Review: "Mayhem" by Sarah Pinborough

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

"Mayhem" is a book not to be pigeonholed. It has crime, but it's not a police novel. It's set in the later nineteenth century, but is definitely not a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. It has the supernatural, and horror, but it's not trying to evoke Bram Stoker. If there were a space between these for a kind of Victorian-urban-fantasy-detective-noir (emphasis on the noir) this might be it. But it's probably better just to enjoy the fact that Sarah Pinborough's new book is... different.

The book is mainly set in 1888 and 1889, at the time of Jack the Ripper. It features real historical characters (doctors and police who were involved in the hunt for the Ripper) and weaves around real events. But it's not "Ripper fiction". Nor is it (thank goodness) True Crime. Instead, Pinborough has created a background, an atmosphere, a taint, which has infected London, the Ripper murders being one consequence. It is this underlying cause which is the true subject of the story and which Dr Thomas Bond, the police surgeon, investigates.

The narrative mainly follows Bond and Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish Russian refugee whose story begins, in flashback, a few years earlier. (There are a couple of other viewpoints too, whose relevance emerges gradually). Of the two, Kosminksi is written with more verve. He is a fantastical creation, a man who loathes both blood and water and has dreams that foretell the future (he glimpses terrible evil coming to his family and people - historical events of course give the story a very dark context indeed).

Compared to Kosminski, Bond seems flatter, reflecting his semi-official status (and also perhaps also the fact that he was a real person). He does though have his vices, and is increasingly to be found in the opium dens of the East End. At the start this is to escape from sleepless nights, but in time he begins to think that the drug will assist him in hunting down the horror that is behind the "Thames Torso Murders". These were as real as the Ripper killings, and as unsolved, and their investigation is the main focus of the book. It leads Bond to a terrible conclusion, that there is a more than human wickedness behind the Torso killings.

Pinborough is good at evoking the atmosphere of panic as the two sets of crimes continue: the scarcely suppressed hysteria, the Press frenzy, the casting about for someone to blame (whether the police for failing to find the murderer, or suspect foreigners). I think it's one of this book's strengths that in describing it all she avoid any temptation to adopt musty Victorianisms. At one stage she refers to "smog" - language underpinning the sense that what is happening is current, not confined to a distant land of pea-soupers, Hansom cabs and policeman with whistles. This in turn highlights Bond's dilemma: he is a rational scientist, a doctor, in many ways a very modern investigator seeking to apply the science of his day (in one scene he scoffs at a constable who believes that a photograph of the dead woman's eyes will reveal an image of her killer). Yet he is forced to confront the possibility of the supernatural - or the alternative, that he's losing his sanity.

It's all made very real. This is a fine book - I'm pleased to see that there is a sequel coming.

What am I doing here? Why am I Blue Book Balloon?

Not that anyone has asked, but I thought I'd try to explain anyway. 

About ten years ago I started posting reviews on Amazon, and toiling away, I've now passed 250.  Most of them are for books: but a couple of years ago Amazon noticed me and invited me onto their Vine "programme" which offers free stuff for review.  Under the auspices of Vine I have reviewed coffee makers, toothbrush heads and even Sugru - and books: it was through Vine that I discovered the possibility of getting review copies, before the book is published.

I still find Amazon reviewing fun:  you get fairly prompt feedback on whether anyone likes your review, and they have this addictive thing that gives you a rank, which is probably fairly meaningless but can be a wonderful ego boost. 

However, I do worry about Amazon.  If they drive the physical bookshops out of business, it will be harder and harder to get the "real" books I prefer.  And bookshop browsing is so much fun.  So I'm trying to limit what I buy from Amazon and make a point of ordering my books from my local shop.

By the same token I thought I should start putting reviews somewhere apart from (or, if I'm honest, as well as) them.  So far I haven't been posting them all here - I'm still getting used to using Blogger.  (I know that Google's possibly no better than Amazon, but...)

And just to confuse things I also recently found Goodreads.  And my son persuaded me to try Twitter, which turned out to be more bookish than I had expected.  Help - I do actually want to carry on reading books, and all this networking uses up the time so efficiently it's actually rather scary.

Also, since you asked, why "Blue Book Balloon"?  - a name that possibly makes me sound like a travelling Victorian sideshow.

A few years ago I took a photo of a blue balloon, in a blue sky, as it passed over my wife's church on a Sunday afternoon.  It was fairly low and we could hear the gas burners.  I used the picture for my profile on various sites, including Twitter when I started that, and I decided to use it for my Twitter name as well. 
 
It is distinctive, and I've got used to it.  (Though it caused a little confusion among local balloonists - I was contacted by one who had ridden in the actual balloon).

Review: "Bedlam" by Christopher Brookmyre

I have a feeling this is going to divide Brookmyre's fans (again).

It's a full blooded science fiction story, akin to last book but two Pandaemonium rather than the more recent "straight" crime fiction.  Indeed, there's a case for saying that in narrative terms, this book picks up almost where Pandaemonium left off - with a character flung unexpectedly form this world into another reality, albeit that of a violent video game rather than a violent parallel universe.

So begins a breakneck narrative as Ross, a browbeaten Scottish techie with a Dilbertish outlook, tries to find out what has happened and how he can get back to familiar, damp Stirling and his girlfriend Carol. He soon discovers that there's more going on than a simple brain scanner accident, and that events inside and outside the game are threatening its reality: a Corruption is spreading...

It is an exciting story, interspersing chases, combat, philosophy (are we all in a simulation?) and ethical debate (if the simulated inhabitants of a game are sophisticated enough, does that make them human? If so, what rights should they have?) The plot is intricate and, for the first half of the book, pretty baffling, turning on a few unexpected reveals which it would spoil to say much more about. But everything does become clear in the end (perhaps there is a bit too much exposition in the final 20 pages or so) and - no surprise - it turns out to have been very deftly put together.

I enjoyed this book. Brookmyre shows his knowledge of 80s and 90s video games, moving Ross through a succession of different game milieux from first person shooters to platform games to a warped version of The Sims - yet as a non-gamer I never felt left out of baffled. (If I were "Daily Mail" reader, I might have felt got at by one section...)

Philosophically, it felt as though he was joining in an ongoing discussion among Scottish based SF writers about the "simulation hypothesis" and its consequences, coming after books such as Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game and Charles Stross's The Rapture of the Nerds.

In a postscript, Brookmyre hopes readers will find this venture into SF proper worthwhile - so do I, because it would be a shame if there were no more like this.

Review: "The Chosen Dead" by MR Hall

I should declare at the outset that I am a fan of M R Hall's series of books featuring Jenny Cooper, the Coroner for Severn Vale (and also that the publisher kindly gave me a copy of this book to review).

Cooper is one of those awkward types - not unfamiliar in crime fiction - who uses every last bit, and more, of the licence allowed by her job to investigate deaths that the powerful would prefer were quietly forgotten, always getting into deep trouble but generally finding out the truth despite everything.

At the start of this, Hall's 5th book, she has, though, calmed down a bit.  After confronting traumatic events in her own past, she no longer needs sessions with Dr Allen, or anti anxiety drugs, to cope with life, and she is also trying to mend her relationship with her son.

That's something I think that the fans of Hall's dauntless coroner had been hoping for - I know I have - given that in the previous four books she has been variously arrested, threatened, suspended from her job and had her troubled past, and her mental condition, used to try and control her.  And even when things are going well, there is always the odious Simon Moreton at the Ministry of Justice, her status-seeking consultant ex husband David and various families desperate for the truth.  Jenny's only support has often been her officer, Alison.  It soon becomes clear, though, in this book that Alison has problems of her own and this time she can only give limited help as Jenny gets caught up in another quest - I don't think this is too strong a word - not for justice, but simply for the truth - the  only thing she can give a bereaved family.  After a young girl does of meningitis Jenny sets off again, inspired by, of all people David, to expose, if she can a hospital cover up.  At the same time she is investigating the perplexing suicide of an aid worker, recently returned from Africa.

Of course, more emerges.  Of course, Jenny goes after the facts like an angry terrier, and of course, odium descends on her from assorted smug Government agencies who would prefer a more nuanced presentation of the facts (or perhaps, a more nuanced presentation of a few facts).

And as we have come to expect, even when she doesn't have a clue what is happening, Jenny digs away anyway, following every lead, reckless of the consequences, ignoring - pushing away - anyone who tries to stop her.  That may sound like the template for many a crime novel, but what sets Hall's series apart is Jenny herself - a magnificent protagonist, well portrayed, infuriating, deeply human, brave, intense.  And she never gives up, to a degree that makes the book painful to read at times, times when I found myself (nearly) wishing that Jenny would ease off, turn the whole thing over to the proper authorities, get in a pizza and a bottle of wine and give herself a quieter life. And throughout this she's berating herself for being a bad mother or accusing herself
of being cowardly (as if!)

In the end, Cooper unravels a chain of events stretching from Eastern Europe at the fall of the Berlin Wall to modern Africa to a 1980s biotech start in the US, and, finally, to Bristol.  She does what she has to do to get answers, and there is a cost.  Might there actually have been fewer deaths if Cooper had stood back and let others take over?  By the end I'm afraid some relationships may have been broken beyond fixing, and that that will lead to more anguish and guilt for Cooper.  We'll see.

This book has great verve (only slowing, perhaps, during a late stretch of exposition in the courtroom), a likeable, exasperating, central character, a disturbing and all too convincing premise and a real sense of danger.  It's a worthy sequel to the previous Jenny Cooper books, possibly even a bit pacier than they were, and a thoroughly good read.  Strongly recommended.

MR Hall
"The Chosen Dead"
Macmillan, 31 January 2013
ISBN: 9780230752030
 

Review: Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

"Alif the Unseen"

G Willow Wilson

ISBN 978 0 85789 566 0

429pp

Corvus, London

This is a magnificent debut novel by G Willow Wilson.  It is, though, difficult to pigeonhole.  It is a fairy story, but also a story of revolution, a cyberthriller, and a love story.

The Alif of the title (not his real name) is a hacker living in a nameless but authoritarian city state on the Arabian Gulf.  Alif hires his skills to anyone who will pay, but especially to political and religious rebels across the Middle East.  However, he and his comrades are steadily being hunted down by the Hand,  the almost godlike tool of State security.  And Alif’s love life is in turmoil as his girlfriend is destined to marry someone else.

Though a little slow to take off, the story really gets going when Alif acquires an ancient book, the Alf Yeom or Thousand and One Days.  Everyone seems to want this book, including the Hand, who wants to use it to devise new coding methods to trap the rebels.  But fairytale books are perilous and the danger of reading them is that you write yourself into the story.

In rollercoaster action Alif goes on the run and becomes involved with the djinn, mercurial and magical fairylike beings who are, like him, “unseen” by the mundane world.  Can he tell what is real and trustworthy from what is demonic and deceitful? 

This is an exciting story which brings to life a magical setting very different from the more typical European-flavoured background of much fantasy, weaving in a topical background of the Arab Spring and creating some wonderful incongruities, including an efreet (a sort of spirit) which employs Alif to fix its anti-virus, a pious vampire and an American convert whose bad Arabic is rendered as somewhat “‘Allo, ‘allo” style English.

It’s something rather different, very fresh and immense fun.

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

Review: The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

The Apocalypse Codex

Charles Stross

Orbit, 416 pp

ISBN 9780356500980 

I find it difficult to review the Nth book in a series, where N >> 2. Genuinely review, that is: unless the series goes off the boil, you can be reasonably sure it will appeal to those who have read the N – 1 earlier books, but also that as N increases, the books will mean less and less to newcomers, who should instead to be directed to Book 1 for orientation.  Make that into a template and you can speedily review a series – and I suspect there are reviewers out there who have done this, consciously or not.

Well, that doesn’t work for Charles Stross’s Laundry series. Each book in the series gives his readers something new and distinctive, so while long term fans will enjoy “The Apocalypse Codex”, the latest instalment, that’s not because it is more of the same but rather the exact opposite. 

While the earlier books were each written under the inspiration of a different thriller writer, in the latest, he doesn’t so much adopt a style as borrow a character: BASHFUL INCENDIARY, codename for one of the lead characters, is modelled on the heroine of a long running newspaper cartoon series (can you guess who?).  Basically Stross sets her loose to bamboozle, assist and exasperate his long suffering IT manager-turned-spy, Bob Howard, who is now being groomed for the Senior Civil Service by the British occult service, the Laundry.  (Don't do it, Bob!  Please!)  Bob is however more confident in this book than any of the previous ones and pretty much gives as good as he gets.

Unlike, especially, the first two books in the series there is more of a plot arc developing here.  The Laundry exists to counter threats of the Lovecraftian variety, and the day is fast approaching when the stars come right, the Sleeper will awake, and the Great Old Ones return – not a consummation devoutly to be wished, unless you’re a crazed cultist, or a follower of a heretical Christian sect who has mapped Lovecraft’s eschatology onto a dodgy template of what might happen in the End Times.  A sect that sees a new potentially Prime Minister as helpful in furthering its aims…

I really enjoyed this book. While to a degree more straightforward than the earlier books – more of a plot rollercoaster, fewer of wheels-within-wheels – it has the same convincingly realised world as them, the same sardonic Bob humour, and is peppered with the usual SF and IT allusions.  I particularly smiled at the running joke whereby (Bob’s counterparts in the US equivalent to the Laundry are continually referred to as the Nazgûl.  We also learn more about the real nature and history of the Laundry, and about Bob’s apparent future role in it as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN approaches.  Most of all, it’s a really good story.

In fact, there’s only one part of my standard template for reviewing a Laundry book that I can use here: the standard grumble that there is no UK hardback edition…

Review: "Railsea" by China Miéville

Railsea

China Miéville

Macmillan

384 pp

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

Most of Miéville’s recent books have worked out the consequences of a big, central idea – two cities in one place in The City and The City, an alien race learning to lie in Embassytown, the city of what London rejects in UnLunDun.  Railsea follows that with… well, a railsea.

You might think that the point of a railway is that the trains go in, more or less, one direction.  But imagine the surface of the Earth, in the far future, being covered in a dense mesh of intersecting lines, looping back on themselves, switching and splitting and splitting again.  A railsea, on which, (with enough skill at working the points) you can travel more or less anywhere.

Upon a sea like that, what might you find?  Island nations, with teeming ports? Ruthless pirates, as merciless as any in Treasure Island?  A captain, consumed by the hunt for a great beast, like Ahab in Moby-Dick?  Desert islands?  Explorers?  Treasure hunters?  The fleets of many nations? Hunters of salvage (whether arche-salvage, nu-savage or alt-salvage)? Wreckers? Really, a boy like Sham, setting out on his first voyage as assistant doctor aboard the moletrain Medes, might encounter anything.

Miéville portrays the railsea so well, using such twisted, yet concrete language, bristling with his own invented rail jargon, that as you read you can feel the beat of wheels on the rails and see the distant horizons, the dangerous knots of lines and treacherous, the unmarked gauge changes that his characters negotiate.  And he makes them real, as well – Sham, the Captain with her philosophy, Sham’s crewmates, the strange Shroake siblings.

Like them, Miéville speculates on where the railsea came from, and how it persists.  In Sham’s world, people are inclined to attribute it to the old gods, such as That Apt Om, and the repairwork to mysterious angel trains.  Nobody really wants to get to the bottom of things, just to make a living.  But sometimes, one doesn’t have a choice…

This is an excellent book, which I think will appeal to Miéville’s different groups of followers – a story of adventure, more straightforward than Emassytown or City and the City, but more focussed and (even) better realised than UnLundun.