Copyright (C) 2010 Andy Hedgecock
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WINTER SONG
Colin Harvey
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Reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn
Technologically augmented humans, surviving in a galaxy where humanity has spread and evolved across the stars, haven't yet become a cliche of modern space-based science fiction, but it's already becoming a challenge to do something different with them—a challenge that Colin Harvey successfully takes on here. Starting with a bang—almost literally, with main character Karl Allman's ‘intelligent’ ship being attacked and ultimately destroyed by distant, unseen enemies—the focus of the novel quickly switches to a young woman called Bera, who lives in a small farmstead on the overlooked colony world of Isheimur. Through her eyes, we begin to see this as a place where the daily struggle for personal and communal survival leaves little room for looking to the future.
As an imagined human colony, Ishmeimur has two notable selling points to the jaded sf reader: firstly, the society portrayed has an interesting slant, based as it is on Icelandic/Scandinavian lines; secondly, the planet's ecology can be best described as ‘not quite enough’—not quite enough gravity to permanently hold on to the atmosphere, not quite enough carbon dioxide to hold on to the heat, and not quite enough water to allow planet-wide settlement. This is a colony that's slowly but surely falling backwards, forgotten and overlooked after a galaxy-spanning human conflict that still echoes in the distance.
The titular Winter Song is a near-mythical colony seed ship that Karl realises could be his only route off the planet. Getting to it, however, is problematic. For starters, his fall to Ishmeimur almost killed him, and the months of food and care provided by Bera puts him in significant debt to her stepfather and his host Ragnar, hard leader of the small farming community who originally found him. When Karl and Bera decide to make the 500-odd mile journey towards the Winter Song, they not only face the dangers of the planet's ecology, but also a pursuing Ragnar who is determined to issue his own kind of justice to the ‘starman'.
If you're looking for a lightweight, post-cyberpunk tale of augmented human against the weird inhabitants of a hostile alien world, then this may well surprise you—it's a relatively slow burner, but the drama that holds your interest is grounded on the believable conflict of interests between Karl (who for much of the first half of the book is also coping with a rather frayed-at-the-edges downloaded personality nicknamed Loki), Bera and Ragnar. This draws you into the main section of the novel, the long trek towards Winter Song that pushes the characters to their physical and psychological limits, punctuated by the many genuine sacrifices each must make in order to survive.
This is a novel about many things, not least the shape and form a culture will revert to when the hard times come, and to what extent both individual and communal freedoms are lost as a result. The novel also touches on the all-too-human ability to fail to see sentience and intelligence in another species. Ultimately, though, the focus of the novel becomes the relationship between humans and an environment that was only partially ‘terraformed'; and this, perhaps, is where the novel is less satisfactory when huge ideas—such as Karl's comet-shattering plan to try and repair the planet's ozone layer, or at least mend it sufficiently to delay an impending environmental collapse—take precedence over the intimate character interaction that had successfully powered the novel up to that point.
Winter Song is solidly plotted, and the reader can forgive some obvious chestnuts (not only does Karl discover the ancient ship, he's still able to fly it into orbit) thanks to some genuine surprises along the way. Given the relatively open ending—though it does work as a satisfying conclusion in its own right—you can't help but wonder if the author plans to visit Ishmeimur again.
Copyright (C) 2010 Paul F. Cockburn
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THE CARDINAL'S BLADES
Pierre Pevel
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Reviewed by Ian Hunter
In case you haven't guessed from the title, we are in seventeenth century Paris in a world that might have been created by Alexandre Dumas writing with Anne McCaffrey, because this is a France—nay, Europe—where humans and dragons co-exist. If you are familiar with Dumas’ novels, or even just the many movie adaptations of The Three Musketeers, there are a few names you might recognise, including Cardinal Richelieu, the Comte de Rochefort, and a certain Athos. There are also dragons, which come in various guises: some are kept as pets, some act like winged horses, and others are scaly carrier pigeons. Some have even mated with humans, producing human-like people (until they open their eyes), but others are ancient, more powerful creatures with terrible ambition. There is even a disease called ranse which can be contracted from dragons and which turns humans into horrible mutations.
There is a scene in the first Grendel/Batman crossover (okay, I confess, I collect comics) when Grendel is surrounded by Commissioner Gordon and a bunch of armed cops and says something like, “You really don't know who you are dealing with here, do you?” Likewise, there are several moments at the start of The Cardinal's Blade when our heroes could say the same thing as they face duellists, assassins, cutthroats, brigands, officials, and even half-breeds (part human, part dragon) and see them off with ease. The long first part of the novel does come across like a comic book: fast, furious, and filled with action and very, very short chapters, Despite the pace, that first part was confusing—there are too many characters, and too many of them have royal titles, and there are infuriating gaps before they appear again, even when they are left in jeopardy. What was also infuriating were the in-depth descriptions of Parisian architecture and the equally in-depth descriptions of what people were wearing and how they carry themselves, which smacked of padding.
When it opens, Richelieu's Blades—his ‘A’ Team—have been disbanded and are in disgrace, with one of their number slain in a previous action and another missing, presumed dead. The survivors are misfits—and pretty much stock characters—trying to eke out a living as a musketeer or a likable rogue, or by giving fencing lessons on the side, but now their former leader, Captain La Fargue, has been summoned by Richelieu and ordered to reform the Blades and they are given the mission of locating a Spanish nobleman who is at large somewhere in Paris. However, there are also other forces at work, and agents of France's deadliest enemy—the Spanish—are trying hard to establish a lodge of the Black Claw within France. There are plots within plots, schemes within schemes. No-one is who they seem and no-one can really be trusted.
The novel consists of four parts with the final part containing an epilogue, and I felt a bit cheated by that final part as some elements came out of left field to give us what, in TV terms, would be described as the season finale, setting us up for the sequel, The Alchemist in the Shadows, which is due out next year. The whole book is over three hundred and eighty pages long, and includes maps of Paris and even a song, but there are almost eighty chapters and quite a few of them are only two pages long, and I did come to the end of some of them (which were mainly dialogue driven) and wonder how that had advanced the plot, and why it was even there.
If you are looking for a swashbuckler, you probably won't be disappointed with The Cardinal's Blades, especially if you like your swashbuckling with a smattering of fantasy. Think of it as alternative history with the emphasis more on history than fantasy; but there could have been much more done with the fantasy than is done here.
Copyright (C) 2010 Ian Hunter
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THE BATTLE OF THE SUN
Jeanette Winterson
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Reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
The Battle of the Sun is the tangential sequel to Tanglewreck (2006), Jeanette Winterson's earlier novel for children. Possibly, given the emphasis on movement in time, it is Tanglewreck's prequel, or even the other part of a diptych, separate but intimately related, for the two books share several characters
and some previously referenced events are re-examined. Whereas Tanglewreck, preoccupied as it was with people seeking to control time, clearly owed a debt to the science fiction genre, The Battle of the Sun appears to be more akin to a fantasy novel. If I seem hesitant in saying this, it is because I am mindful that Winterson seeks to refuse genre labels but also, in part, because the novel itself seems curiously uncertain about its own nature.
It is intended to be a children's novel but whereas a writer like Diana Wynne Jones seems able to engage simultaneously with adults and children, mainly by ignoring any perceived differences between them, Winterson's narrative suggests that she is self-consciously aware of the presence of that younger audience, and as a result is holding back the ‘real’ story.
The story we learn is this: Jack Snap, who lives with his mother, and who is about to be apprenticed to a printer, is instead kidnapped on his twelfth birthday. He finds himself imprisoned with six other boys, the captives of a mysterious magus, who claims that Jack is the Radiant Boy, the child who will help him achieve his desire to transform London into gold and show the magnitude of his powers. Jack is a resourceful child, and immediately sets to work to win his freedom. This rapidly takes the form of what is clearly an alchemical quest, in which improbable objects must be found and impossible tasks undertaken.
While Jack's adventures are overtly fantastical, his approach to them is very matter-of-fact. Winterson is clearly playing with the expectations raised by quests in fairy tales, especially those involving boys called Jack, and so far as it goes, it is extremely enjoyable. The Battle of the Sun is perhaps most akin to some kind of theatrical spectacle, appropriate to London in 1601. It has dazzling set-pieces, and a cast of startling real and fantastical characters. There are some genuinely sad and shocking moments, and even a deus ex machina, admittedly a rather problematic one, not to mention an appropriate denouement. At almost the last moment in history when the real and the fantastical can comfortably coexist, it seems entirely reasonable that there should still be dragons or mysterious half-people grown in bottles. And yet also the story possesses that sense of overly neat finality that one finds in Shakespearean comedy, with order a little too firmly restored, even though it is clear that the story's deeper currents are still seething.
For there is clearly a darker side to this narrative which unfortunately remains occluded, apart from occasional, frustrating glimpses. One striking example is that Jack is frequently referred to by other characters as ‘Adam Kadmon'. The repetition of the name suggests it is significant, but this is not really explored, and for those with a limited knowledge of alchemy or Kabbalah, the extra layers of meaning are lost. Winterson constantly hints but refuses to engage. Perhaps she didn't want to confuse her perceived audience, perhaps she genuinely didn't know where that strand of story went and just left it to hang loose, teasing the reader. Either way, its half-presence points up the sense that so much is left unsaid, and that some of it needed to be spelled out.
In the end, I cannot decide whether Winterson tried to resist genre labels too hard and left herself with no place to stand, or whether she felt too constrained by her perceived audience to let rip imaginatively, but either way, The Battle of the Sun left me feeling frustrated. So much was happening just around the corner, but the author always held me back from going to look.
Copyright (C) 2010 Maureen Kincaid Speller
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BRAIN THIEF
Alexander Jablokov
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Reviewed by Ian Sales
In recent years, a number of literary authors have dipped their toes in the waters of science fiction. However, their lack of confidence, or inexperience, in deploying sf tropes often gives such attempts an air of diffidence, which in turn gives the novels an old-fashioned feel. This is because sf is a mode of storytelling, it is not just the garden in which its stories play. The reverse, science fiction authors writing mainstream fiction, is less common. But when science fiction authors write non-sf, it is never really not science fiction. Brain Thief, Alexander Jablokov's new novel, is a case in point. It is science fiction lite; it presents its mystery credentials with greater authority than it does its science fiction credentials. But it is still at heart a story told in science fiction mode.
Brain Thief is Jablokov's first novel after a ten-year hiatus. When a pop singer or rock star disappears for a decade, they're retrenching, or ‘charging their creative batteries', and there's an expectation their new material will be a significant improvement over their last. When a writer—especially a genre writer—vanishes for ten years, it's usually because real life has intervened. And so it was with Alexander Jablokov, whose previous novel, Deepdrive, was published in 1998. Jablokov has made no secret of that fact that he stopped writing novels “to raise a family and make a living."
If there's a fear attached to the return to writing of novelists after a lengthy period, it's that they've failed to keep progress with their chosen genre and their new book reads like one that could have been written before they dropped from sight. Admittedly, Jablokov had shown a wide facility within the genre, from knowing interplanetary adventure to cyberpunk to new space opera. Happily, Brain Thief is very much a late noughties sf novel and—if this doesn't sound too much like jacket copy—is almost the novel Bruce Sterling might have written if he hadn't written The Caryatids.
While there are clear likenesses to Sterling's fiction, Jablokov does not spin off ideas with the same frequency or outrageousness. Nor does he need to—Brain Thief is, after all, not a science fictional novel, but a mystery novel told in science fiction mode. Initially, this collision of modes makes for an annoying read—in science fiction, there is a world to be laid out before the reader; in a mystery novel, much has to be withheld. So while Jablokov happily explains the world of his story, he's less open about the plot which drives it.
Bernal Haydon-Rumi is personal assistant to Muriel Inglis, a wealthy widow who finances oddball projects. One of these projects is Hesketh, an AI-controlled interplanetary probe under development by lone researcher Madeline Ungaro. On his return from a business trip, Bernal discovers that both Muriel and Hesketh have disappeared. And their disappearances are linked. He finds himself following a trail of clues—some generated by Muriel herself, some discovered on his own. Both disappearances, of course, have a single solution—not only the nature of the Artificial Intelligence which drives Hesketh, but also the one thread which binds all the characters into a single narrative.
Brain Thief is populated with a well-drawn, entertaining cast of characters. Bernal himself might be a tabula rasa, as is required by the story, but the rest might well populate an oddball comedy-drama set somewhere in one the USA's more oddball corners. This is not a criticism; Brain Thief?'s characters are one of its strengths. Another is its writing. Its biggest strength is perhaps the fact that it isn't trying to be a science fiction novel and a mystery novel. The sf permeates the mystery story, it's not continually fighting it for dominance. Which means the resolution satisfies because it doesn't need to do more than resolve the story. Jablokov has judged his plot, and integrated his world, to a nicety.
Copyright (C) 2010 Ian Sales
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THE SAD TALE OF THE BROTHERS GROSSBART
Jesse Bullington
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Reviewed by Iain Emsley
Jesse Bullington's The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is a strange debut which bewilders as much as it rewards. The brothers Grossbart begin their story in a world which echoes the Brothers Grimm and slowly alters as it travels from Germany to Egypt, changing them from being consumers of story to becoming the story themselves.
From the preface, Bullington invites readers to question whether the brothers’ story is a tragedy or not, and makes them question what they feel about the brothers when positioning them in their own family history as well as in the overall tale. The brothers grow up be
lieving that their grandfather has hidden treasure in Egypt which drives them from poverty to search for a wealth that they only dream about. Along the way they come across various stories in picaresque episodes, such as those of Nicollette and Martyn, which challenge their own beliefs. Nicollete reflects their misogyny in her rejection of their versions of femininity, and yet we see them continue in maintaining their own constructed sense of self. This is partially challenged by Martyn, the surviving priest in a massacred village. When the pestilence strikes, it transmogrifies into something truly demonic, as if a divine retribution has been visited on the place for its harbouring of a heretic. Yet even here Bullington questions the story that we are being told and who the heretic is, developing different perspectives as more information is added.
When the brothers reach Venice, they move away from the marchen, the fairy tale land of forests and rural villages, and into an adventurous story for which they are ill-prepared. Finding Captain Barousse, whom they mistakenly call Bar Goose (so hinting at the Europeanisation of tales to come) the Brothers are besieged and forced to escape through the sewers and onto a ship bound for Egypt. Again they must escape their attackers when the crew mutinies, and they begin to create their own story in Egypt.
The remaining adventurers find themselves lost in the desert, living from hand to mouth. They find what they believe to be their grandfather's treasure, though it may just be a random pyramid. In their haste to get to the riches, they trigger the final part of their story when they trip a fabled trap and are buried alive in the tomb. As with the tales of all good heroes or villains, their story carries on and is embellished, becoming greater than anything that they could dream of. They go back to perhaps being what they always were: the grit in the oyster which creates the pearl.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #226 Page 14