Review: City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Stairs
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 2/10/14
Hardcover, 400 pages

My copy was bought (yes, it was ahead of UK publication date: I think I got lucky...)

Sometimes, as I approach the end of a book, my reading slows. I don't want the experience to end. I want to stay immersed in the world, accompanying the characters. I just want it go on. This was such a book, such a world; these were such characters. Robert Jackson Bennett has created a wholly believable yet utterly strange setting, peopled by diverse, interesting, maddening yet - above all - credible individuals.

The action takes place in the city of Bulikov, on the Continent (the names of people and places on the Continent are vaguely East European: Vohannes Votrov, Vasily Yaroslav, Pitry...) Bulikov was the chief city of the Continent, location of the Seat of the World where the Divinities would meet together. But it - and much of the Continent - was ruined when enslaved Saypur rose up, slaughtered the gods and enforced the Worldly Regulations, which ban even the mention of a divinity, miracle or other supernatural thing. So the Saypuri are hated by the Continentals for erasing their history: and the Saypuri hate and fear the Continentals for their cruel enslavement before the revolt.

This isn't a mouldering, legendary background.  It all happened within living memory: the events that almost every looks back to - from different perspectives - are as real to them (gods included) as Western colonialism or the Cold War to us.  It's a powerful background, which naturally motivates a story of murder, spying and revenge.

A Saypuri historian, resented by the locals for his explorations of Continental history (history forbidden to those who should own it) is murdered. Shara Thivani, secret operative - spy - for the Ministry of Foreign affairs, arrives to investigate. From that moment, the story become a blend of a Le Carré-esque thriller, a theological meditation on human and divine nature, and a techo-thriller (for certain, miraculous values of tech). If that sounds like a jumble, it really isn't.  The story is compelling: Thivani is a marvellous protagonist, experienced, successful, cynical (she exposed corruption at home and has been exiled from Saypur for sixteen years) - and torn. Torn between justice for Saypur and justice for the Continent. Between duty to her illustrious family and to her country. Between her faithless ex-lover and her murder investigation. She's just wonderful, as is her sparring partner, Governor Turyin Mulaghesh, military ruler of the city. Together the two women grumble and clash and work together to face down plots, violence and nameless horrors. It's great fun, moving, and frankly unputdownable.

Confidently, unselfconsciously, the book challenges the whiff of gender and racial prejudice that still haunts corners of the science fiction and fantasy universe. The setting isn't the stereotyped proto-European fantasy world: Saypur's people are brown, not white.  Unremarked on, women fill central roles: the closest we get to an acknowledgement that some may find this strange is the occasional aside (Shara and Sigurd meeting in an alley to hunt for an elusive piece of magic: "Does it only work for men, not women? No, of course not, don't be absurd", or Mulaghesh, grinning as Sigurd strips naked and covers himself in lard before plunging into icy water: "There are times", she says "when I kind of like my job").

The book has a vein of wayward humour. Under its Divinities, the Continent ran by "miracles" - magical tricks and artifacts created by the gods. With no gods left, many of these have stopped working. The rest are outlawed - but by a bureaucratic quirk this means they weren't destroyed, but rather confiscated, catalogued, and stored in vast warehouses (think of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.) So we have lists of items, reading a bit like a handbook for Dungeons and Dragons:

"356. Shelf C4-145. Travertine's boots: Footwear that somehow makes the wearer's strides miles long...

357. Shelf C4-146. Kolkan's carpet: Small rug that MOST DEFINITELY possesses the ability to fly...

358. Shelf C4-146. Glass window. Originally was the holding place of numerous Ahanashanti prisoners, trapped inside the glass. When Ahanas perished, the panes bled for two months - prisoners were never found or recovered. No longer miraculous..."

The book also has darkness. The vision of the "knuckle-man", the "voice under the cloth" with its many jointedness, mockery and voicelessness, was disturbing, as were the visions and actions of some of the fanatics, devotees of dead gods.

The dark centre of the book is, perhaps, the theme of lost history. The Saypuris suppress anything divine (for fear that the gods may return? from a desire to forget their oppression? simply for revenge?) But to do this, they need to know what they're suppressing. So we have the catalogues, the warehouses, the historians.  Shara knows more about the divinities than most Continentals are allowed to. She can say things they're forbidden. In turn, the Continental resistance movements, the religions fanatics, have gaps in their knowledge, so they are effectively following a faith they have made up rather than inherited. This spiritual hole echoes the messed-up geography of Bulikov, broken when the gods died (but unremarked, lived with, because to comment on or recognise it would be to mention the divine, and that's forbidden).  The book is a bit Nineteen Eighty-Four in the way history has been rewritten. And we eventually see that this... contagion, this loss of facts, of truth, doesn't just affect the Continentals - there are things the Saypuri conquerors would rather not know as well.

It's a terrific read, compulsive, persuasive and thought provoking. One of my favourites, so far, this year.  And there's a sequel coming!

Review: Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

Acceptance

Jeff Vandermeer

Fourth Estate, 2/9/14

Hardback, 352 pages

Warning: this review has mild spoilers for the earlier books "Annihilation" and "Authority" - if you haven't read those yet (and why haven't you?) don't read any further.

In the third part of the Southern Reach trilogy, VanderMeer seemed to have set himself an impossible task, both to match the standard of the previous books and to draw the narrative to a close despite having pretty well established his "other" - that baffling Area X - as unknowable, ineffable. It's a sign of just how good the writing is that he manages the latter at all, let alone, as he does, giving new insights into his characters, creating a pacey, gripping story and leaving the reader with a LOT to think about.

This is a more complex book (structurally and thematically) than the other two. "Annihilation" followed a single, disastrous expedition into Area X, a mysterious, impenetrable region somewhere on the southern flank of the US. "Authority" was apparently a more conventional (...for some value of "conventional"...) story of administration and espionage set in the Southern Reach, the organisation overseeing Area X, which documented the attempts by a new Director ("Control") to grasp what exactly was happening. "Acceptance" dots backwards and forwards, now following Control and Ghost Bird returning to Area X after the events of "Authority", now now following the former Director, now going back to Saul, the lighthouse keeper, before the creation of Area X or to the previous Director and her dangerous plan to... well, that would be telling.

All these are enthralling narratives, sparely told. Though much remains baffling and unclear, we learn a lot about what has been happening - Central's brutal attempts to manage the expeditions, to manage the Southern Reach, even, one suspects, to manage reality itself ("[she] has been operated on, reconditioned, broken down, brainwashed, fed false information that runs counter to her own safety, built back up again...") Control's family and their links to Area X are explained as is the role of the "Seance & Science Brigade", even, at one level, the nature of Area X itself. We learn enough to close the narrative as a story, if that's waht we want to do. 

But on another level, these books aren't - at least I don't think they are - so much about "what happens" that as about the challenge of Area X. 

 Faced with this impossible anomaly, this utterly alien infestation, how do we respond? What do we do? How do we cope with the unstated threat, the uncertainty?  In VanderMeer's trilogy, the guiding hand behind much of the "official" response turns out to be Lowry, portayed almost as an evil genius, with his underground bunker, manipulating, hypnotising, seeking, almost, a way to smuggle a weapon into Area X. he is a spymaster, a planner, a bureaucrat using Cold War tools.  Define the tools, perhaps, and define the threat?  But we saw in Authority how that ended. (Or perhaps not - at the end of this book it's far from clear what really happened).

But there are other responses to Area X. We see Saul's, developing even before Area X's existence. We see that of "the biologist" Annihilation (the account of which I found truly moving). And Control's. In the end, I think they do all - differently - find acceptance (except Lowry, we never learn what becomes of him).  That is the point of the story - not how Area X came about (we find out, but I don't think it is particularly significant).  There is a sense in which the "story", the expeditions, are secondary to this group of characters and their responses.  It is, in the end, all a "long con" - VanderMeer writes of "grifters" and "marks", there is an implication that the Southern Reach, the attempts to understand, contain and control Area X are an elaborate deception - even a self deception - on the part of those involved.

This is a haunting book, a laden book, to be read and thought about. It shouldn't be read quickly and will, I think repay rereading (as would the previous volumes). At first I wished all three had been published together - they are a whole - but I'm now glad they weren't, as for me the tempation to read them in one go would have been too great to resist. And they do need to be read slowly and carefully.

This trilogy and deserves to be recognised as a classic.

Review: Extinction Game by Gary Gibson

Extinction Game

Gary Gibson

Tor 11/9/14

Hardcover, 400 pages

I’m grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.

Life is fragile.  In a many-worlds universe, where everything that can happen, does happen, there are so many ways to end civilization

Volcanoes can lob billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, triggering an ice age.  Asteroids or rogue moons can set the world on fire.  Disease can rage, whether natural or created by humans.

Sometimes, the people just seem to disappear.

Jerry Beche has seen all this, and more. It wasn't enough that he was left alive, the last man in the world. He was then recruited by a shadowy Authority as a “pathfinder”, employed to loot those myriad, desolate alternate Earths for weapons, technology and data.  This book is his story, and that of his colleagues, survivors like him, who have proved themselves up to the task. But people like that don’t just do as they’re told, they aren’t good team players.

Gibson is scarily good at conjuring up apocalypses, ways for the world to die, whether natural or the result of human tampering.  As Beche explores these, we gradually learn what happened to his own – our own? How would you tell? – world, what he went through, and what he lost. I’m impressed that Gibson uses Beche's history mainly as backstory - there is enough there to make a novel in itself.  But he is reaching further than just-another-apocalypse.  While the interplay between multiply-iterated global disaster and the rivalries and squabbles of the pathfinders is also striking, there is still much more going on here than there seems at first.  

The pathfinders are a ragged group, truly diverse in ways that science fiction and fantasy are often accused of overlooking (again, Gibson is good at delineating their personalities and backgrounds). This brings conflict with the Authority, which is revealed to have pretty bigoted, narrow-minded views.  The core of the book, then, is a cross between a spy thriller (who is on which side? What even are the sides? Who can Beche trust? Why do they react so strangely to him?) and a kind of John Wyndhamesque, survivalist nightmare.

Exactly what the Authority is up to, where it came from and how it threatens the future of Jerry and the others - all this does becomes clear, slowly.  It is a compelling story, difficult to put down and pretty much action packed throughout. Gibson evokes a deep sense of unease.  Not only is Jerry alone, amongst strangers who – while human – literally come from different worlds to him, but the very premise of the story emphasises the fragility of the Earth and of life on it. 

That’s backed up by what we’re not told.  Mysteries abound.  Why are so many Earths empty, with no sign of what happened to the people?  Is there something out there even more horrible than artificial diseases, than global winter, than the beebrains?  Lots of ends are left loose, and I hope this means Gibson will follow up with more - even though after reading this I'll see all those routine news stories about spreading disease, global warming and possible asteroid strikes in a different light... 

Graham Joyce

This evening I heard the sad news that Graham Joyce had died.  Although I came to his books fairly recently, he'd become an author whose new books I'd always be waiting for.  It was a shock to learn last year that he was ill and, though I never knew him other than as a reader, I am sad at his death:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

So, as an inadequate tribute, here is a review of one of Graham's books, Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Gollancz, 2012).  If you haven't read the book, you should.


A few months ago, a Channel 4 series ("Gods and Monsters") presented by Tony Robinson (of Time Team and Baldrick fame) examined the history of superstition. It told the story of Bridget Clary. In 1895 she was murdered by her husband, who believed she was a changeling, that is, not his wife at all - the real Bridget having been stolen by the fairies. Graham Joyce's novel uses this theme, postulating a similar "abduction" in 21st century England. There is a strong and intriguing opening, when Tara Martin knocks on her parents' door just after Christmas. Tara disappeared 20 years ago at the age of 16, and it was assumed that she was murdered in the mysterious Outwoods. When she reappears, insisting that she has only been absent for six months, and she doesn't seem to have aged a day, there are challenges for everyone - her now elderly parents, her brother Peter who has "grown up" since, and her ex boyfriend, upon whom suspicion fell. The book deals with the consequences of the situation.

Joyce weaves together Tara's own story of her experience (white horse, seductive young man, strange, fey land which she cannot get out of) with a very matter-of-fact account of everyday life for the left behind (work, pubs, children, casual police brutality). He grounds the comings and goings to the mysterious otherworld very credibly in a specific English locality, the Charnwood forest, where three counties meet (so, a border place - good for crossing into the Otherworld) which overlies a geological fault. (Those interested in "Earth mysteries" sometimes speculate that spooky experiences may be linked to the influences of gases and vapours seeping up from below ground, as with the oracle at Delphi. Equally, of course, those "stolen" away were thought to be somehow taken underground).

This is done very well. Joyce creates well drawn and believable characters, and the plotting is excellent: I sat up well past midnight to finish this, I simply couldn't stop till I found out how it would finish (without giving too much away, there's a delicious sense that it might NOT have finished).

The chapter headings recount various scraps of lore concerning "fairies" (though we're advised not to call them that - they don't like it) including the tale of the unfortunate Bridget. I smiled to see Joyce introduce thoughts from William Heaney among these. Heaney, also known as Graham Joyce, was the "author" of Memoirs of a Master Forger and the reference - passing though it is - is appropriate in this book, with its themes of truth and falsehood, and how we judge them. (Bridget died because of the accusation that she had "visited" the fairies, though she says she hadn't: Tara suffers because she claims she has, though nobody will believe her).

In all, this is the best book I've read so far this year.


(Review originally published on Amazon.co.uk, 28 January, 2012.)

Review: The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

This is the second of Cornell’s series featuring James Quill and his team of paranormally aware London police officers – or rather, the fact that there is a second volume means, I suppose, that now there is a series.  “London Falling” certainly deserved a follow up, and this is as good or better.  There is a bit of recapping at the start, necessary because details from the earlier book matter quite a bit here, but Cornell prevents that making the story drag – rather we’re into violent action from the start, with the team racing to stop a supernatural killer who acts very much like Jack the Ripper – except that his victims are not poor women but rich men.

This tales place against a background of cuts, austerity and protest. Even the police are about to down truncheons and strike. London is suddenly full of demonstrators dressed (and masked) as “Toffs” – among whom the killer can slip unnoticed.

As with the previous book, the investigation has Quill’s team – Ross, Sefton and Costain – strained to the limit (or way beyond).  They have the Sight, the ability to see that other, magical London, but they’re not wizards, they can’t control it or protect themselves or others except by applying their policing skills, working methodically and deductively – and putting themselves in the line of fire.  There is a real feeling of danger in this book, of sulphur and brimstone, as the team take risks.  Probably, some of them go too far.  The plot they’re investigating is a heady mix of politics, ancient power, mixed motives (not least from some of the team themselves) and a clash between old and new ways in the magical community.  Cornell holds this together superbly, conveying the sense that there is order to what’s happening, there is a pattern, it’s not just one thing after another, even when events get very bizarre indeed.

It is becoming clear that behind the immediate events of the books there is a deeper story unfolding, involving the Smiling Man who turned up in London Falling.  Something is wrong in London, connected with the absence of the “Continuing Projects Team”, leaving the magical side of things unpoliced.  Quill’s team, answering to the enigmatic Lofthouse, seek to fill this gap, but they don’t know the rules – a tricky situation for police to be in.

It’s a superb story which builds tension and gets harder and harder to put down. I’m looking forward to the next!

Review: "Murder" by Sarah Pinborough

"Murder" is a sequel to Pinborough's Mayhem, and it is a worthy sequel. (If you haven't read Mayhem - and why on earth not? - be warned there are spoilers below for that book, and you should look away now, go and get a copy and read it first).

The earlier book manages to simultaneously about crimes (the Ripper and Thames Torso killings in the 19th century) but not a crime novel, Victorian and dark, but not a gothic pastiche, and horror-laden, but not a Bram-Stoker-a-like. It is also thoroughly modern in sensibility, forging soemthing quite new and I think unique in tone and outlook.

Well, "Mayhem" isn't unique now because Sarah Pinborough has done it again - indeed I think she's surpassed the earlier book, whose hero, Dr Thomas Bond, could seem slightly stilted, compared with his foil, the fantastical Jewish Russian refugee Aaron Kosminski. Here, Bond is more fully realised, more human and very much the centre of the story.

Several years have passed, and the evil that menaced London - which was ended when Bond murdered James Harrington, in league with Kosminski and the mysterious Argentine priest - has faded. Bond has finally lost the air of dread that overtook him, and Juliana, Harrington's widow, is bringing up their son in peace. Bond even has hopes of marrying her, despite the difference in their ages. But the past will not lie. The ripples of Harrington's cursed life spread outwards, and an old friend of his comes calling. Then Pinborough does something very daring, and quite brilliant - while steaming horror slowly cooks in the depths of the book (hinted at by the various press cuttings reporting gruesome discoveries and deaths), on the surface a love triangle plays out with dollops of jealousy, duty and - yes - sensuality which get all mixed up with the horror underneath.

There's no pastiche Victoriana in this book. While absolutely rooted in the time and place described, and convincingly so, the author is happy to use "modern" terms or have her characters behave in "modern" ways where it suits her (and where it suits the story). It might annoy the pedants (what doesn't?) but it works surprisingly well - perhaps, as I said above, even better than in the first book, possible because Bond is here a much more rounded character, and the centre of things. Again, he is forced to confront the possibility of the supernatural - or the alternative, that he's losing his sanity - but there are no easy answers, no Van Helsing to sort things out.

It's a rattling good read, though parts aren't, perhaps, for the squeamish.

Reviews: "The Voices" and "The Axeman's Jazz".

I seem to be following a vein of horror reading at the moment, having been lucky enough to be sent a copy of FR Tallis’s new book “The Voices” by the publisher and to pick up a copy of “The Axeman’s Jazz” by Ray Celestin from Amazon Vine.  (Axeman isn’t really horror, it’s crime, but the steamy New Orleans setting and the slightly surreal nature of the plot give it elements of horror).

Both of those books are reviewed below: to complete the trinity, I’m now reading Sarah Pinborough’s “Murder’ – more horror! – which I’ll report on soon, but it is deliciously scary, sensual and creepy.

FR Tallis’s new ghost story The Voices is set during the notoriously long, hot summer of 1976 – when roads melted, reservoirs dried up and it was impossible to sleep at night under one’s nylon sheets.  Against this background – and amid rumbles of economic failure and national crisis – a small, apparently gilded group of trendy artists suffer their own, more private crisis.

There is Laura Norton, ex-model and trophy wife to the older Christopher. He was an avant-garde musician who found fortune (if not acclaim) writing music for films.  Christopher seems to be getting tired of Laura; she is wondering is there’s more to life than being Christopher’s wife and baby Faye’s mother, and beginning to discover feminism.

Then there’s Simon and Amanda.  Simon, who kept the faith and is now a “serious” modernist composer, a power at Radio 3. Amanda, who retains 60s-ish, hippy leanings. The group face a changing world which they don’t much comprehend: we see Christopher’s agent commend him for not getting involved with that obvious trainwreck of a film, Star Wars and – amusingly, after a scene in which Simon heaps praise on prog rock as a coming movement, there is an uncomprehending encounter with an early punk.

All this is helpful in setting a scene of unease and showing how fragile are the lives – lives of some comfort and ease – which the main characters share.  So that at first, the threat that begins to develop – whether in voices heard over the baby monitor by Laura, sounds recorded on tape by Christopher in his studio or the distress of Faye – is unfocussed, out of shot, so to speak.  Some of the elements may be conventional – the house which has stood empty for years, the strange collection of junk in the attic, the cryptic figure of a stage magician who seems to be important – but Tallis uses them skilfully.  By keeping them mostly in the background and making the centre of the story a very 70s one of infidelity, depression, sexism (that patronising doctor!) he’s able to produce real frights and shocks when the supernatural erupts, as it inevitably does. 

He also cleverly leaves just enough unexplained – we know what has happened, but not quite how or why, and a few mysteries remain.  What exactly does Sue know, and how?  What is the reason for Loxley’s sudden interest in Maybury?  Does somebody, somewhere understand more than poor Laura and Christopher?

This is a book that was hard to put down, great entertainment, with a great sense of reality.

 

The Axeman’s Jazz by Ray Celestin is  debut novel that completely beguiled me.  Set in New Orleans in 1919 it focuses on a real series of murders by a killer who terrorised the city that summer.

Assigned to investigate the killings is Lieutenant Michael Talbot of the city police. Talbot needs a success: he is unpopular in the force, after exposing a corruption racket years before, and his personal circumstances also make him vulnerable.

Also looking into the crimes are Luca d"Andrea, recently released from prison, and Ida, a young secretary at Pinkertons detective agency, who dreams of moving on detective work and hopes that cracking the Axeman case will make her name. Ida is assisted by her musician friend Lewis (later known as Louie) Armstrong.

The three investigations run in parallel, rarely intersecting (although there is some interaction between Luca, working for the all-powerful mafia, and Talbot). Celestin manages to tell three tales in one, as each of the three "detectives" finds a solution of sorts to the deaths - though only we, the readers of the book, get to see the full picture and understand how the various forces at play in New Orleans have combined to create the demon Axeman and set him loose.

It's a compelling story, blending racial prejudice (between white and black, Irish and Italian), political and police corruption, child trafficking and abuse, the legacy of slavery and the machinations of the Mob into a rich mixture of a book. Nobody in this book is wholly innocent - the crimes of the Axeman arise from a corrupt past, but they are manipulated and used by a corrupt present with which it's impossible not to collude. As the city fills with vagrant ex-soldiers back from the Great War, and Prohibition looms, there seems to be no way to release the building pressure that Celestin skilfully evokes. The city is subject to "a system of organised malice" with a degree of racial separation comparable to that of apartheid, and even though Armstrong is applauded wildly when playing in his band on the riverboats or in the clubs, he can be set upon the next night for being in the company of a white woman.

It's a great book, on many levels, and without being over didactic, draws some nice parallels between New Orleans then and now. Perhaps the only respect in which it didn't (perhaps) quite fulfil what I expected was that while the title of the book perhaps hints at some kind of musical aspect to the Axeman's terror, there isn't one. There is a sympathetic and mature exploration of the early life of Armstrong, including a marvellous sequence where his music really catches fire, and there is an episode where, in response to a taunting letter form the Axeman, the desperate citizens "jazz it up" en masse to avoid "getting the Axe". But the rhythm of the murders and the dance of the Axeman himself come from something else entirely, so the music isn't as central to the story as the title might suggest. But that is a small quibble really.

Perhaps the last word should go to the corrupt mayor, speaking after a hurricane has brought chaos to the city: "The Mayor finished his report by promising residents that this type of disaster would never befall New Orleans again". Indeed...