#Review - Invisible Sun by Charles Stross

Invisible Sun (Empire Games, 3)
Charles Stross
Macmillan, 30 September 2021
Available as: PB, 400pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781447247593

I'm grateful for an advance copy of Invisible Sun to consider for review.

Invisible Sun sees Stross's multiple timeline story of politics, economics and development reach a potential conclusion, and also reach six books by the New Reckoning or nine Old Style (the first six, the Merchant Princes arc, were revised into three satisfyingly chunky volumes). In the course of its unfolding, the story has mutated from portal fantasy to SF, with a distinct technothrillery edge.

In Merchant Princes, Miriam Beckstein, who thought she was an ordinary young woman from Boston, struggled to come to terms with the reality that she was a world-walker able to cross between timelines, and a member of an other-Earthly aristocracy from a medieval kingdom. In the course of that narrative arc, Stross explored ideas about development, the functioning of states, the corruption of democracy and the interplay between family and the wider world - Miriam's cousins in the Clan, world-walking smugglers who put their abilities to good using trafficking special cargoes under the noses of officialdom, being great fans of Family. 

Eventually Miriam took refuge in a nuclear-armed, revolutionary-democratic state, the New American Commonwealth, which occupies the American continent in another timeline. And so, in this last (at least for now) instalment, we see the Commonwealth squaring up to a paranoid security-state US. Paranoid, because it was attached with nukes by the Clan,  who have now fled to the Commonwealth. It's a complex, game-theory driven situation, a para-time Cold War liable to go hot at any moment even before throwing in revolutionary ultras, a runaway Princess and independent-minded intelligence operatives who don't always think to clear their ploys though the chain of commend.

Elsewhere, though, a much worse threat to the future of the Earths (all of them) has awoken (giving Stross the opportunity to use 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' as a chapter title).

The title of the present book, Invisible Sun, picks up the "family" theme, viewing the effect on great events of family and personal connections as being like that of a great, gravitational mass moving through a solar system, warping space around it and producing unforeseen disturbances in the heavens at odds with the expected orderly progression. Notoriously, there's no exact mathematical solution to the dynamics of such a system (the famous many-body problem). So we see here the existence of not only the Clan, but another hidden family, one made rather than born, driving events in this book. (And in the author's Afterword we see the same theme occur again in real life as he explains why this book took longer to reach your hands than you might have expected).

I really, REALLY enjoyed seeing that second family, the Wolf Orchestra, in action. An old-style East German spy ring composed of sleeper agents in the US, they are now stranded with no home to return to, nobody to broker prisoner swaps with or offer diplomatic cover. But they are tuning up to play one last symphony, pitting their classical spycraft, their dead-letter drops and lamplighters, but more, their discipline and their loyalty to one another, against a modern panopticon state armed with endless cameras, massive compute resources and virtual hegemony in the West. 

Virtual, not quite total. An entertaining subplot here features a Berlin police officer who insists on following the rules to the letter while his gang-ho DHS opposites stew in frustration. Also, those EU data protection rules which prevent the raw take from the exported to the US for processing.

I also enjoyed seeing the imaginative creation that Stross has made of the Commonwealth, not a perfect place by any means (indeed in some respects a rather deadly one) but an attempt, perhaps, at a sketch of a better nation. It's one that reminds the members of the Orchestra, in atmosphere if not in specifics, of their vanished home, but also allows them to see a perhaps more perfect version of that. Their status also leads to some moments of genuine, if grim, humour; 'It's not kidnapping: they asked us for political asylum... They're not doing so as American citizens but as citizens of the German Democratic Republic. If you don't like it, you can take it up with Erich Honecker's ghost.'

This book is, as I've come to expect from Stross, slick, thought-provoking but above all, fun with rapid-fire deployment concepts from science, engineering, espionage, defence, politics (of all sorts: within families, within organisations, between arms of a State, between nations, between timelines, you name it) and much, much more. (I loved JUGGERNAUT). Want to see how a princess from an ancien regime, Diving Right of Kings monarchy might behave when she escapes into 21st century Berlin? Look no further. How about a perspective on the accelerating defence technology of a rapidly industrialising revolutionary polity with paratime espionage capability? Here it is. Would you like to to know how that paratime capability might have come into being, and what it means? It's here.

Yes, in this book, we finally see the veil lifted on the origin of the Clan's ability, and how it fits with that other threat, the one that the US and the Commonwealth have been ignoring as they manoeuvre and jostle for advantage. It could be that is a BIG mistake as the book pivots fully into apocalyptic SF... 

I would STRONGLY recommend Invisible Sun. It brings epic closure to the Empire Games arc, revisiting many much-loved characters as well as exalting in the doings of new ones such as Rita Douglas and Liz Hanover who are both EXCELLENT and should get more coverage SOON. 

I could also swear I saw hooks for followups, despite Stross's protestations about this in the Afterword. Maybe once he's got over writing something longer than War and Peace, he might change his mind?

For more information about Invisible Sun, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Horseman by Christina Henry

Horseman
Christina Henry
Titan Books, 28 September 2021
Available as: HB, 352pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781789095975

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Horseman to consider for review.

Horseman revisits events in Sleepy Hollow, a remote township in the woods of the US Eastern seaboard, some years after Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". You don't have to know the details of the earlier book, as Henry gives plenty of context, but I think you will get a richer experience if you do.

The story opens as Sander and his friend Ben Van Brunt visit the deep woods to play "Sleepy Hollow Boys", acting out the famous story. Their game is though set aside when a group of villagers gallop past, having made a grim discovery - which turns out to be only the first in a series. Someone - or something - in the woods seems to have woken, and to be killing in a particularly horrible way. Gradually, Ben realises that what's going on may be connected to the Van Brunt family, and tension rises between grandfather Brom and grandmother Katrina.

Horseman is one of those stories where attempts are being made to hide or bury what happened in the past, but if danger is to be seen off, it's necessary to face the darkness, however painful that may be. Easy to say, harder to do when one has to navigate a web of taciturn family members, suspicious villagers and enigmatic legends. It all means Ben has to grow up very quickly - going in a few days from being a carefree child to one who will never, never, play "Sleepy Hollow Boys" again.

Alongside that narrative of growing-up, Horseman is also a story of difference and acceptance. Sleepy Hollow is a very backwards community (indeed, Henry hints, perhaps almost unnaturally backward, unperturbed by any currents of change in the wider world. What might cause that?) It is also an inward-looking community, where conformism is important and everyone knows everyone else's business. But facing up to long buried secrets - and, as becomes clear, lies - is hard in such a place, and may expose other things too. The privileged and slightly eccentric Van Brunts may to a degree be able to face that down, but they also seem to be at the centre of a series of gruesome events - and they have enemies.

And what of the Horseman himself? Brom denies he exists at all. He may have his own reasons for that, but Ben seems to hear the hoofbeats - or is it just his heart? - and for the first time, begins to doubt Brom's word and past deeds. 

I really enjoyed Horseman. Apart from its sympathetic portrayal of a teenager who is, most definitely a bit of an outsider, despite being a member of a wealthy family, it gives a vivid picture of life at a particular time and place complete with a range of characters, from the stupid to the villainous. At the heart of things is that central triangle of Brom, Katrina and Ben whose love for one another shines through, even when they bitterly disagree as, here, they do.

Adding to Henry's takes on familiar and less familiar motifs and stories, Horseman is entertaining, often surprising and deserves to be read at a gallop, preferably into the early hours.

For more information about Horseman, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Born to the Dark by Ramsey Campbell

Born to the Dark (The Three Deaths of Daoloth, 2)
Ramsey Campbell
Flame Tree Press, 13 August 2021
Available as: HB, 288pp, PB, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787585638

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Born to the Dark and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

The second part of Campbell's Lovecraftian trilogy The Three Deaths of Daoloth (after The Searching Dead) takes us to 1980s Liverpool, a city in the midst of political turmoil and confrontation with the London government. But film studies lecturer Dominic Sheldrake is involved in a more personal struggle, as shadows from the past seem to be reaching out for his adored son, Toby. In a story that very much continues from the earlier book, Campbell injects a sense of unease from the off: returning from a meet-up with old friends in London, Sheldrake seems inordinately concerned over a dropped phone call and the fact that, when he rushes into the house, he can't immediately find the boy. We might wonder why.

It's only partially explained when we learn about the seizures and sleep problems that have afflicted the boy since childhood - there does still seem to be a vein of over-protectiveness in Sheldrake who's suspicious even of the treatment that his wife Lesley seems, after endless medical consultations, to have found. That seeds an unease between the parents, something that will only grow as Sheldrake delves into his own history and begins to see echoes of events that he experienced in his childhood, events involving a sinister cult.

I adore Campbell's finely-crafted horror, which relies less on shock and gore than on cultivating a nagging unease as his protagonists explore their, often urban, landscapes. Born to the Dark is a fine example, exploiting the unsaid, the misunderstandnings, the awkward frictions in daily conversations to suggest that all may not be well. Without at all needing to invoke the uncanny, almost all the interactions here are difficult, cross-purposed and, ultimately, lacking in a full sense of communication. Sometimes Sheldrake shares in this view, pointing out things that were missed or sidelines, sometimes we're left to draw our own conclusions. Staying on top of life is, Campbell shows us, hard work, with a constant risk of going off the rails (or even falling off the ferry, given Liverpool's geography). 

That's pressed home by the conflict in all areas of Sheldrake's life - the increasingly acrimonious exchanges with Lesley are matched by interventions from the irritating figure of the university vice-chancellor, Dominic's boss, who's hyper-sensitive to complaints from the students about the content of his film-studies course.  The root of the trouble seems to be the response of religious members of the class to Dominic's instinctive scepticism, which is ironic given his past encounters with the occult might give him grounds for belief in something, if not anything orthodox. But it does mean he is continually harassed and nagged, in a context where he might otherwise have some respite from the difficulties in his marriage. Instead, we see a portrayal of a man pushed from all directions, increasingly believing that he and his family are being targeted by unseen forces but - in trying to explain his fears - only making himself seem obsessed or even deranged.

It's all done very slowly and gradually and, in having an innocent boy at its centre, one for whom there seems no help, seems deeply, deeply sinister - an impression only magnified by a somewhat comic pair of policemen (if they really are) who take to harassing Dominic. They present as both funny and deeply creepy, suggesting that the forces at work here are active not just in dark backstreets and remote isolated mansions but in brightly lit corridors and streets of the city. Indeed, the rough ride that Dominic gets from officialdom in general backs that up and suggests a connection between him and his city, both estranged from the powers and principalities that given them.

All in all, a disturbing and suggestive read, one that achieves its effects by hinting at a taint in everyday life rather than through setpiece supernatural theatrics, and is all the more effective for that. 

I'd recommend.

For more information about Born to the Dark, see the Flame Tree Press website here, and also the other stops on the blogtour - listed in the poster below.

You can buy Born to the Dark from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop dot org UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - Dark Things I adore by Katie Lattari

Cover design by
Natasha MacKenzie

Dark Things I Adore
Katie Lattari
Titan Books, 14 September 2021
Available as:PB, 466pp, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN(PB): 9781789095906

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of Dark Things I Adore and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

Dark Things I Adore takes us to a remote colony for artists, set among the deep woods of Maine, in 1988. Here a group of misfits gather, isolated from the world, and are given nicknames, distancing them from their everyday lives: Zephyr. Moss. Juniper... Names reflecting the Nature within which they will live, painting, sculpting, shaping clay. Walking in the woods. Boating on the lake. Making love. Making art. 

It may sound idyllic - but this is also where a terrible event will tale place, an event that has echoes into the future. Some will return to their lives with a new purpose, with new art. Others seem to end up gathered in to Lupine Valley, and stay for months or years. 

Told in two timelines - the story from 1988, and another visit to Maine, in October 2018 - this enigmatic, beautiful book challenges us to spot connections - who is who, and what are they trying to forget? It's interspersed with descriptions of an artist's show, the "Dark Things" of the title. Paintings layered with notes on scraps of paper, receipts, pages from notebooks, all found in and around the same house and telling a despairing and sad story. Reported in meticulous detail, these items form a commentary on both the simultaneous timelines, offering clues about the central character, a woman called Cindy and also - in the colony - Coral.

Coral is a troubled and troubling young woman, whose difficulties seem to have everyone - her boyfriend, her family, the artists in the camp - at their wits' end. She is both at the centre of the book, with her thoughts, actions and feelings the focus of all that goes on, and also reported indirectly to us - and also curiously absent, often interpreted to us especially by Juniper, who narrates her story in 1988, but also by Moss and Mantis whose interest in her was rather troubling to me. Their relationship - especially Moss's, as a painter who adopts Coral as his muse - seemed to be saying really dark things about the potential in art to exploit a subject. Moss has some of the aspect of a vampire, his art gaining in depth and quality as Coral loses herself and becomes more desperate.

So there are more dark things here than just the paintings being prepared for show. A heady brew of love, obsession, revenge, exploitation that approaches abuse, and despair, and with - at least in the imagination of its characters - a brush with the supernatural - Dark Things I Adore exhibits the dangers and pitfalls of high Romanticism in a story that really, really gets inside your head and feels as though nothing good can come of the events being described.

I should perhaps say, of course "Years ago X happened, now those who took part have to live with the consequences" is not a new concept, but any doubts I had were swept away by Lattari's bewitching prose and crisp characterisations, as well as by her telling of these events through the lens of art, all of which make this such an absorbing read, and one I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about Dark Things I Adore, see the Titan Books website here or any of the stops on the tour listed on the poster. You can buy Dark Things I Adore from your local bookshop, or online form Bookshop dot org UK, Hive Books, or Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour - Resilience by Bogdan Hrib

Resilience
Bogdan Hrib (trans by Marina Sofia)
Corylus Books, 20 August 2021
Available as: e, 286pp
Source: Purchased copy
ASIN: B09C44C3X7

I'm grateful to the publisher for inviting me to join the blogtour for Resilience.

If - in this year of all years - you've missed out on some international travel, let Resilience fill that gap in your life, hopping as it does across Europe from the beaches of South Shields, where it opens with a death, to the streets of Bucharest and Iasi in Romania and back again to London. More than travel, though, the action in this slickly plotted thriller is driven by distance, by geography and by history, plugging into the complex history of Middle Europe with its evolving borders, nationalisms and polities.

Stelian Munteanu is an investigator, a fixer of sorts, also an editor - a man, as the book describes him, with his fingers in many pies. He's hired, after that early death, to look into things. Travelling from Bucharest to Newcastle, he's able to cast an outsider's eye on Britain - but will it be able to penetrate the web of mystery and conspiracy that we're confronted with here? I enjoyed meeting Stelian - the book makes it clear that this isn't his first adventure and indeed, I see that the book is part of a series, but it wears that lightly: there is a sense of backstory, of the characters here having met and been through things before (particularly Stelian's wife, Sofia Matei, whose occupation and dealings are kept a bit mysterious).

Further deaths ensue in the story, both in Britain and back in Romania, and Hrib shows us glimpses of a conspiracy that may or may not be responsible for them. It's part of the fun of this well-constructed and pacey story that we see parts of what they're doing and can sort-of guess and what they want, but at the same time, not everything seems to fit. There are plots within plots, and some of the characters seem to know altogether too much about what's happening. I just didn't know who to trust - even now, I'm not sure. That, to me, is a sign of a convincing thriller.

Behind that, the book read to me as having deep roots in the history and politics of Central Europe. There are the grand plans - the dreams of unifying modern states to create something crossing the continent, echoing the empires of the past and, perhaps, bringing back greatness. There are also nightmares, fears of what dislocation and chaos might follow. All of that's seen through the lens of modern "influencing" - of fake news, astroturfed activism and mysterious figures dispensing large denomination Euro notes. All thrilling, but Hrib never takes the story beyond the plausible and that sense of a history, a previous life, to his main group - not only Stelian and Sofia but Anton, Stelian's policeman friend and his brilliant assistant, Anabella, and Ionescu the spy who comes and goes like Gandalf in The Hobbit. Hearing them speak (and argue and make up) it almost feels like walking into a room where a group of friends are already deeply engaged in a conversation - except that rather than falling silent, Hrib's writing, combined with Marina Sofia's readable, evocative translation, invite you get a drink, take a seat, and listen along.

Bogdan Hrib

Overall a fun read introducing characters I'd like to meet again.

For more information about Resilience, see the publisher's website here. And do take a look at the other stops on the blogtour, listed on the poster below.

About the Author

Bogdan Hrib was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1966. 

Former journalist, civil engineer by education and now professor at the University in Bucharest, Hrib is the co-founder of Tritonic Books (1993) and has been instrumental in bringing other Romanian crime writers into English publication.

He was the vice-president of the Romanian Crime Writers Club (2010-2012), and the director/organizer of the International Mystery & Thriller Festival in Râșnov (2011-2015), as well as the PR coordinator of the History Film Festival also in Râșnov

He is the author of the crime fiction series featuring Stelian Munteanu, a book-editor with a sideline doing international police work. Kill the General (2011), the fourth book in the Munteanu series was Hrib’s first novel translated into English, won the Special Award of the Bucharest Writers Association (2012). The Greek Connection is Hrib’s second novel translated into English.

The novel Resilience, the sixth of the series, was published in May 2020, by Tritonic. The story A Bucharest Arrest was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (March-April 2021)

Marina Sofia

www.bogdanhrib.ro
Instagram @bogdanhrib
Facebook @bofromro
Twitter @bo_hrib

About the Translator

Marina Sofia was born in Romania but has lived in the UK for half of her life. She was a reviewer for Crime Fiction Lover for more than seven years and has also worked for Asymptote Literary Journal. Her previous translation for Corylus Books was Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu. She is on Twitter and https://twitter.com/MarinaSofia8 and blogs at https://findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com/

 

#Review - From the Neck Up by Aliya Whiteley

Design by Julia Lloyd

From the Neck Up and other stories
Aliya Whiteley
Titan Books, 14 September 2021
Available as: PB, 301pp, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN(PB): 9781789094756

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of From the Neck Up to consider for review.

From the Neck Up collects 16 of Whiteley's stories, originally published between 2014 and 2020. The longest ("Brushwork") is an 80 page near-novella, most though are shorter, between 10 and 20 pages. The themes are riotously diverse, but often concern - or are set among - environmental and societal collapse whose consequences are being explored. In many of the stories we're located in a sanctuary - literal or emotional - which has escaped the worst consequences of the catastrophe. 

That reminded me at times of Joan Aiken's stories in that, as did the skilful and even joyful juxtaposition of the weird and the normal. One can't, I think, fully appreciate the weird if it's presented in isolation, we need it to be interweaved with everyday life.

That's certainly true of the first story, "Brushwork", where we meet elderly Mel (many of the stories features older characters) who's working on a farm, tending melons in a greenhouse. Only gradually does Whiteley reveal the complexities of the setup; the catastrophe that causes Mel and her colleagues to be near prisoners, her background and the wrenching choice she was forced to make as things got worse  - and the extent to which she has, since then, been sheltered (though it might not seem like it) from the harsh world outside. But she won't be able to escape reality forever.

In "Many-Eyed Monsters"  the narrator is living an ordinary life until she begins to worry about something truly strange in her body. Initially trying to hide the problem, she's forced to accept that she is creating - or becoming - something new. Moving from unease, and the desire to suppress what is happening, she finds a sense of acceptance and solidarity. This story catches well, I think, the drive to try and contain the strange.

"Three Love Letters from an Unrepeatable Garden" describes not only an "unrepeatable" garden - one that can't be duplicated or, once lost, restored; its creator is gone - but seemingly one of those precious islands of beauty and normality (well, for certain values of "normal") left in a hostile world. That's why it needs protecting and nurturing. But if it's doomed anyway, might it not be justified to just, well, enjoy it before the end? Posing questions about the fragility of beauty and our duty to protect it, this one left me thinking hard.

Corwick, in "Corwick Grows", is one of those elusive islands amidst a wider world, always teasingly distant; the narrator has hunted for it but can't find the place until one day when they stumble into a remote farmhouse. Nothing will ever be the same again for them, or for Corwick - a place that seems to thrive on the imagination of its residents. Combining a calm acceptance of what is happening with a somewhat body-horror aesthetic, "Corwick Grows" suggests that some, at least, of those elusive places may be better left unfound.

"Loves of the Long Dead" takes an imaginative journey from Ancient Egypt to the abyss of the ocean to a modern research lab. When a spirit from the past seeks revenge, she becomes frustrated that time hasn't stood still and that the villain whom she hates no longer exists to suffer. Perhaps a substitute can be found...

In "Reflection, Refraction, Dispersion" the optical terms hint at some sort of visual phenomenon - the Effect - that is ill understood, indeed, whose nature and effects are argued and disagreed over but which seem to be dire (cancer? Suicide?) It is something to which Eliza, the narrator, was subject but about which she seems ambivalent. She does, though, want to understand and perhaps even re-experience it which leads her on a strange quest.

"Farleyton" is another of those islands of wholeness and order amidst a chaotic and sickening world. Many wish to travel there, lured by the stories of its wonders. Told in the voices of various groups - the enclave's guards, a travel agent facilitating migrants, workers seeking good jobs in the place, a girl en route to it - we see jarring and contrasting pictures, hinting that perhaps Farleyton is a different place to each, that perhaps it may not be able to be the same Heaven on Earth for all, that it may have limits, small print and abrupt endings. Trying to assemble a picture from the pieces given here is frustrating, suggesting truths that Whiteley avoids spelling out directly. One of my favourites in this volume.

"Into Glass" is a deeply weird story which opens with the unnamed narrator about to cut her sleeping lover with a scalpel. Only a small cut, the tiniest nick, blood from which she hopes will reveal something wonderful. It is an act that to her is deeply ominous - not just an assault, a violation of consent but a recapitulation of a dark history involving her parents and grandparent. But at the same it's a family inheritance, a gift. What to do? And what will happen? The story ponders the value of love - is it finite, can it be bled away? - as well as secrets. An achingly beautiful and sad story.

"Compel" posits an alien invasion, swift and sudden and complete, but not the normal death-ray wielding tripods, rather a glitch, an anomaly that leaves most humans literally speechless and lost. In face of this, Whiteley's narrator feels some duty to resist, but can only record, gradually losing coherence and the ability to tell what's happening - even as they start to grasp more fully the causes of the catastrophe.

"Chantress" is a fun story revolving around three women, the Chantress of the title, the Enchantress and the Disenchantress. Somehow unmoored from modern society - the Chantress has a mobile phone but signal is poor on the mountain - they seem to be acting out roles in a near fairy-story for the local villagers, but why, and where will it lead? Again, the mundane, human and normal are seen alongside the frankly weird.

"Blessings Erupt" is about Hope, a woman who has some kind of healing gift against the contamination caused in the near future by plastics and toxins. But it's a gift that takes its toll. Hope has the gratitude of so may whom she has saved, but she has become cynical about the whole process; are we to believe that she's now seeing through things to the truth, or has she herself become corrupted? In this story about a life drawing to its close we are also shown Hope's beginnings and left to wonder what version of the future is the truth. A moving and powerful story about community and responsibility.

"Star in the Spire" sees Sammie, travelling alone in the blighted waste of the future, find an oasis, a little patch of life and growth. But it also seems to contain death - there are some gruesome sights described. Whether, though, they represent a catastrophe, or a transformation, is very ambiguous.

In the titular story, "From the Neck Up", Megan is obsessed with decapitation and reality seems to meet her interest, offering a head if not on a platter, then on a bed. But despite being severed it seems to be a head with business of its own and not to be finished, not at all, with life. Veering from comedy as Megan tries to control the situation to a strangely moving depiction of the head's ongoing life, "From the Neck Up" was another of my favourites here, whether it's to be taken literally or as expressing something of Megan's (rather desperate) life and the changes she needs to make in it.

"The Tears of a Building Surveyor, and Other Stories" could be seen as the Walter Mitty-like fantasies of aging Violet - in a chaotic narrative of running away with a "chaperone", joining a nunnery, escaping a massacre and then becoming a clown - if it was not so touchingly and tenderly wrapped around glimpses of Violet's reality, of her life with Tom. The two ways of describing Violet's world are so different, yet so closely linked, that the reader needs, I think, to see them both as true to to unpick what each needs from the other. A beautiful, sad, and funny story.

"To the Farm" explores the potential darker consequences of artificial intelligence and both the limits, and unexpected graces, of love. Another very sad story (or it could be) leading up (as did "Brushwork") to a moment of letting go, of allowing for growth and change.

In the final story, "The Spoils" we return to a community living after some apocalypse (never made clear). They're an underground people, with a ritualised way of dealing with their world illustrated when a great beast - an Olme - is killed and divided between the community. Like a baffled Victorian explorer learning the customs of an unknown people, a lot doesn't make sense, even as it does. Again the story dwells on the different roles and lives of those who receive the body parts of the unfortunate Olme, and we might wonder why there is such a complicated routine here as there is no suggestion for example that they will all eat it. Some explanation is given when a daring member of the group decides to take her share to the surface, but story - both obscure and slightly menacing - leaves a great deal to the reader. A haunting story.

Altogether, there is a lot to think about bin these excellent stories. If you have read her Skein Island or Skyward Inn, you'll recognise some of the atmosphere, and themes, but the exploration of them across different fragments of story adds new depth (and enjoyment).

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

The Echo Wife
Sarah Gailey
Hodder, 18 February 2021(HB), 8 July 2021(PB)
Available as: HB, 256pp, audio, e 
Source: Audio
ISBN(HB): 9781529354492

I listened to The Echo Wife as audio, completing it in the e-book as I got close to the end. Audio is the ideal medium for Evelyn's spiky, defensive story, Xe Sands' narration conveying the whole range of emotions from anger - so much anger! - to betrayal to grudging sympathy. The narration really takes flight to imply a whole world of unspoken truths festering just under the surface as Evelyn and the others here ignore awkward facts, look the other way, fail to understand things on purpose, and generally evade their way through the moral complexities of this twisty story.

Evelyn is a research scientist, a pioneer in the field of human cloning and especially, of "conditioning" the "specimens" to resemble - and act like - their originals. Gailey's writing is simply astonishing here, employing understatement and na clinical, precise register to show Evelyn and her co-workers apparently happy to accept all this entails: The creation of life.  Its manipulation. Its destruction when it doesn't come up to scratch, or when no longer required. A world of horror and suffering defined away in clipped, clinical language and then tidied away quickly. Evelyn doesn't need to think through the implications because these are simply not humans, are they? They are "specimens".

This isn't the only way in which Evelyn has learned to master her emotions. From her childhood, where she and her mother are at the mercy of a controlling and (it's implied, but never stated overtly) abusive father to her life with husband Nathan (the story opens just after their divorce) there is just so much not said. So much so that the silence, the passivity, actually gets quite LOUD, quite VIOLENT. Evelyn's determined not to be her father, afraid (though she won't admit it) that she will be. After all, wasn't she moulded by him (as she moulds her specimens?)

Questions recur. What makes us, us? What makes us, human? Answers are demanded as Evelyn is forced, after a catastrophe in her life, to cooperate with Martine, Nathan's new partner. Martine is all that Evelyn isn't. 

Compliant.

Obedient.

Demonstrative.

... willing to have a baby. 

Yet she's also, inescapably, a version of Evelyn, Nathan's idealisation of her. Again, what makes us, us? WHO makes us, us? 

Forced, for the sake of survival, to work together, the two women orbit one another, acting as two foci in a dialogue about freewill, humanity, selfhood. All of Evelyn's painfully acquired certainties will be challenged by Martine's sheer existence, her life an argument for other ways of seeing, other ways of being. It's a very claustrophobic piece. Evelyn and Martine - these two women, so different, so similar - endlessly fascinated me as they learned about each other and so, about life.

There are many bumps along the way. This is a world close to ours. It has Evelyn's marvellous cloning tech, but that's the only difference: women's existence, their participation, is still visibly on sufferance. (Evelyn knows she has to be better than any man, and resents manbaby Nathan, sloppy Nathan who never pays attention to his work and yet gets away with it.) There is the doctor who doesn't ask questions when a young girl is brought in with a broken wrist. There is the sense that, as Evelyn sees it, it's her, as a woman, who has the responsibility of organising everything for Nathan, of making plans and making things work - and then he goes and sulks because she burnt the eggs! 

For Evelyn, everything is about her legacy, her need to excel. We might wonder who, in her past, she is trying to impress? And just how far she will go, what she has to achieve, to do that? And who might get hurt?

There is just so much here, whether you see this as a classic SF novel - Evelyn an even more modern Prometheus, perhaps - as a study of living, of becoming, as a grim account of dominance and abuse or, possibly, as half a dozen other things. It is absorbing, accomplished, very sad in places and, in all, a terrific read. 

For more information about The Echo Wife, see the publisher's website here.