Review - Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri

Empire of Sand
Tasha Suri
Orbit, 15 November 2018
PB, 432pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of this very impressive book.

In this, her debut novel, Tasha Suri draws a convincing world, a vast Empire sustained by chanting mystics who have bound the gods themselves with their prayers. A land of spirits - daivas - and dreamier. A land of cruelty and absolute power. It's peopled with real, convincing characters who are caught up in chains of privilege, prejudice and birth. And it's a world where there is real peril, both physical and spiritual - what if the price of saving the world is engaging in heresy, in blasphemy, becoming what you hate? Here, vows and contracts are made into real, tangible forces which constrain actions and compel obedience - and have consequences.

Mehr is a privileged young woman, daughter to the Governor, given everything she needs - except for freedom, except for a mother. Loved by her father but kept safe in the palace, hated by her stepmother Maryam, she is one of the despised and hated Amrithi, persecuted by the Empire her father serves and safe only so long as her secret is hidden.

But with jealous Maryam watching it's only a matter of time before Mehr's stubborn  attachment to the forbidden rites of her mother's people will lead her into trouble...

This fantasy novel was like a breath of fresh air (well, hot desert air). It's a world away from fur clad barbarians, dark lords and chainmail, instead cleverly showing the dilemma of a conquered nation, an outcast race. In that sense I was reminded somewhat of Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in another, I saw the same dilemma of an apparently privileged person, a ruler of sorts, as in Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan - which is apposite because Mehr, like Tenar, finds herself with a role in a dreadful temple, trafficking with old powers and in great danger.

The book has a complex heart, with Mehr genuinely torn; between the man she's been made to marry but is coming to love, the clan she has never known, never been part of, the woman who could have been her mother, and her missing friend, Lalitha. Oh, and fear for what the ruthless powers of the Empire - including the priest Maha - may do to her family if she doesn't submit. Mehr is in a truly terrible bind, with no-one to turn to but her husband Amun - who is himself enslaved to the Maha and unable to help her.

It's a truly exciting book, taking one from the depths of despair to a sense of hope as Mehr tries to salvage something - anything - form the wreck of her privileged, soft life; whether the safety of her father and sister, a little bit of friendship in the grim temple, or the joy of performing the ancient rites of her people under the very noses of their enemies. But all this seems vain, and hope drains away - the Dreamfire is coming and it may consume Mehr as it has others.

This an assured debut, a riveting and thought provoking book written from a woman's perspective, that of Mehr, a truly memorable hero who may feel despair but who will never give up. While she is, in various ways, controlled by men around her (because they have power, because they have tricked her, or because of the laws and customs of the society) there's never any doubt who is at the centre of  the story. Mehr's father may have great power but is absolutely under the thumb of the Emperor. The Maha has great spiritual and magical resources but is dead inside. Against them is a gallery of glittering and complex women characters - whether allies or enemies of Mehr's - who really drive this story along. But I'd also mention Amun, who shows a distinctive strength is respecting Mehr's autonomy despite the vows that bind him.

I'm delighted to see from the interview included at the end that there will be more from Suri about this world. There's clearly a lot still to explore and I want to read about it all soon!

You can buy Empire of Sand from your local independent bookshop here via Hive, or from Waterstones, Blackwell's or Amazon.

Review - Treason of Hawks by Lila Bowen

Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

Treason of Hawks (The Shadow, 4)
Lila Bowen (Delilah S Dawson)
Orbit, 18 October 2018
PB, 371pp

I bought my copy of this book from Waterstones in Oxford.

With Treason of Hawks, Bowen brings to a close a truly remarkable sequence of books. Starting with Wake of Vultures and continuing with Conspiracy of Ravens and Malice of Crows (links to my reviews of the earlier books), she has documented the story of, first, the girl Nettie Lonesome, an orphan living in virtual slavery on a ranch presided over by the drunken man she calls Pap and then of the man Rhett Walker, who is also The Shadow, avenger of wrongs and at times, a great bird. As the series has progressed we've seen Rhett grow and develop, take on new challenges and, most of all, fight - both to overcome the monsters that threaten him and his friends, and to own and transcend his own past

Most of all, he has struggled with his relationship with Sam, finally finding love and a sort of happiness - which was thrown into terrible jeopardy in Malice of Crows.

Set in the lawless wastes of Durango Territory, a sort-of version of the Wild West that would seem familiar if it wasn't crawling with vampires, Lobos, Chupacabras and even carnivorous rabbits, the books have taken Rhett on a bewildering tour of ranger outposts, rail camps, cursed towns and abandoned missions. It's a breathtaking world that Bowen creates (ably assisted by Tim Paul's glorious map), one full of wonders (some never explored in the books), terrors and riddles.

Treason of Hawks continues right where Malice of Crows left off with Sam bleeding to death and Rhett in despair. And that note of darkness continues with what is really nonstop action, Rhett seemingly at the mercy of a mysterious and implacable enemy, desperate to defend the little family that he has build up. In many ways I think this is the darkest of the books, Rhett having to confront not only the unexpected weakness of the Shadow to protect and guide him, and malice and strength of his opponent, but also his own nature.

Rhett has, though all his adventures, been fixated on the idea of manliness. He worries about what he, as a man, should do and tends to scorn women and girls (at one point in this book he more or less claims not to know about the daily things that need to be done to make the ranch work - mainly women's work). Here, that attitude is challenged, as is the alarmingly high casualty rate among those who follow him. Monsters they may be, invulnerable to most dangers, but immortal they;re not - and Rhett begins to lose people.

The result is that - not for the first time - he has to question everything: who he is, what he has been, his heritage as a Native person, his ability to defend those he loves. As everything seems to be going wrong, what can he hold onto?

I have loved this series and adored Rhett as a character, and it is painful to see what Bowen puts him though here. Authors truly are monsters! But what happens also feels right. Durango is a brutal crucible for a man - or for anyone - to be formed in, rife with injustice, with persecution of both the Native population and the monsters, with Rhett's beloved Durango Rangers far from being the angels of justice that he imagined. (In fact coming to terms with this fact is one of his biggest challenges). In the course of these books we've seen slavery, murder and torture and there is no tidy resolution to that  - the forces behind it are too big, too strong, for resistance.

But much can be done and the book does focus on the power of love, friendship and kindness even in the face of such evils. It is in the end a quietly triumphant story, despite the losses and tears.

I'd strongly recommend this series, if you haven't read them, and if you have I'm happy to be able to report that Bowen tales the series out on a real high.

The whole thing is a fabulous achievement and I'm so glad to have read these books.

Lila Bowen kindly answered some questions when the first two books were published in 2016. You can read the interview here.

Review - Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Middle England (Rotters' Club, 3)
Jonathan Coe
Penguin, 8 November 2018
HB, 421pp

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

Middle England is a return to characters Coe introduced in The Rotters' Club (which followed their lives as teenagers in 70s Birmingham) and returned to in The Closed Circle (focussing on the years of Blairite pomp at the beginning of the century). Opening in 2010 with the run-up to the General Election and continuing to Autumn 2018 (i.e. now!) this is very much Coe's Brexit novel, suitably titled as an enquiry into England's (not Britain's) character and ghosts - literally, a "condition of England novel".

That makes the book very contemporary (except where, I imagine due to publishing deadlines, it's not able to take in the latest developments in the unfolding story - such as the criminal investigation into the Leave campaign which would have fitted very well with the final third of the book). Thankfully, it's not a moment-by-monent account and the accent is very much on the response and behaviour of Coe's usual wide cast of characters, muddling along with their lives as they always have.

Revisiting the world of those earlier books also means a return to what are for me some beloved characters, people I really feel I've got to know. Central here is Benjamin Trotter, with his love of music, and his sister Lois, still - forty years on - haunted by her experience of one of the Birmingham pub bombings. We also meet Lois's daughter Sophie, and Doug, the radical journalist who married a wealthy heiress and has a daughter, Coriander, who despises him. And many more. Coe has a very good technique for handling his characters - we dip in and out of lives, sometimes skipping months or a year, sometimes following a particular incident or series of events (Sophie's cruise to the Baltic, delivering lectures on the history of art to a boatload of pensioners; Doug's meetings with Nigel, the baffling Assistant Deputy Director of Government Communications under the Cameron government). It's a bit like throwing a handful of leaves into the stream to help picture the flow - in their encounters with students, friends, enemies, family and workmates we get a cross section of, well, Middle England.

There's Colin, Benjamin and Lois's father. At the start of the book, their mum Sheila has just dies and it's clear that Colin will never recover from that. But as the years pass, he does;t just mourn, he broods, over how the country has changed - whether it's immigration ('I don't think I heard a word of English spoken on the way here'), loss of industry or "political correctness" (a common complaint of characters here, at least those of a Brexitish turn of mind).

There's Helen, Sophie's mother-in-law, who astounds and shocks Sophie by harking back to Enoch Powell (but of course Sophie doesn't challenge this: a long and awkward pause on the car journey ensures).

There's Charlie, a long-lost friend of Benjamin's, who's trying to make a living as a children's entertainer while supporting his girlfriend Yasmin and her daughter Aneeqa.

Through the comings and goings, crossed paths and life events, Coe weaves a picture of a deeply uneasy country taking a long look at itself and deciding it doesn't like what it sees. There is a degree of rage, perhaps the realisation of loss of privilege and the frustration is pushed this way and that, finally to be vented on  23 June 2016. There is also - through the subplot with Nigel - the story of vain and stupid politicians who didn't realise, or chose not to see, what they were unleashing. There is nostalgia (a golf club that seems fixed in the 50s) and - Coe has a gift for portraying this - the little nuances of English racism played out in (mainly) everyday moments, almost gone before they're spotted and rarely or never the occasion of any rebuke.

Wrapping round the book are the words of a folk song, credited to Shirley Collins, a haunting ballad telling of lost good times and diminished circumstances ("Adieu to old England, adieu/ And adieu to some hundreds of pounds/ If the world had been ended when I had been young/ My sorrows I'd never have known") . Combined with Benjamin's taste for the elegiac in music and some wistful passages towards the end looking back to his and Lois's childhood ("Beacon Hill. The landscape of his own childhood. Tobogganing in the winter...") and of course the part of the country - the east Midlands - where much of the story is set, there is an almost Housman-like sense of nostalgia and of a lost world.  Coe punctures this by having Benjamin point to this as, in a sense, nostalgia for a world that never was but he also cannily uses it to show the very real sense of loss and bewilderment felt by so many at their place in the modern world (Colin, literally lost when he visits the side of the old Longbridge car works). More ominously, Coe shows how that sense of loss - not in itself a malign thing - is worked upon and manipulated by those with an agenda.

Throughout this the theme of different Englands emerges, of a lack of comprehension and shared experience. ("Just as Doug had told him, 'People are getting angry, really angry' even if they could not have explained why, or with whom.") Whether causing a malicious complaint against an academic for their treatment of a student, a violent, racist assault in a small English village or the breakup of a marriage, Coe seems to be saying that we just can't live with each other any longer - an ironic reversal of something he has a French celebrity author say towards the start of this book: 'The French are an intolerant, judgemental people. Not like the British, I think". Perhaps that reputation for tolerance - whether deserved or not - is another aspect of the lost "old England" to which we have sadly bid Adieu.

So this is in many ways a mournful novel, even if often funny. Coe isn't, I think, pointing out anything that hasn't been said or debated in the aftermath of the 2016 Referendum, but he does the subject the courtesy of a scrutiny from all angles (even if it's clear where his sympathies lie). He does suggest that, in the end, some of the divisions may be healed. I think though that if there is to be a fourth book in the Rotters sequence, bringing things to a real reconciliation, it will have to be another few decades in the making - and I'm unlikely to see it written.

Strongly recommended, even if uncomfortable reading at times.

Review - The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French

The Grey Bastards
Jonathan French
Orbit, 21 June 2018
PB, 420pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of The Grey Bastards.

Live on the Saddle, Die on the Hog

Back in the Summer, the ever generous Nazia recruited me into the Grey Bastards through the ingenious ruse of sending me commissioning papers. (Blogger tip: be VERY CAREFUL when opening any package from Nazia. I wouldn't put it past her to use runes if you upset her.)

I've been worried ever since that Jackal, Fetch and the rest of the Hoof would turn up to ensure I delivered my pledged service - the more so as time drew on. There have been so many great books this year, and they all take time to read properly and digest, so I have deferred my attendance rather, but not wanting to end up at the wrong end of a tulwar or even a stockbow, I am relieved to say that I have now completed my review of The Grey Bastards.

This is a tale of half-orcs, battle and sex. (I'm going to have trouble cross-posting this to Amazon, I can tell already). The titular Bastards are a band ("hoof") of half-orcs, one of a number pledged to defend from the Orcs the land of Ul wundulas, the ruined country knows as the Lot Lands because it's parcelled out among the various hoofs. The land may be home to some, but it's primary important to because the defence of Ul wundulas is the defence of Hispartha, the fertile northern kingdom which the Orcs ultimately covet.

I am summoned!

I loved French's description of the Bastards, their organisation and their world. Roving their Lot on mighty fighting hogs, they are well able to ride down stray Orcs or even small raiding parties - but all dread a new incursion, as happened thirty years before leaving Ul wundulas ruined. Against that day, the leader of the Gray Bastards, the disease raddled Claymaster, seeks a wizard to bolster the Hoof, whose glory days are long gone.

Also featuring elves and halflings, the territory here might seem pretty familiar but French makes it convincing and new, not least through the idiosyncratic language he creates: humans are "frails", Orcs, "thicks", the Elves of Dog Fall, "Tines" and so on. Soon the scrubby, barren land that Jackal and his Hoof shed blood for becomes so, so real, as does the grim reality of the life there.

Because it is grim. Jackals's story begins as one of rivalries within the Hoof - the young bloods are restless under the failing rule of the Claymaster and a lot of time is spent on plots and alliances to replace him. This may seem like a squabble over a very small prize - wouldn't you just want to get out of Ul wundulas? - but an answer to that does emerges, if slowly, and it has to do with loyalty to the Hoof and a curious, perverse love of the land itself. To see that we will have to ride many miles, as French skilfully expands his story to take in the history of the Hoof, wider plots for power and the truly awful reality of what Hispartha's rulers have done in the past. And the seeds are clearly sown for Jackal's role to broaden still further.

It makes for an exciting, engaging story, never far from action and peril which I'd recommend to lovers of fantasy. And this is also very much "history from below". The rulers are definitely the humans of Hispartha, often presented as aristocratic, privileged and hierarchical, dominating the land from their Castile and treating the half-Orcs (and other outcast inhabitants of Ul Wundulas with disdain.

I do have one caveat, though, or perhaps a content warning. The concept of rape is very much ingrained into the background of this world. Not in the events we see - but the very existence of the Bastards, or most of them, derives from the rape of human women by Orcs (the Hoof defends, and recruits from, an orphanage where many of the resulting kids end up). The idea also comes up as a prominent subplot involving the creature known as the Sludge Man and it's used metaphorically too, in the sense of how Ul wundulas has been treated by the Orcs (thereby saving the blushes of dainty Hispartha beyond).

I should stress none of this happens in action that we see in the story, it's more of an underlying reality in the construction of the world.

This is, I know, something that has divided fantasy readers and authors (and bloggers!) and it's not a debate I'm going to rehearse now - but it is a facet of this book that the reader, or some readers, may wish to take into account.

So - am I glad I accepted that commissions and rode with the Bastards? On the whole, yes. Not every facet of their world attracts but there is a power and a flow to this writing that makes me look forward to French's next instalment (obviously this is a series!)

Review - By the Pricking of her Thumb by Adam Roberts

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By the Pricking of her Thumb
Adam Roberts
Gollancz, 4 September 2018
HB, 260pp

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

This review first appeared on the Shiny New Books blog here.

NB there is a potential mild spoiler below - I will flag it up when it gets close.

Roberts seems to have been very busy lately so I'm glad he managed to include a return to the world of The Real-Town Murders, one of my favourite books of 2017. R!-Town is a futuristic version of Reading (the town on the Thames, not the bookish activity) though the futuristicness is less embodied in what the town's like, but in the fact that almost no-one is around and about: all those who can spend their time hooked up to The Shine, an immersive virtual reality where lives are conducted while bodies gently decay, or at best, are exercised automatically by AI driven exoskeletons.

R!-Town is home to Alma, a down-at-heel PI, and to her partner Marguerite. Housebound by illness, Marguerite operates as part Watson, reporting Alma's cases, and part Mycroft, making links and connections that Alma can't. The connection between the two women is well, and gently, done - the strength of their love for one another conveyed in what they don't say, what they don't - can't - do. Marguerite's illness is a designer smart malady which strikes every 4 hours and 4 minutes with a mutated threat, requiring Alma's presence to diagnose and treat whatever new instance of it has arisen. It has to be Alma, that's coded into the virus, inducing a great degree of urgency to the life of an investigator - Alma simply has to be home when the time comes round or Marguerite will just die.

Of course this predicament doesn't come cheap. Alma is deep in debt, and when she is offered an impossible case by one of the four richest people in the world, she doesn't have many options... though the "crime" (one of the four has allegedly been murdered, but nobody knows who) is baffling and the authorities unhelpful.

Like its predecessor, this is in many ways (despite the desperate situation) a joyous book. Roberts is a good writer - make that a very good writer indeed - and his prose simply sparkles. It's a wonder to read, regardless of subject, plot or context. I think I'd happily read him if he were to draft the telephone directory or washing machine instructions. He really, really observes. Just look at this:

"A concrete wall disclosed a kind of derangement of detail: unsmooth greyness stippled with an astonishing variety of pointillist dots of slightly darker and slightly paler grey. It called to her not only to see, but to touch, so she ran a finger along the wall's five o'clock shadow"

or

"The surrounding trees had swapped their green livery for scarlet, like soldiers putting on dress uniform for a royal parade."

Roberts also brings too bear a vast range of references, whether from memory or knowing where the words are buried - I was pleased with myself for spotting some of them (Ron and Reg Kry, two recognisable criminal henchmen, " 'Search, search, search,' agreed Marguerite, 'searchability, that's the beauty of - me' " is a riff on a British Gas advert from the, 1970s or 80s) but I'm sure I will have missed many more.

The central reference here, which isn't concealed, is, though, the homage that the book pays to the films of Stanley Kubrick and in particular, to 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is explicit, for instance in that Alma is soon approached by "Stan", a self-confessed Kubrick fan (so perhaps a double reference there) who first urges her to "follow the money" (of course!) and then introduces her to a private in_shine 2001 sim which he uses to illustrate theories both about the film itself and about the crime she's investigating. It's also implicit, in ways which I won't disclose because they would be spoilers, other than to say that a key theme of 2001 turns out relevant to By the Pricking of her Thumb as well.

But this isn't just a clever book filled with knowing mentions (even if Roberts makes the title of the very first chapter a nod to one of his one earlier books). It's got some really hefty ideas behind it, from the nature of money and the consequences of "monetising" the Shine (that's what the wealthy "fab four" are about as part of their quest for "absolute wealth") to the limit of State power in the face of wealth to the transformational impact on society of all that virtual action.

Mild spoiler alert - skip the next paragraph if you care about these things

By the Pricking of Her Thumb  is also, in a couple of places, almost unbearably, rawly, moving and true. There is a point here where the story is bobbing along nicely, building to the conclusion - and then stops in its tracks where something truly awful happens. But rather than being something that annoys or detracts, this is a moment that enhances and deepens the story. Roberts makes the response very real, very raw and quite, quite true. I always expect a lot from his books, but here he far surpasses even what I'd expect.

End of mild spoiler alert

By the Pricking of Her Thumb is a sequel, something Roberts famously doesn't do. He has justified writing it by saying that a sequel is, for him, itself a first and therefore justifiable. I'm pleased that this argument is recursive so ought to permit more in this series (and could be extended to allow further series if required, who knows) so I'd like to think there can be more stories of R!-Town to come (the hidden internal war within the Government apparatus that we saw in the previous book continues here, we're told, though it doesn't feature centrally, so perhaps a burger book may be required to resolve that?)

Review - Europe at Dawn by Dave Hutchinson

Europe at Dawn (Fractured Europe, 4)
Dave Hutchinson
Solaris, 1 November 2018
PB, e 320pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Europe at Dawn.

This fourth, and final, book in Hutchinson's Fractured Europe sequence is well up to the standard of the previous parts. Again, we're in a near future world where the population has been ravaged by the Xian Flu, Europe is divided (and dividing) into increasingly many fragments and life is complicated by the existence of the Community, an extra dimensional pocket universe where it always 1950s England. ("A place where tricky concepts like ethnic diversity and political correctness and sexual equality had never taken root, and gay rights were a misty fantasy... it was an awful place, and that was why so many of the English wanted to move there.")

We are also in the world of Les Coureurs des Bois, an international networks of smugglers who refuse to accept the fragmentation, and work to ensure that "packages" can still be delivered across borders. That gives the book, especially the first half, an agreeable atmosphere of "tradecraft" as Situations, drop-offs, dust-offs, "jumps" and so on run past, at first seemingly unconnected but gradually joining up. We meet Alice, a young Scottish diplomat in Tallinn whose life ("Her crappy job, her dickhead employers, her bully of a husband") is about to be destroyed ("She had been constructed out of chaos by people who did not care about her"), Ben, a refugee trapped on a nameless island in the Mediterranean, and Meg, an English Colonel commanding Heathrow Airport (which, in the last book, was somehow moved into the heart of the Community). Hutchinson is very good at showing the reality of these lives in quite brief portraits - Alice's abusive husband and her daily frustrations ("she could feel her life with him slowly crushing her to death"),  Ben's desire, simply, to go North away from the chaos, Meg's confrontations with an American flight marshall who thinks he should be running things and an emissary from the Community who has old-fashioned ideas ("They didn't like hearing women swear. Well, fuck that.")

Indeed, he's so good at it that this book contains at least half a dozen separate stories, each of would easily furnish enough material for a full story. I could read a whole book about Alice or Meg. But we only see glimpses of Alice's life, and only a couple of episodes in Meg's: I'd love to have been able to read more about them, but the focus stays - as the separate strands come together - on the grand story Hutchinson's been weaving ever since Europe in Autumn. This book is fully part of that, ducking and weaving around the timeline and events already established (it must have been murder to keep all the events and characters in the rights places) and adding new depth and different perspectives to what we already know. That does mean you'll get more out of it if you have a fairly fresh recollection of the previous books, although there are enough hints that it also makes sense on its own.

Kind of... By the end of the book, Rudi himself - I did mention that Rudi's back, didn't I? No? Well, RUDI'S BACK! YAY! - is pretty bewildered by some of the revelations, and aghast at what the future may hold. But that's the nature of Fractured Europe, I think - there is no neat resolution, we don't get all the answers, and there is an unsettling sense that no-one is really in control. (Of course no-one is in control, ever, anywhere, but that's such a worrying idea that we spin conspiracy theories and postulate sinister masterminds: it's easier to believe a genius is running the show, even an evil one,  than accept the directionless, emergent chaos that is the alternative. Hutchinson refuses to comfort us by affirming that conspiracy rules OK, while not denying that there are conspiracies afoot).

Did I sound excited to meet Rudi again? of course I am. I just love Rudi. He's so capable, so resigned, so... upright. Surveying what's been done to Alice, "Rudi felt his heart break". Unlike others here, all he really wants to do is to run his little restaurant, not be swindled by the meat suppliers, and to keep the "cohorts of individual creeps, ghouls, crooks and gentleman adventurers" at bay. That sounds a tall order, in a continent where, seemingly, everyone wants to be a spy: I think that - despite the focus on spyycraft, the jargon - one of the targets of this book is the general obsession with espionage, with the glamour of it (at one point Alice meets a man she describes to herself as a "Poundshop Harry Lime" and reflects that she herself is therefore a "Poundshop James Bond").

Another focus is, clearly, the Little Englander mentality thats sees the preserved never-was of the Community as some kind of salvation, rather than a horrendous parody (make your own connection to current politics) and - in a wider sense - the current world trend towards extremes. Rudi is the perfect foil to this, a dignified, modest man with steel inside him, an inhabitant and product of deep Mitteleuropa. He is the counterpoint to the chaos and even, to a degree, the conspiracies. We can believe in Rudi and I salute Hutchinson for giving us that. More, his books take Europe seriously, as a place, not just colour: Hutchinson displays a familiarity with the places, the journeys, the ways of living. There's a cosmopolitanism here, a rooted cosmopolitanism, a sense we have to transcend the irritable scratchiness of nationality and resit the demagogues. It's a delight in countries and places and differences which is its own riposte to the narrowness of the Community and those who think like it.

This is, in short, a delightful book and also a serious book. I'm so glad that we have it to round off the Fractured Europe sequence. The whole thing is a considerable achievement, and while everything has to come to an end, I am also sad that this is the last book in Fractured Europe.

Review - Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

Red Moon
Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit, 25 October 2018
HB, 447pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of Red Moon.

Red Moon is a story of epic proportions, told through quite a narrow perspective. It's a story of the future, and necessarily science fiction, but also a story of people and politics, of the future of Earth and some of the great nations upon it. And also, of course, a story of the Moon.

Our guide into this story is Fred Fredericks, an engineer visiting the Moon to set up an entangled quantum communications device for a Chinese client. (In 2047, China is dominant in lunar exploration and settlement).

Visiting the Moon on the same ship is Ta Shu, a Chinese poet and online travel broadcaster. (Some the sections of the book are Ta Shu's broadcasts, either actual or projected, describing his impressions of what he sees and thinks).

Fredericks, through no fault of his own, becomes involved in political trouble, which links him up with Chan Qi, daughter of a powerful figure in the Chinese Government. The two set off on a series of adventures across the Moon and then Earth, a travelogue in itself (if being recorded) during which they rely on the support of many friends and allies and are hunted by multiple Chinese security agencies which frequently seem to be as hostile to each other as they are to the fugitives. (' "I wish I knew what was going on." "It's China" she said. "Give up on that." ')

Oh, and Qi is pregnant...

During this time Qi and Fred become close, although not - quite - romantically close (which is refreshing). I enjoyed Robinson's portrayal of Fred, his feelings and thought processes possibly placing hi on the autistic spectrum - a classification which Robinson firmly, and explicitly, resists - leaving us with a wonderful, complicated and un-pigeoonholable character who is nevertheless clearly not "neurotypical". He's discussed at one point by Qi and a couple of Chinese lunar prospectors, their speech rendered into English by a cheap pair of translation glasses:

"So this guy cannot act?

That is right. That is what shyness is. He thinks he has to be real. So he has stuck to me. But there is no harm in him..."

(Robinson returns to this idea of "acting" later, when Ta Shu's friend Zhou points out that "We all present a persona to other people. Some have a wide range... A real cast of characters". Perhaps Fred is the only unvarnished, truthful person here?)

I enjoyed the depth of Robinson's rumination on China, its history, future and politics. Obviously placing the story twenty years in the future, and foregrounding China while making clear that the only other global power, the US, has big problems of its own, distances Robinson's take from being about China as it is now - and distances this book from any criticism that it is hostile to China. That may be as much a pragmatic marketing tactic as it is an artistic choice. But on the other hand it's also clear that little in Chinese politics has changed from now to then. I can't say whether or not a Western author can fairly discuss or represent China, or whether it's even wise to try, but Robinson at least approaches China as a reality, as a civilisation, as something to be analysed and understood in its own terms (and those terms go deep into the history of China - it's not just about the 19th and 20th centuries and the Revolution) not according to Western concepts. So for example we get a discussion by Chinese officials on the Moon of aggressive US behaviour which likens it to that of a toddler. "Three years old, three hundred years old- same thing, right? When you're talking about China, five thousand years old? Fifteen times older than this kid?"

Equally I sensed, perhaps, Robinson's frustration in places, as when he has Ta Shu say that "We think in pairs and quadrants, and in threes and nines, and every concept has its opposite embedded in it... So we can say... China is simple, China is complicated. China is rich, China is poor. China is proud, China is forever traumatised by its century of humiliation... all the combinations come to this... China is confusing." Much of this analysis indeed comes from Ta Shu and his debates with old friends he encounters on the Moon - some of them now powerful and rich friends. (The low gravity on the Moon is, we're given to understand, congenial to those of advancing years who are suffering from problems with their joints). There is philosophy and even poetry, as a counterpoint to the more hectic chase involving Qi and Fred. That is inevitably a journey of discovery for him, both of China, and of how to live alongside a young woman but it's also an intensely practical business and the book frequently spends long periods following a particular aspect of the journey - for example, a scramble down the precipitous slopes of a mountain in Hong Kong. (The two actually shuttle several times between the Moon and Earth, each time on the basis that this will make them safer - although it never seems to work very well).

If I had one criticism it would be that the degree of focus here is quite uneven. For example, while certain parts of the chase are shown in great detail, others aren't covered at all: at one point Fred disappears into some kind of captivity, is lost sight of for a while, and then simply discovered again by another of the security factions; we're never given much of an account from his perspective of where he was or how he was treated although episode must have been as important from his perspective as some of the events described in loving detail.

That isn't me pleading for less detail, by the way, but for more! I suspect that things have been left out here to prevent the book getting too long - well, i'd read it if it were twice as long! I find Fred in particular a fascinating character and I'd be interested in more of his reflections on what goes on.

But the background to the book is one of political intrigue and turmoil as the leaders of China meet to decide on a new President. This is what drives events, and this is why Qi, in particular, is being hunted. So perhaps it's right that Fred is kept in his place as very much a pawn in the game, and giving him more space could upset the balance. That's especially so when the political dimension - the issues being struggled over - is important but can't be given too much of an airing without turning the book into a manifesto. Instead the focus needs to be on Qi and her aspirations (although she too has missing episodes: her presence of the Moon, already in trouble, is presented as already given when she and Fred initially meet up).

To summarise, this is an action packed and thoughtful take on the future, a great read, with some of the most beautiful writing I've ever seen about the Moon as the Moon (the concept of rocks being not weather-beaten but sun-beaten by "billions of years of photon rain", a description of the Moonscape as "...something like the colour of a red sunset on earth, but darker and more intense, a subtly shifting array of dim blackish reds, all coated by a dusty copper sheen. the previously pastel patches of rare earths were now shifted to purples and forest greens and rusty browns..."). It's also not afraid to pause for some truly mind-boggling scenes which aren't strictly germane to the plot, as when a couple of the Americans join in an impromptu 3D ballet in a lunar cavern threaded by wires and nets. (Overall, I felt the American characters - having been firmly established - were used less than I'd have thought. Perhaps they will play a greater part in subsequent books, and downplaying them is obviously appropriate in a book that attempts - as far as a Western author can - to break out of a Western-centric view of things.)

Anyway, the portrayal of the Moon here has a feel of truth, and in terms of lunar colonisation I won't be in the least surprised if in the 2040s, China has a presence something like this up there (if I live to see that).

Whether Robinson's suggestions about the politics of the time are equally accurate... well, who really knows?

Definitely recommended.

You might also be interested in Kate's take on the book over at For Winter Nights.