Category: Science Fiction & Fantasy

Matthew Hughes: Template

Template

There are many refreshing things about Matthew Hughes’ novels: The old-style galactic empire feel of the setting, and quirky sense of humor he puts into his writing, and even the brevity of his novels, which pack a lot of ideas and plot into stories typically under 300 pages. Template weighs in at under 200 pages, yet it’s not only one of his best, but it’s an excellent introduction to his Archonate universe.

Conn Labro is a professional duelist on the world of Thrais, and also an indentured servant on a world where everything is for sale. But when his owner and patron is killed, Conn is bought by an off-world consortium – or nearly so, as a man he’s gamed with weekly for his entire life has also been murdered, and willed Conn enough money to pay off his debt. More significantly, he’s given Conn a bearer chip which seems to be what the assassins are after. Accompanied by a woman from Old Earth, Jenore Mordene, Conn leaves Thrais to learn what his friend really left him, but he also finds the galaxy to be a much more diverse place than he’d ever expected.

Template wanders all over the place, and yet it’s a pretty terrific book. Initially I’d summarize Conn Labro as being “a Libertarian Mr. Spock”: His upbringing on Thrais makes him believe that all aspects of human endeavor of transactional, things being bought, sold and exchanged, and that anything else is irrational. Yet every other world is considerably different from Thrais, not least the archipelago on Old Earth where Jenore grew up, which is based around art and lacks monetary currency. Hughes comes up with a nifty way to consider different cultures in the Archonate via a brother and sister who have come up with the idea that every human society is based on one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a fun mental exercise.

Conn’s story is his personal odyssey to learn where he comes from (and why that matters), and where he belongs. So he has to grow emotionally to understand how to relate to other people, and a lot of the suspense comes from him making some poor choices along the way. For much of the book he has Jenore to help guide him and inform him, but eventually he has to control his own destiny. Fortunately he’s not without skills of his own (professional duelist, remember?).

While the book drags a bit in the middle when Conn and Jenore are on Old Earth and the plot doesn’t move forward very much (what does it mean when a book under 200 pages “drags a bit in the middle”?), and one could argue that the cultures Hughes portrays are too simplistic to be plausible, it’s still a really fun story. And besides, Hughes at his best – and this is him at his best – portrays both the people and the cultures of the Archonate as a little absurd, having a bit of the feel of a fable even in an otherwise serious story. (It’s not so different from, say, the races in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, actually.)

Overall Template is one of Hughes’ best books, and should appeal to anyone who likes space opera, adventure, or just good old galactic empire science fiction.

Matthew Hughes: The Commons

The Commons

If you haven’t read Hughes’ earlier novel Black Brillion, I suggest reading it before reading The Commons, as this novel’s second half replays the events of the earlier novel, but from the point of view of Guth Bandar, a supporting character in Brillion, but the protagonist here. The Commons is a “fix-up” novel, reworked from a series of short stories featuring Bandar, plus the Brillion material. So it doesn’t entirely hang together as a novel, but it’s pretty entertaining anyway. (For what it’s worth, I read The Commons first, not realizing the connection between the two.)

Guth Bandar is a “noönaut”, a man who can enter into humanity’s collective unconscious and explore representations of our racial memories. This domain is known as The Commons, and while it’s a rich source of information, it’s also a dangerous place, as explorers can get trapped in a story or legend, or get wrapped up in the doings of archetypal figures which represent undiluted facets of human experience. The book opens with Bandar as a student at the Institute for Historical Inquiry, and its first half consists of short stories in which he attempts to become a full scholar, encountering repeated setbacks in his competition with another student, Didrick Gabbris, for favor with the capricious and insular faculty. These stories show how the Commons works, and the exotic techniques the educated traveler uses to try to insulate himself from the influences of the scenes he visits. Bandar’s adventures include:

  • A visit to a planet where the native life forms are exploited into adopting human archetypes to perform in plays for the human colonists.
  • Being waylaid in a contest with Gabbris and having to take the long way around to reach the finish line. (This is the most absurd story, as Bandar alters parts of his body in comical fashion in each episode, but has the best payoff when he gets stuck in a representation of the eternal war between Heaven and Hell.) You can read this story on Hughes’ web site.
  • Getting caught up in the collapse of an Event in the Commons – which he inadvertently causes himself – and which reveals something hitherto unknown about the Commons.
  • Getting stranded – for reasons I won’t reveal here – as the Helper to a Hero in an ancient scenario of a slaves’ revolt, which leads to a pivotal development in Bandar’s life.

As I said, the second half of the book revisits the events from Black Brillion, in which Bandar meets the policemen Baro Harkless and Luff Imbry, and learns that Harkless has an unusual and disturbing talent for entering the Commons himself. Bandar helps tutor Harkless for a while, and then gets caught up in the case the pair are investigating on the wasteland on Old Earth known as the Swept. Here he becomes the Helper to Baro Harkless’ Hero, a key component but ultimately largely a watcher in the younger man’s story.

Taken as a whole, some key elements of the novel are not very satisfying: Bandar’s life is disrupted by powers beyond his ken in order to accomplish a goal of great importance to all of humanity, but I don’t think Hughes really sells the manipulation of Bandar very well, and the ultimate goal that he and Baro Harkless manage to achieve just doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that the powers that be would have known about years ahead of time, much less manipulated Bandar to be the right man in the right place at the right time. And as a character arc the payoff for his troubles hardly seems adequate: While he finally achieves something like his life’s goals, he’s lost a big chunk of his lifetime because of his career getting derailed, and he ended up being a supporting character in someone else’s story. I really just felt sorry for the guy. Also, it felt like most of Bandar’s maturation occurs off-stage between the first and second halves, when he’s growing from a young man to an experienced one through the natural day-to-day progression of life; he definitely feels more mature in the second half, but we don’t see it happen, which makes it feel like a big part of his character arc is missing.

I think Hughes’ sense of whimsy – particularly the ludicrousness of the situations Bandar ends up in – isn’t as effective here as in other books. Indeed, a problem with both Bandar and Harkless in their respective novels is that they’re both too serious, too humorless, to feel like characters that fit into these situations. While Henghis Hapthorn is himself a pretty serious character, he has both the style and the verbal wit to be an effective actor in ridiculous or belittling situations, in ways that Bandar isn’t.

The book is at its best in portraying the narrative potential of the Commons, especially in the first half, which runs through a number of inventive situations, with clever puzzles for Bandar to figure out within the confines of this strange environment. The story involving the war between heaven and hell is my favorite precisely because Bandar takes advantage of the peculiar nature of a scenario within the Commons, and the fact that it’s not a real event, to be able to get out of his predicament.

So overall I was disappointed with The Commons; I don’t think it measures up to Hughes’ other novels. I hope he revisits the environment again sometime, but with a story that holds together better.

Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book

I temper my expectations for a Neil Gaiman novel: I view him as being a style-over-substance writer, whose emphasis is on crafting a setting and evoking a mood – usually with a heavy overlay of clever and witty use of language – rather than being strong in plotting, characterization, or giving his stories meaning. Indeed, Gaiman is someone to avoid if you mainly want character development, as his main characters tend to be either everyman sorts (Neverwhere, Stardust, Anansi Boys) or empty shells (American Gods, and the hero in this book). I actually do enjoy most of his books, because of his strengths, but because I tend to prefer books which are based around his weaknesses, I never expect or hope that one of his books will become a favorite.

So it was with The Graveyard Book, an homage to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. I’ve never read The Jungle Book (shock, horror from the audience), nor even seen the Disney film (even more shock and horror), but a friend of mine summed up both books like so: “In The Jungle Book, a boy is adopted by animals and learns the things that animals know. In The Graveyard Book, a boy is adopted by dead people and learns the things that dead people know.” A fine summary, as the book opens with man with a knife named Jack kills a family in a nameless town in England, save for the youngest child, a toddler who happens to toddle away to a graveyard during the massacre, where he’s saved by the spirits in the graveyard, adopted by a couple there, and given the name Nobody Owens. “Bod” grows up in the graveyard, rarely leaving it because his guardian, Silas (who is hinted as being a vampire), says that Jack and the cabal behind him are still looking for Bod, and only in the graveyard is he safe. So his parents and friends in the graveyard teach him the knowledge and skills of dead people, even though he’s still alive. But they also prepare him for his eventual rejoining of the living world.

The book is told in episodic form, as Bod learns about the skills that dead people have (fading from view, walking in dreams, instilling fear), and also learning about some of the less-visited nooks and crannies of the graveyard. He does, of course, venture out of his home, which eventually leads to a showdown between Bod and the cabal. But for the most part you’ll either accept the premise and enjoy the individual stories – which are only loosely linked, although several points are recapitulated in the climax – or not.

For myself, I did enjoy the stories Bod follows a fairly traditional “hero’s-coming-of-age” journey, questioning his elders and the rules he lives by, then coming to learn when he should follow them and when he should break them. I particularly like “Nobody Owens’ School Days”, when he ventures out to attend a regular school and has a variety of adventures, partly because his motivation to do the right thing by other kids gets him in trouble with the bullies, and events spiral out of control from there.

His confrontation with the cabal signals the coming of his adulthood, leading to a bittersweet ending, but I was disappointing in the climax since we never really learn why the cabal are so set on killing Bod – the reasons are hinted at, but so vaguely that they’re hardly sufficient to explain the events which set the story in motion. Gaiman sometimes gets too caught up in being mysterious and leaving holes for the reader to fill in, and that’s the problem here, as more specificity was sorely needed.

As a book aimed at the “young adult” market (which I always instinctively think means 18-22 year olds, but which really means 10-14 year olds, I think), for an older audience The Graveyard Book is an easy read and could be summed up as “enjoyable but light”, sliding in as better than Stardust and about on par with Coraline. (This is a good point – as he illustrated both books – to make my obligatory statement that I cannot stand Dave McKean’s artwork. His work is better here than in Coraline, but it still fails to be either illustrative and evocative, and frankly I just find it ugly. Your mileage may vary.) As someone once said, if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you’ll like. While it’s full of wonderful imagery, I don’t think it’s a story that will stay with me for very long.

Matthew Hughes: Black Brillion

Black Brillion

I’m working my way more-or-less backwards through Matthew Hughes’ tales of the Archonate, his far-future galactic society which is marked more by his own wry and whimsical turn of phrase than anything in the setting itself. Black Brillion is the tale of Baro Harkless, rookies member of the Scrutinizers (or “Scroots”) who follows the con man Luff Imbry as Imbry tries to pull a job in an unusual city on Old Earth. As is Hughes’ tendency, the opening sequence is merely a lead-in to the main story (not unlike the pattern in the James Bond movies): Baro’s success in arresting Imbry and others leads to his being instated as a full officer, but his boss, Ardmander Arboghast, quickly sends Baro off on a new assignment with a new partner – Luff Imbry, himself now a fully-deputised Scroot. Their mission is to capture another con man, Horslan Gebbling, whom Imbry once worked with, who’s apparently working a scheme to separate sufferers of an affliction known as the lassitude from their money, claiming to be able to cure them while on a voyage across a wasteland known as the Swept.

One of their fellow passengers is a an named Guth Bander, a Nöonaut, able to enter the Commons, the manifestation of the collective unconscious of mankind. Baro finds himself intrigued by the notion, and even finds that he has an unusual talent for entering the Commons, drawn by the archetypal entities that dwell there into accomplishing some task. All of this greatly alarms Bandar, who is keenly aware of the dangers in the Commons and in interacting with the archetypes. Baro finds himself torn between his mission – and following in his father’s footsteps – and his sudden new calling in the Commons.

While the story is largely that of Baro Harkless, a coming-of-age and a journey of personal discovery, Luff Imbry often overshadows the young man. Hughes does a masterful job of contrasting the inexperienced and rule-bound Baro with the worldly and clever Imbry. Indeed, while Baro comes into his own by the end of the novel, if Hughes were to write more novels about one of these characters, I’d rather see how Imbry develops as a man of the law who’s spent most of his life on the other side of it. (Of course, the character Hughes actually wrote a novel about is Guth Bandar, which I’ll cover shortly in another review.)

The plot itself is both interesting and peculiar: The pursuit of Gebbling develops into a much more serious scenario which threatens all of Old Earth itself, and that Hughes makes this transition naturally is impressive stuff. On the other hand, the introduction of the Commons and the degree to which it dominates the second half of the story is a very strange departure from the straightforward police investigation the book starts out as. It feels like a big distraction until it ends up playing a key role in the resolution of the case. It makes the book feel like a bit of a patchwork, though, but the focus on Baro’s feelings about his father and his efforts to find where he belongs in life makes it work in the end.

While not as ambitious as Hughes’ later novels starring the detective Henghis Hapthorn, Black Brillion is still a fun romp. (Although the title bears only a passing resemblance to the story; perhaps not the best choice for the book.) Overall this is actually a fine introduction to Hughes’ Archonate universe, and his writing style overall.

Matthew Hughes: Hespira

Hespira

Hespira is the third in Matthew Hughes’ novels of his Sherlock Holmes-like protagonist Henghis Hapthorn, the greatest discriminator of his age, but an age of science which is drawing to a close, to be replaced by an age of magic. The book opens with Hapthorn getting involved in a dispute between a rich collector and a criminal overlord, at which point the chief of police (the Scrutinizers or “Scroots”) suggests that Hapthorn take a vacation until it all blows over. Conveniently, Hapthorn has recently run into a young woman, Hespira, who has lost her memory. Hapthorn seizes this opportunity to get off-planet while also pursuing a case that seems likely to challenge his mental abilities (even if it might not pay very much; then again, he’s rather taken with the woman). Hapthorn and Hespira journey far down the Spray of human civilization to a remote world in search of her origin.

Although not short on ideas content, a lot of the fun of the Hapthorn novels is Hughes’ witty writing. Hapthorn himself is always conscious of protocol and propriety, given the rich and powerful people who employ him, yet his chosen profession frequently takes him outside of his comfort zone where has must improvise in dealing with other people. Early on in Hespira there’s a paragraph which I’ve been reading to friends as representative of the narrative style. In it, Hapthorn is visiting a new restaurant while waiting for someone on his current engagement:

When she had brought me the platter of pastes, the server had pointed out to me the different strengths of the eighteen sauces, advising me to save for last the meat puree doused in Sheeshah’s Nine Dragons Sauce, predicting that one it struck my palate, the dish’s other, subtler flavors would be unable to register. I now scooped up a good pinch of the stuff, made sure my tumbler of improved water was full and to hand, and popped the laden bread into my mouth. There was a pause – my taste buds may well have gone into shock for a moment – then the full weight of Master Jho-su’s genius crashed upon my senses. My eyes widened, simultaneously flinging a gush of tears down my cheeks, my tongue desperately sought an exit from my mouth, and my nose and sinuses reported that they had been suddenly and inexplicably connected to a volcanic flume.

I groped for the tumbler and took a healthy gulp, but the water seemed to evaporate before it even reached my throat. I drank more, my free hand finding the carafe even as I dained the glass. I could scarcely see to pour a refill and ended up drinking directly from the larger container. Gradually, the inferno in my mouth subsided to a banked fire. I wiped my streaing eyes and sucked in a great breath and would not have been surprised, when I exhaled to have emitted clouds of steam.

(If this piques your interest, you can read the entire first chapter at Hughes’ web site.)

Throughout Hapthorn’s adventures, Hughes has changed the status quo of his hero’s life several times. Hespira opens with Hapthorn in a period of relative calm, without the disruptive presence of his doppelganger, Osk Rievor, who is Hapthorn’s intuition given form and who now lives separately. The adventure in the meat of the book is clever and entertaining, with Hespira an unusual foil for Hapthorn since he’s attracted to her, and she’s amnesiac but strong-willed. Untangling the threads of her life is what Hapthorn does best, even without his intuition, and seeing him at his best once more makes for fine reading.

But the impending end of his age of science and reason worries at Hapthorn’s soul, and while the adventure here is a distraction from his problems (and, amusingly enough, a distraction in other ways as we find out in the novel’s climax), eventually he returns to the problem of what to do about, well, the transition he can’t do anything about.

The book ends in a somber note, which is a bit disappointing if this really is the last Hapthorn novel. On the other hand, Hapthorn has never been a very heroic figure; while he’s not simply a mercenary, he’s always been timid and even a little craven, so the decision he faces at the end of the book and the fact that he can’t actually decide is (unfortunately) in keeping with his character. But it’s always been a little ambiguous as to when the turn of the wheel is going to descend, so it’s sad to leave him at this point, not sure if he’s going to give up, or give in, but in any event ending his career with a personal whimper rather than a bang. But, I guess there are people who do that.

China Miéville: The City & The City

  • The City & The City

    • by China Miéville
    • TPB, Ballantine/Del Rey, © 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-345-49752-9
The City & The City

I read this year’s co-winners of the Hugo Award for Best Novel back to back, starting with China Miéville’s The City & The City. Fundamentally, the novel is a mystery: In the eastern European city of Beszel, a woman’s body is found dumped in the trash. Inspector Tyador Borlú investigates her murder, but quickly runs into a problem: not only does no one know who she is, but she appears to have been murdered in Beszel’s sister city of Ul Quoma and her body brought back. But Ul Qoma occupies the same physical space as Beszel, only slightly shifted in dimensions. The two cities are separated by language and culture, and despite “crosshatchings” where the two cities bleed together, their separation is reinforced by a mysterious organization called Breach, which monitors people violating the laws of both cities.

The dead woman is eventually revealed to be a foreigner, and Borlú follows her trail through the fringes of society, groups who champion their own city’s individuality, and those which want to bring the two together. Eventually Borlú travels to Ul Quoma, where he works with detective Qussim Dhatt to track down the killer from that side.

The book is rich in the mechanics of how the two cities stay separate, yet interact through well-defined channels, but how it plays with its premise is ultimately unsatisfying. Hints of the origins of the split between the two cities are dropped, but the truth is lost to antiquity. I understand that Miéville decided that this book wouldn’t be backwards-looking, but the story doesn’t really develop its premise, keeping it constrained to the basic set-up of the divided sister cities, not really expanding on the theme, developing it, or transforming it or the cities through the progress of the plot. While in a way Miéville’s restraint and discipline is admirable – sticking strictly to the plot of the murder mystery, not using it as a vehicle to explore the fantastic premise as the premise as a backdrop to the story – it’s disappointing that such a rich idea isn’t developed more fully.

Miéville is a strong “colorist”, excellent at crafting a world in minute detail and bringing it to life, but his plot and characters tend to be dry, and the story develops slowly, and this book fits right in with Perdido Street Station and The Scar in that regard. Even when the story finally heats up in the final third, it seems to lope along without a sense of urgency, or with much concern that the events at hand are going to have a big impact on the characters.

Overall The City & The City is frustrating for its lack of ambition – not that Miéville doesn’t do his usual strong job of painting the world, but that he doesn’t really do very much with it. Certainly nothing like, say, a Vernor Vinge might. It feels like a very small story in a world the author seems to be actively fighting to keep under control. And unfortunately that just makes the novel feel like much less than it should have been.

Alastair Reynolds: Terminal World

Terminal
World

Did hard SF writer Alastair Reynolds construct Terminal World just so he could write a steampunk adventure? Since the world is filled with dirigibles, which as I recently observed is the flavor du jour of steampunk, it sure seems like it. But there’s a lot more in here, too.

The novel opens in Spearpoint, the last city on Earth, a giant tower jutting towards the sky, covered with several towns, each of which has a lower technology level as you get closer to the surface (the Celestial Levels, Circuit City, Neon Heights, Steamtown, Horsetown), and not by choice – the ambient nature of the city forces this on Spearpoint, and travelling from one zone to another not only constricts what technology can operate there (irreparably damaging most technology carried in which can’t), but it’s a shock to biological systems to make the transition as well.

The story opens when an angel falls from the Celestial Levels into Neon Heights, where it’s brought to the morgue of a Doctor Quillon. Quillon has a special interest in strange beings arriving from elsewhere, because he’s an angel himself, one who years ago was part of a task force infiltrating the lower levels to see if modified angels could survive there. The mission went badly wrong, and Quillon was stranded in Neon Heights alone, knowing that other angels would love to recapture him for what he knows. This fallen angels has come to warn Quillon that he’s about to be hunted, and that he should leave Spearpoint immediately. With the help of his friend (and underworld organizer) Fray, Quillon leaves his life of ten years behind, conveyed by a foul-mouthed transporter named Meroka out of the city, just ahead of pursuing angels.

Outside the city they have several adventures, where Quillon is acquainted with the ravenous, biomechanical Carnivorgs, and the drug-addled, violent Skullboys, before they are rescued by Swarm, once the fleet of Spearpoint, but now the only source of civilization (never mind law) outside the city. Befriended by Swarm’s leader, Ricasso, Quillon is carried on a journey which reveals that the Earth is dying, but also that the zones which cover the planet have an underlying cause, and that there may be a way to help heal the planet before it dies completely.

It only takes a few pages to see that Reynolds’ notion of zones in Terminal World are very similar to the “zones of thought” in Vernor Vinge’s great novel A Fire Upon The Deep, only really different in the details. Vinge has more-or-less said that he came up with the zones to allow him to write traditional space opera, which he thinks is implausible otherwise due to the likelihood of a race going through the technological singularity before they would have the technology to embark on such adventures. And it feels like Reynolds is employing his own zones to a similar end, to write far-future SF where dirigibles, horses, and pistols exist side-by-side with angels, ray guns, and Spearpoint. While Reynolds’ world here feels a bit rough around the edges (the world outside Spearpoint feels a bit too simplistic, and the excuse that the planet is dying doesn’t feel entirely satisfying), overall it’s still an entertaining milieu, particularly the dichotomy of the city vs. everything else, and the adventures Quillon and Meroka have on their way out of Spearpoint.

The bulk of the story concerns Quillon’s experiences within Swarm, as its citizens are deeply skeptical of anyone from Spearpoint, due to not-yet-forgotten crimes committed against them years earlier. There’s a combination of politics (Quillon trying to earn their trust, and various schemes going on within Swarm) and travelogue (as Swarm visits a couple of interesting locales in its travels). The mechanics of the story focus on Quillon trying to heal the rift between Swarm and Spearpoint, as he finds himself with sympathies towards both entities, and figuring out the nature of the zones and what can be done to heal the fragmentation of the planet before it’s too late. The Skullboys and Vorgs are background color and obstacles to these missions, the Vorgs being the more interesting of the two, as the Skullboys are pretty generic gangs who apparently don’t have much contention within their own ranks (another rough edge in the setting). As always, Reynolds is excellent at dealing with the mechanics of the plot, especially in the story’s climax when several ships of Swarm have to run a brutal gauntlet under adverse conditions.

Reynolds is a cut above the typical hard SF author when it comes to characterizations, and he does a good job here, keeping us guessing for a while as to whether Quillon will ingratiate himself to Ricasso and other members of Swarm. Once that’s resolved, though, the characters do tend to collapse into whites and blacks, which is a bit disappointing. But at least the characters are engaging, and Ricasso in particular is a figure who makes some interesting decisions for debatable reasons.

But Quillon is the backbone of the story. He somewhat resembles Shadow, the protagonist of Neil Gaiman’s terrific novel American Gods, in that he’s very even-tempered, and seems to be dragged along by circumstances beyond his control for stretches of the story, though he’s a little more active than Shadow when he has the chance. Quillon’s story arc is one of a man who’s been beaten down and in hiding for years, and by overcoming adversity becomes a heroic figure doing what he can to help others and improve the world. He’s the glue who holds the story together.

The novel’s biggest disappointment is the ending, as our heroes manage to accomplish all of their goals, vanquishing several adversaries and delivering an important package to Spearpoint, but despite those accomplishments two key elements of the story are left unresolved: Saving Earth from the ravages of the zones remains a long-term goal, and the frailties are Quillon’s body are left decidedly hanging. Getting to that point is a lot of fun, but I wish Reynolds had been able to take things a little bit further. I don’t know if he’s planning a sequel, but without one, Terminal World is going to feel somewhat unfinished.

Following the “bigger ideas” approach of House of Suns, Terminal World‘s sticking to a single planet makes an interesting counterpoint. Although a decent adventure, I don’t think it’s one of Reynolds’ best. Too many unfinished edges, and not quite as satisfying.

That cover sure is gorgeous, though.

Cherie Priest: Boneshaker

Boneshaker

Cherie Priest seems to be the queen of steampunk today, or at least there seems to be an expectation that she’ll be anointed such, even though she’s apparently pushing her novel Boneshaker and its setting as alternate history rather than steampunk (though, really, it’s both). Other than my fondness for Girl Genius (which is mainly due to my being a slavering fanboy of Phil Foglio), I’ve never gotten into the genre of steampunk: Neither the punk nor the cyberpunk aesthetics were my thing, I have no particular interest in 19th century fashion, technology or culture (steampunk seems to have a very strong fashion/costuming element in it), and all-in-all I’d rather be reading far-future SF than recent-past SF. Still, I do have a weakness for alternate history, and we read Boneshaker for a book discussion group. Plus it’s up for the Hugo Award for best novel.

The flavor of steampunk these days seems to be dirigibles, which are present in Boneshaker, but more to seem cool than to serve a significant role in the story. The story’s backdrop is that in 1863 an inventor named Leviticus Blue created a huge drill to aid in exploiting the gold rush, but something went horribly wrong, the drill destroyed big chunks of Seattle, and also somehow unleashed a gas which seeped into the city and turned people into zombies. The government walled up the city, but a few citizens remained living outside the walls. Blue disappeared, presumed dead, and his widow, Briar, moved back to the house of her father, Maynard Wilkes, himself a man of some note, although he died during the initial release of the gas as well. Years later, in 1880, Briar’s teenage son, Zeke, gets it into his mind to go into the city and gather evidence to prove that Blue wasn’t really responsible for the disaster, and Briar follows him into Seattle to save him. Within the walls they discover a town flooded by blight gas and populated by starving zombies, but also by a few stubborn humans who live in sealed-away buildings and basements, where the two get caught up in the ongoing power struggle within the city.

Priest has meticulously crafted her world (which she’s named The Clockwork Century), with the Civil War still ongoing in the east after 30 years, and the west even more of a hardscrabble frontier than it was at the time. But the book’s setting seems more calculated for effect than anything else. That Seattle is still populated doesn’t make much sense, as I’d expect most people would have cleared out (likely heading to another city farther north) as there’s really nothing for them here except some bad memories. Briar in particular I’d think would have headed far away. There are a few rationalizations for why there’s still a town outside the walls, but I wasn’t convinced.

There is some neat stuff here: The humans inside the city have carefully sealed off living spaces, and the Chinese population are responsible for operating pumps which import fresh air from above the wall, to keep everyone able to breathe. There’s a mysterious Doctor Minnericht who creates fantastic devices which help people survive, and which also keep them beholden to him. Briar and Zeke encounter various eccentric characters who have been playing out their own little dramas within the walls, all of which come to a head when Minnericht stands in the way of Briar and Zeke getting what they want. Compared to this, the airships are downright mundane, serving little role in the book other than to provide a means to escape the city.

The core problem, though, is that story itself is slight, being not much more than a travelogue of the inside of the city. Yes, events develop so that there’s a big shootout at the end, at the book is a page-turner at times. But characterization is slim: Neither Briar nor Zeke really have a story arc, and they’re the main characters in the story. We do eventually learn some of the secrets in Briar’s past, but they’re added almost as an afterthought, as if Priest felt that once the main story was done she should tidy up a few loose ends in case anyone cares, but those revelations were what kept me reading, as the battles among the residents of the city felt like just an obstacle to the characters getting to the good stuff. And other than Zeke becoming closer to his mother when he sees what she risked for him, the characters don’t really change or grow. The supporting characters are quirky but not deep. The story is a lot of running around and agonizing, but the payoff didn’t justify it for me.

While Priest is a fine wordsmith, and her characters’ names are themselves quite evocative, overall I found Boneshaker disappointing, a little too long to be carried by its ideas content, and without enough heft to its characters or plot to feel really satisfying.

Matthew Hughes: The Gist Hunter and Other Stories

The Gist Hunter
& Other Stories

The Gist Hunter is a fun book which collects a number of Matthew Hughes’ short fiction, including all of the stories leading up to his first Henghis Hapthorn novel, Majestrum. While the Hapthorn novels can be enjoyed on their own, these stories explain how Hapthorn learned of the impending ascendance of magic in the universe, how his intuition became its own fully-formed personality, and how he acquired some of the paraphernalia he owns. There’s even an arc in these stories involving Hapthorn’s friend from another universe which is alluded to in the novels, but which is all over by that time.

The Hapthorn stories are mostly mysteries, very much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes: “Mastermindless” introduces Hapthorn and reads a little more like a fable (everything happens because of a really bad decision someone made), as if Hughes hadn’t quite decided whether to take the character in a more grounded or a more magical direction. “Relics of the Thim”, “Falberoth’s Ruin” and “Thwarting Jabbi Gloond” all have nifty science fictional twists to their resolution. “Finding Sajessarian” and “The Gist Hunter” are more in the style of adventure stories, and are at the core of the character’s development leading up to Majestrum. Other than “Falberoth’s Ruin”, which I found a little mundane, they’re all fine stories.

The other series of stories here features the character Guth Bandar, also a resident of the far-future Archonate in which Hapthorn lives, but the two inhabit completely different regions of society: Bandar is a “noönaut”, who travels into humanity’s collective unconscious as a researcher and scholar. The three stories here check in on different points in Bandar’s career, as a student and later as an experienced traveller. They’re entertaining and clever, but don’t feel quite as rewarding as the Hapthorn stories, perhaps because they are merely snapshots of his career, ones which don’t flow into each other very smoothly. There is also a little too much feeling of “anything goes” in the stories, as Bandar falls prey to the whims of fictional deities, has various convenient spells at his disposal, and undergoes some rather creepy changes, such as turning into a pig. It doesn’t eel grounded in well-understood rules, which is a characteristic of stories which bothers me. I’ll see if the Bandar novel, The Commons, is more satisfying.

The remainder of the volume consists of standalone stories. “Go Tell The Phoenicians” is a nifty H. Beam Piper-esque first contact story, but the others are plain by comparison. But since the Hapthorn and Bandar stories making up most of the book, that’s not a big problem.

The Gist Hunter is great reading for a Hapthorn fan, and the jury’s still out (for me) on the Bandar stories. Overall, it’s a lot of fun.

John Scalzi: The God Engines

The God Engines

If The Android’s Dream could be looked at as John Scalzi taking the humorous side of his writing to its logical extreme in a novel, The God Engines could be seen as the opposite, as it is a very serious, rarely humorous, and very dark fantasy. (Well, a fantasy with spaceships.) It may also be his best work to date.

Captain Ean Tephe of the Righteous seems practically like a set-up for a Star Trek story, but in this case Tephe’s ship is in the fleet of a culture which serves its god, a god which has been conquering other gods since creation came into being. Many of the conquered gods are now the power source for the ships of the fleet, and Tephe’s god gains power through the faith of his followers, a faith stoked on the Righteous by the ship’s priest, Ando, whom Tephe doesn’t care for very much. Tephe is recalled to lead a mission to bring his god’s faith to a new planet, a planet that doesn’t know of any gods, and whose faith could therefore be seen as purer than those of long standing. This journey both reveals to us the details of the culture in which Tephe lives, and reveals to Tephe some unpleasant truths underlying that culture.

For such a short novel, Scalzi packs in plenty of details, such as what happens to the followers of the conquered gods, how the social structure on the Righteous works, and glimpses into the workings of the government and priesthood. But he keeps the story focused on Tephe, who is a moral and practical man who turns a blind eye to things he doesn’t like that he can’t change, and who also fervently wishes to command a spaceship even though he’s promised much greater things once this mission is completed.

By the end of the book, the fantasy has turned to horror, quite effectively so. The actual conclusion I found a little disappointing as I’d hoped things would turn out differently, but I can certainly see the argument that things couldn’t have gone any differently. Despite that, I thought The God Engines was an outstanding story, not in the least diminished through the relative lack of Scalzi’s trademark zingers (the story isn’t entirely without humor, but it’s very much reduced in quantity). I’d love to see him do more of this sort of thing, especially since I didn’t care at all for the other direction, as seen in The Android’s Dream. Though I think the smart money is on us seeing more novels somewhere in the middle, as his Old Man’s War series has been.