted things, concepts, that disappeared - or almost disappeared: perhaps they went into a dreamworld from which people have now awakened. Some of these terms are defined throughout the book and used as chapter headings: so "Admiral of the Blue", a term for a blood-stained butcher, is the title taken on by a leader of a cult of the Awakened who wants to use Paul as a puppet prophet.

While that's not a cause and effect explanation of events it's as much of one as we get, and it informs both Paul's approach and that of the crazed cult who try to hunt him down. Whether you feel the accompanying digressions into what I can only call wordiness (writing both about words and meaning and employing thick barrages of the things to illustrate themselves) advance or delay the story will depend, I think, on how wedded you are to that Platonic ideal of the apocalyptic.

For myself, I found them slightly jarring at first but then, as Barnes gets into his flow, I quickly saw that they made a strange kind of sense. In fact, the book proved to be a refreshing change, focussing on the characters' responses to the situation they're in (and not just in the sense of recording their bewilderment at what they have lost - though it does do that) and the changes it brought about in them, rather than on the mundane details of finding food, water and shelter.

The book also, then, works on a deeper level. Those changes to Barnes' characters don't just appear on a blank slate which pops up Day 1 of The Disaster: they're actually edits to complex stories which occurred before the book started and glimpses of which he shows us (chiefly the background of Paul and Tanya). Similarly, the world that's plunged into chaos by the loss of sleep wasn't perfect before; large parts of it resembled what Vancouver soon becomes: so in that sense the events here are, truly, an awakening into a reality that was already here.

In the end this is a book that gives the reader a lot to think about.

It isn't always an easy read (and there are some gruesome events in here) but it is a very rewarding one.