Kate Wilhelm - Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is an unusual end of the world novel. It begins with the incredibly wealthy Sumner family who seeing all the signs that civilisation is collapsing - failed crops, disease and sterility - decide to set up a hidden research hospital where they can create human clones to repopulate the Earth after humanity has died. The first few chapters are rather plodding, exploring the collapse and the frantic search for scientific solutions to genetic problems. But once the clones become viable and are part of the story itself, the novel rapidly takes off - with echoes of Earth Abides, The Midwich Cuckoos, Stepford Wives and perhaps, I Am Legend.

The clones are human, but not. They cannot function as individuals, in fact individuality has no meaning for them. On an exploration trip some of the brothers and sisters cannot function properly, and one of them, Molly, becomes isolated and develops traits of individuality. Isolated from the other clones because of this, and for fear of infecting them, she gets pregnant and gives birth to a child who grows up to be free of the psychological limitations that affect the cloned children. This child, Mark, then becomes a foil for the clones - useful to them because he can go where others cannot, and becomes confident and at peace with the natural world. But he also threatens to undermine the whole clone "group think", because of his individuality - never mind his interest in the arts, culture and the world around them. Its a novel that makes the reader uneasy, with no morally upstanding figures for you to identify with.

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is a surprising novel for the 1970s. It deals, as many did, with the failure of human society, and the limitations of science in solving those issues. But it is also a fine rumination on the role of the individual and the limits of collective thinking. I wonder, to what extent, it was fueled by crude (right-wing) critiques of socialism which supposedly would destroy the individual. But it is as much anti-authoritarian as well as a critique of such ideas and consequently, today, the novel probably is read differently - there's quite a bit of focus on the natural world and its destruction, and resurgence after humanities' demise and at least one reference to the newish idea of global warming. Recommended.

Related Reviews

Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Aldiss - The Interpreter
Bester - The Stars My Destination
Burke - Semiosis
Pohl & Kornbluth - Wolfbane

Stephen King - Fairy Tale

Written during Covid-19 Stephen King's Fairy Tale bears all the markings of a literal escapist fantasy, and that's why I found it perfect to read when I did. It beings with the troubled early life of Charlie Reade who is 17 when the novel is set, though the first 100 pages concern his childhood - the death of his mother and the consequent alcoholism of Charlie's father. Charlie's dad eventually escapes the cycle of alcoholism, and puts himself back on the straight and narrow, but the fear of a relapse haunts Charlie, whose efforts in the schoolroom and on the athletic field seem to be attempts to atone for his father's behaviour and some unsavoury childhood rebellion by himself.

But it is when Charlie meets Howard Bowditch, and elderly, reclusive and very rude neighbour that things enter the fantastical. It turns out that Bowditch, who becomes Charlie's friend and mentor, is the guardian of a gateway to a fairy tale world, but its a world attacked by evil, while has begun to disintegrate. As it's a fairy tale land the former royal family are actually rather nice people, rather than those at the top of a system of oppression and exploitation. Charlie sets out to restore the throne, and save the life of Bowditch's beloved dog.

It is actually a fairly classic fairy tale, though Charlie spends a lot of it in prison, forced to compete in violent gladiatorial combat with other prisoners. There is a satisfactory ending, and reconciliation with his father, and the dog lives.

As with much of King's writings, Fairy Tale is at its best when describing the mundane parts of his character's lives. The first third, focusing on Charlie and the relationship with the two adults - his father and Bowditch is the best. The reader is carried along on a sort of soap opera. By the time we get to the fairy tale, it feels a little like King has spent his imagination a little and the the rest of the story is cobbled together. It feels more like a computer game brought to the page, than a fully rounded novel. That said, there's plenty of vintage King here, some blood and guts, lots of excitement and a host of weird and wonderful fantasy characters. 

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Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood

Mythago Wood ought to have been a standout fantasy novel for me. It steers clear of the standard fantasy tropes of elves, wizards and quests and instead redefines the genre, taking as its starting point a strange forest outside Stephen Huxley's family home. This forest has obsessed his father, and in turn his elder brother, and eventually Stephen, returning home from World War Two and years in Europe, is also pulled in to its strangeness trying to understand his father's obession and his brother's disappearance.

The woods are far larger than the actual perimeter on the Huxley's land suggests and a series of strange events leads Stephen to believe there's something very odd about them. Unusually he employs modern technology to try and work it out, getting himself on board an aircraft to photograph them. This heighten's his curisoty further.

But what really gets him going is the appearance of a strange woman (though Holdstock insists on calling her a girl). This woman is some sort of warrior royalty, from Anglo-Saxon times, and turns out to have been the creation of the interaction of the Huxley's minds with the magic of the wood. When Stephen is nearly killed by an attack from the wood he decides to enter, and try to work out whats happening.

Its an interesting take on a genre were woods are normally places for mysterious elves to offer quests to travellers. Instead it becomes a story about mental health and obsession. But it turns out to be surprisingly thin, and sadly the novel fails to break from the other usual problem of fantasy, which is that female characters are paper thin, rare and sex objects.

All in all this was interesting, but I'm not sure I'll get drawn into the rest of the books.

Related Reviews

El-Mohtar & Gladstone - This is How You Lose the Time War
Butler - Kindred
Neuvel - A History of What Comes Next

Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus

***Warning Spoilers***

The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a complex novel told through three very distinct, but linked short stories. These are all set on the twin planets of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, colonised from France on Earth, but now very much independent. The original inhabitants of Sainte Anne, whose mode of production was a nomadic, hunter-gatherer type, vanished soon after the colonists arrived. Likely driven extinct, but according to some thinkers, their ability to shape-shift actually saw them take over the identies of the colonists meaning the actual planet's inhabitants are the original indigenous population.

The first story is set in the somewhat  steampunk Victorian atmosphere of a brothel on Sainte Croix. The narrator tells the story of his boyhood, under tutaluge from a mechanical teacher, and with only the most distant of attention from his father the wealthy brothel owner. There he eventually discovers that he is not his father's son, but a clone. Killing him he is imprisoned, but eventually takes over his father's position and wealth. It is implied its happened before. The anthropologist who provides the clue to his real nature returns in the final story in the series.

The second book tells the story of the indigenous people, through a dreamlike and very alien account of the arrival of the colonists - though this is very much the final part of a longer account that is mostly focused on the hunting of food, and attempts to evade the dangerous marsh people.

The final tale, that of the fall of the anthropolist from part one, is an account of this man's attempt to understand and locate any information on the original inhabitants. His expedition and experiences are told through fragments from taped interviews, newspaper clippings and the remains of his journal - as well as the police recordings of his imprisonment when tried for being a spy. But it seems likely that the anthropologist at the end of the story, and indeed at the end of the book, is not the same person who he was at the start.

This summary is important because the book is confusing and some of the important detail that links the stories and tells the overarching account is easily missed, particularly as the final section is told in fragments. The reader needs to work hard and I was not invested enough in the book to keep track of the various hints to the bigger narrative. This is not escapist science fiction - this is a very clear example of the genre as literature, and if you aren't prepared you'll miss out on what is actually quite an interesting novel about colonisation, identity and indigenous experience under settler colonialism.

Ren Hutchings - Under Fortunate Stars

Ren Hutchings first novel Under Fortunate Stars has a fascinating premise. A state of the art spacecraft, owned by a bureaucratic galaxy wide corporation, on a diplomatic mission is sucked into a rift in space and finds itself out of touch with the rest of humanity. They quickly encounter another, much older spacecraft, crewed by a ragtag bunch of misfits from the past. These humans turn out to be the founders, the people whose intervention saved humanity by ending a devastating alien war. 

The presence of both craft in this space rift is inexplicable, and it becomes clear that unless the two ships return to their own times, history will be altered and the future may be completely changed as the war will not stop. 

Its a clever premise, but unfortunately it is undone by an overlong and too complicated story. Hidden in Under Fortunate Stars is a great novel, and a good editor should have cut a hundred pages to bring the story out. Instead we are given far too much exposition, background history and overlong technobabble. It makes the book to slow and boring and does nothing to fill out the characters. Unfortunately most of the main characters are one dimensional with people introduced then forgotten. I was left wondering what had happened to some of the main people on the historic ship that had jumped forward - they seem to play no role other than to make up numbers. The author lets the story unfold by telling the characters back story with chapters devoted to their own history. But the time jumping gets confused with the timetravel and its a little messy in places.

This is an ok novel that should have been great, so I find it hard to recommend.

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - This is How You Lose the Time War

Science fiction and romance is a rare combination, so it is wonderful to find a novel that does the sub-genre so well. This is How You Lose the Time War is a short and very tightly written story (the authors apparently wrote alternate chapters) that tells the story of two super soldiers on opposing sides that fight a war up and down history, to shift historical outcomes so they favour their own side.

On one of these battlefields, Red finds a mocking letter from her opponent Blue. To prevent superiors finding traces of the missive, and hence potential for Red coming under suspicion that she's being turned, the letter quickly vanishes. Further exchanges between the two are written in complex codes, the eddies of liquids, the movement of gases, the reflections of lights, and move from mocking, to flirtation to outright declaration of friendship. Which eventually becomes love. Along the way the two share literature recommendations, favourite places and times.

Its a sweet story, that draws out the way that impersonal communications - letters, emails, messages - can become something much more than expected. But its told in the context of a genocidal fight that flips back and forth through time and space. The battles, fights and strategies are mostly hinted at - though the authors give us enough that we can fill in the blanks. Eventually the romance becomes a threat. Should superiors suspect than the agent is for the chop. But is the romance real? Or is it just a complex plot to turn, or entrap the opposition's best soldier?

That, dear reader, is for you to find out. This is How You Lose the Time War is rightly a phenomena, but its well worth digging out for a neat twist on the genre.

Octavia E. Butler - Kindred

Despite my left wing politics and love of science fiction and fantasy, I have neglected Octavia E. Butler for too long. So I am very glad that I picked up Kindred at the Marxism Festival in London this summer, ready for my holiday. Kindred is perhaps Butler's most famous novel and is regularly set as a text in schools in the United States, as well as being made into a recent, short lived, TV series.

The popularity of Kindred lies in part in its approach to its subject. The book deals with the reality of slavery, and the experiences of those who were enslaved, as well as more complex and related questions such as the position of freed slaves in the American South. These are not easy subjects and Butler spares little in her descriptions of the violence of slavery and the day-to-day brutality, including sexual violence, inflicted on the enslaved. 

Butler's approach places the reader at a slight distance, as the story is told by Dana, a working class woman from New York, who is an aspiring writer and married to a white man, Kevin. Dana's ancestors were slaves and she knows a little about them through the inscriptions of a family Bible. She travels back in time to the American South in 1815, pulled back each time Rufus, the heir to a Maryland plantation, life is endangered. Rufus must survive in order for Dana to be born in the future, so she forms a mutual relationship with him, that requires both to protect the other. Rufus' infatuation with Dana also threatens her, and Kevin's trip back in time upsets this dynamic. But Dana continues to return, and spends time with her fellow slaves - encouraging small acts of rebellion, such as teaching reading, while also trying to reestablish contact with Kevin.

This approach is very clever as it allows the reader to be one step removed from the violence, and observe events through Dana's eyes, that is until the slavers decide they need to discipline her. Then the reader, alongside Dana is pulled into the horror.

There is much else in this short novel. The dynamics between the slaves are described, as well as the oppressive and exploitative one between slaver owner and enslaved. These are not always positive. I also enjoyed the way that Butler uses the time travel aspect to illustrate some of the debates about slavery today, as well as demonstrating the way that white people - in the person of Kevin - could simply escape reality. 

This is an excellent novel, that deserves its wide readership and accolades and I look forward to reading more by Butler.

Related Reviews

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Terry Pratchett - Thief of Time

Thief of Time is Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel, and unfortunately I think it is one of the weaker of the books from the mid part of the stories. It is a Death novel, though Death is not in it a great deal, playing more of a side-character to the main arc. This is one of the reasons I feel the story is a little shallow and bity.

Thief of Time is the story of how the Auditors are defeated. These grey men like things simple and ordered. They like to count and tally. They're like the ultimately dangerous accountants. They heat the chaos and unpredictability of human life. Their plan to destroy life involves creating a clock that will enable the end of the universe - being built, inevitably, in Ankh Morpak. 

Opposed to this is Lu-Tze and his apprentice from the History Monks, whose job is to keep history in roughly the right order. They take time from one thing to another to ensure it all balances out, as everyone is always borrowing, stealing, forgetting and wasting time. Even the lesser of Pratchett's novels have some brilliant moments and he excels himself here with one fantastic pun - the spinning devices that the monks store time on are called procrastinators.

Lu-Tze's James Bond like adventure to save the universe doesn't quite work - the best part of the story is how the Auditors sabotage themselves by becoming slightly human and indulging in a few of our quirks. Thief of Time didn't work for me this time - perhaps it has dated far more than other Discworld books, though it has its moments and if you like Pratchett's other books it shouldn't be skipped.

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N.K.Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

Having quite enjoyed the first book of this trilogy, The Fifth Season, I struggled with the second volume. The book follows the first's non-linear story line, jumping back to events that take place right at the start of the first book and then following up with events immediately after the end of that book. 

Much of the book takes place during the Season that began near the end of volume one. This catastrophic era sees the Earth plunged into a chaotic, freezing time when for centuries humanity will have to survive on stored foods, meagre resources and, eventually, cannibalism. Jemisin sets up the ecological context well - there are some great bits about how plants and animals change to adapt to the new conditions, and we see how humans try to survive too. Our hero, the orogene Essum, breaks off her quest to find her missing daughter Nassun. Essum finds shelter in an underground Commune, and quickly finds the society riven by factional disagreements and a simmering fear of magical users like herself. 

Nassun has travelled with her father who also hates orogenes, but hopes in his daughter's case to find a way to cure her. She makes it to a different form of shelter, a commune where people like her are trained in their powers. 

Inevitably with middle volumes of trilogies there is an element of the author setting up plots to tie up in the final book. The book ends, after a decent enough climatic battle, with Nassun and Essum learning of each other's survival. But the best part of the book is actually the bleak world created for the context. Jemisin explores how the crisis raises internal tensions in the communes and external threats create an atmosphere of lynch mobs which seek to scapegoat the magic users.

But I found that this was not enough to hold my attention. The book felt plodding and I didn't care much for any of the characters. The world building of the first volume left me still confused about events and people, but after a while I found myself slightly bored. It probably needed a more immersed reader (that's my fault not the authors!) and the pluses (strong female and black characters being an important one) were not enough to pull me in.

Related Reviews

Jemisin - The Fifth Season

N.K.Jemisin - The Fifth Season

This innovative fantasy novel is far from the "high fantasy" and world-building of the Tolkien clones that proliferate in this genre. It is set on a highly active geological planet, where humans live constantly in fear of the end of their age, as giant earth movements wreck their civilisations. Knowledge, passed down from eons before, warns them of their history and urges them to prepare for the end of a season, when things go to hell and everyone is left to fend for themselves, particularly those outside the Communes. The orogenes however, are hated humans who can control the earth, using its energy to move, change and direct power. Their ability to use this power, and lack of control unless highly trained, makes them feared by other humans - but their powers to stop tremors makes them necessary.

The Fifth Season takes some getting into, but once the reader gets their head around the non-linear plot and the various seasons and reference points, there's a lot here. The central story, of an orogene struggling to find and hide themselves in a hateful and dangerous world, is well plotted to show off the author's worldbuilding. Looking forward to the second volume.

Sylvain Neuvel - A History of What Comes Next

***Spoilers ***

This is a clever alternate science-fiction history that makes the space race of the 1960s the product of the machinations of a group of alien interlopers, rather than the imperial interests of the Soviets and Americans. Or rather, the Kibsu, exploit human international rivalries to encourage humanity towards the moon in order that they might themselves get off planet.

The Kibsu are a group of women who can breed with human males, but whose female children have superhuman abilities to move and fight. They've been with humanity for thousands of years, and through flashbacks Sylvain Neuvel tells us some of their origin story - riding with the Mongol hordes and playing Viking chieftains off against each other. They pass their story down from mother to daughter, and each generation aims to gain wealth and power to influence humanity on to the stars. But they are also pursued. The "Tracker" is hunting them down, trying to kill the Kibsu off and foil their plans. The origin of this conflict is left somewhat unclear at the end of this first volume of a trilogy.

This book focuses on how Mia, a young nineteen year old woman, gets humanity into space. Her mother fled Germany with the rise of the Nazis, and Mia, is sent back into Germany as part of Operation Paperclip to get the best Nazi scientists out to work in the US on rockets. But Mia and her mother realise that American inertia will never get rockets off the ground, so they move to the Soviet Union, understanding that if Stalin gets an ICBM and a person in space then the Americans will be forced to catch up. Once the Americans move their superior economy will do the rest.

Its a clever idea, and Mia is a great character. Her ability to fight back, manoeuvre social forces and organise the mainly male Soviet elite make her a great hero. All this is done in the context of some great asides and background. Neuvel gives us the an interesting moment during the Witch Craze in the Little Ice Age which serves to demonstrate the Kibsu's powers and another of the themes that runs through the book - the growing concern over climate change that makes the alien's quest more urgent. Neuvel also throws in some other interesting events. He places Mia in the clutches of Stalin's henchmen and murderer Beria, and gives her mother a possible role in the death of the dictator himself. 

The book suffers a little from lack of clarity about who the Kibsu are. The reader learns this through the book, though much remains unclear at the end. But the structure doesn't quite work and I was left confused in places. Nonetheless this is a fun counter-history and I look forward to the sequels.

M.D. Lachlan - Celestial

***Spoilers***

Celestial takes us back to the days of Apollo. The early missions are over. The space race, however, isn't. The Soviets are on the moon and the United States are keeping an eye on them. This monitoring allows NASA to spy on the Russians as their mission finds a hatch in the lunar surface. Opening this, and entering, leads to the Russian lunar explorers vanishing. Markings on the surface, and other intercepted intelligence, leads NASA to recruit a specialist linguist Ziggy Da Luca.  Da Luca is an expert in languages. She speakers Italian, French and Russian and can "fake it in Spanish". Crucially to the mission she is about to embark on, she can speak three Tibetan dialects and read classical Tibetan. This is important because the marking on the hatch on the moon are very similar to those in many ancient Earth locations and in particular to scripts and markings from ancient Tibet that hint at "ancient astronauts".

So Da Luca is whisked to the moon with three other Apollo astronauts, one of whom is a racist Vietnam vet called Griffin who is suffering badly from PTSD. On the moon their return vehicle is apparently destroyed by arriving Soviet craft and inside the Tibetan lunar structure the US and Soviet astronauts proceed to shoot at each other, then make a wary alliance, as they explore the alien world.

Inside the moon the alien structure seems to respond to their emotional state. As our racist astronaut becomes increasingly unable to cope, he hallucinates weapons and aliens, other visions from ancient Russian folktales attack the humans while Griffin tries to shoot them. The humans cross an ocean in Baba Yah's hut, fly around on a spacecraft modelled on Space 1999 and have an encounter with one of the earlier, lost cosmonauts who has changed into a giant squirrel. Eventually some of them get back, but only because Da Luca is able to call upon her own, understanding of Tibetan culture and languages and navigate them home - while Griffin flies.

When I read the first chapter I described the book as "gloriously silly". By the end I just thought it was silly. The plot hangs together based on a sequence of increasingly bizarre events constructed from various subconsciousness, and there is almost no pay off at the end. Perhaps if this had been building to a great reveal, I would have been satisfied. But we never really learn why, or what, is happening inside the moon. There are some small pay offs. The evil Russians are dealt with, and Griffin overcomes some of his racism. But, the negatives outweigh it all. And there are too many unanswered questions - not least is how NASA made an astronaut out of a man who clearly had intense PTSD, and whose racist towards Vietnamese people makes him entirely unsuitable to be in a confined space with someone of Asian heritage.

The author has inserted some references designed to be amusing with our hindsight - "What the fuck is a mandala?" asks a senior NASA figure. "I thought he was a some terrorist in prison in Africa". Its not that funny, or clever - but its the best this shallow book seems to offer.

Avoid.

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Scott & Leonov - Two Sides of the Moon

S.J. Klapecki - Station Six

Rarely does science fiction address the lives of ordinary people. Station Six is different. Set in a space station "60 million miles" from Earth, it looks at what happens to a group of workers when their jobs are under threat. Normally readers of novels set on space stations might imagine glistening white corridors, alien spacecraft arriving to make first contact and stories driven by (usually) male heroes. Station Six dispenses with all this fantasy and asks instead, what happens to workers in the future when their livelihoods are threatened by corporate plans to maximise profits? The answer is that they fight back.

The novel opens with Max. Hungry and broke they are heading their job working on Station Six's docking bay. Max is managed by the sort of middle manager whose corporate speak and fake inspiration will be familiar to anyone whose ever had any sort of dead-end job. The job is not exciting, or space age - it is boring and repetitive, and the workers never make enough to pay off their debt to the company. As a result Max, with his buddies, goof off and mess about - finding ways to evade the high-tech monitoring systems. But Max has other ways of coping - a side-line in hacking the body mods of their fellow workers to get around costly software updates and they also hope to get involved in the anarchist resistance and union movements. It is their skills in this arena that mean they are drawn into the heart of the fight back.

When corporate announce that Station Six is going to be converted into a luxury holiday resort, and the workers' will lose their jobs, a strike breaks out and Max finds themselves central to the movement that will hopefully win change. Klapecki does well to show how future technological advances won't automatically benefit working people - here spaceflight, body mods and other marvels haven't liberated anyone - instead they've become yet another way of trapping people into the corporate drive to accumulate wealth for the rich. There's a great scene in the book when Max and some of their fellow radicals break into an area of the space station reserved for the super-rich. It is filled with luxury and evidence of a relaxing lifestyle, an alien environment - but one that is supposed to be available to everyone who works hard for the machine.

But I felt that Klapecki's depiction of the resistance itself did not quite work. Too rapidly it became the story of a few key individuals whose actions would help the rest of the strikers liberate themselves. I was more interested in the depictions of how the strike liberated individuals and allowed ordinary people to being to distribute the fruits of their own labour collectively. The bar where beer was free, and the coffee machines hacked to dispense drinks to anyone who wanted one. That side of the collective struggle was more exciting than the militarised action that focused on Max and his compatriots evasion of the corporate security systems.

That said, Station Six is a fun and unusual novel. The author's use of non-binary language and their inclusion of LGBT+ characters is important, as is their willingness to depict the lives and struggles of working people. I particularly liked the way that Max's own anxieties are integrated into the story of the rebellion. Revolutionaries and strikers are rarely heroes - everyone always worries and second guesses themselves. It was nice to see this drawn out. Sadly it all ended far too quickly - I would have liked to know what happened next to the Station Six Commune.

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Alastair Reynolds - Eversion

*** Spoilers ***

Alastair Reynolds' standalone novels tend to be very different to the high-tech, galaxy spanning books set in his longer series. But Eversion is completely different. It begins with Doctor Silas Coade on a fifth rate sailing vessel exploring the freezing Norwegian fjords for a strange construction that has been reported by earlier explorers. We quickly meet key characters from the crew, all unique - there's a political refugee from Russia who acts as some sort of soldier, the confident captain and the funder of the mission who clearly has something to hide. In addition, Coade's literary nemesis Ada Cossile, who constantly criticizes Coade's writing and speech, and then seemingly mocks him at his death. Because Coade dies in an accident just after the ship has discovered an inexplicable edifice in the ice.

Then Coade is reincarnated. Now he is a Doctor on a steam vessel off Patagonia, but this time crewed by the same characters, none of whom remember the previous voyage, and at the point when they discover the edifice again, Coade is killed again. This time as as result of the betrayals of the voyage's rich funder. Again Cossile is disappointed at his death.

The process repeats, steam ship is replaced by dirigible and then a space vessel. Elements of the narrative are repeated, and each time the trip goes further, but the narrative begins to break down. Others seem to remember earlier trips and Cossile keeps hinting at her deeper knowledge.

The twist is that Coade isn't real. He is Code in a computer and Ada is another subroutine desperately trying to wake Coade/Code so that he can rescue the real crew members who are trapped on a space mission doing first contact on Jupiter's moon Europa. Once we learn this, many elements of the earlier plots click into place and readers might enjoy finding what signposts Reynolds placed in the narrative. The final part of the story is a more conventional science-fiction yarn as Coade and Ada get the humans out of a rather alien danger. 

As I said, this is unusual, but it seems to fit with Reynolds' style - though it felt like a padded short story rather than a novel. That said the characters are drawn very well, particularly Coade, which is ironic as he is not actually real. Reynolds does a nice twist on the traditional AI depiction, by basically giving Coade the personality of a 18th century, small town doctor - and an AI romance to boot.

Reynolds' consistently constructs new and innovative worlds in his books. Eversion will be enjoyed by those who are familiar with his work and those new to it.

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Leigh Bardugo - Hell Bent

Having thoroughly enjoyed Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, I was looking forward to the sequel a great deal. Inevitably there was going to be some disappointment. Sequels are often difficult. But I was unprepared by the extent to which I felt let down. Ninth House worked because it was able to skewer the wealthy elite who attend universities like Yale. In that book Alex "Galaxy" Stern arrives on a scholarship from a poor background. She has been deemed the next guardian of Yale's magical interests - a sort of magical cop, who is there to make sure that the various Houses don't use go beyond the permitted boundaries of their use of magic. It's ok to use it to grant wealth, power and popularity, but not too go too far. 

In the first volume Alex stumbles across a complex plot involving multiple murders. At the culmination her guide, advisor and magical tutor Darlington goes missing. The book finishes with Alex, and her friend, Dawes vowing to enter Hell to get him back. Hell Bent begins almost immediately Ninth House left off. Here lies the first problem. Hell Bent assumes you remember every detail of the first book, and reads like a continuation, not a separate volume. It also means there's no real development of details and plot, and the reader is flung headlong into the action. This might not be a problem - it is a sequel after all - but Bardugo's attempts to explain it all come off badly. 

More importantly the plot - rescuing Darlington from Hell - turns the magic of Yale into a personal rescue story. What made the first book work was its expose of the nature of Yale through its magical alternative: Skewering captains of industry, rich kids and pompous academics. This volume feels like a madcap adventure and doesn't work as well. And when Bardugo does attempt to try to explore wider issues she gets it badly wrong. At one point the heroes use a magical map to find another character. The map, actually a model of Yale, turns out to have been something used to find escaped slaves by Yale's elite. The black characters are horrified, and it feels like a Black Lives Moment when a horrible reality is exposed. Yet nothing comes of it. It feels like Bardugo recognised that she had to include more such events, but didn't know how to use them effectively.

Secondly the characters never develop. Alex constantly behaves stupidly and self-sacrificing when it completely isn't required, most of the other characters feel like wooden cut outs, particularly the black Cop, who seems quite happy to break the law on remarkably flimsy evidence. Characters who are exposed to the new magical world accept it far to readily. Finally, once Darlington is rescued, everyone just carries on after a couple of bowls of soup. PTSD just happens to other people in this universe. Hell Bent is a massively disappointing sequel - the first book promised much, but Bardugo could have used her world to discuss race, class and power in a magical setting - just as she used the first book to highlight sexism and rape in universities. Instead she throws it all away and the whole book is just a setup for the inevitable third volume. Read R.F.Kuang Babel instead.

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R.F.Kuang - Babel

R.F.Kuang - Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Babel is a truly remarkable novel. For the unwary reader it is likely to feel popular because of its initial similarity to the basic premise of Harry Potter - an unlikely child is plucked from their normality and placed in a secret, magical environment. But Babel is a much richer, more complex and far more satisfying novel that Rowling's works. For R.F. Kuang's main characters are not the children of suburban middle class, white, households. Instead they are the children of Empire - Chinese, Indian and Haitian. For in Kuang's alternative world, colonial Empires thrive on the magical powers derived from the subtle differences in translated languages. The slight alternations in meaning between two Mandarin and English words, for instance, can drive power and spells linked to those words when placed in blocks of silver.

The scholars of Babel tower in Oxford University have become rich and fat on their monopoly of this knowledge and the British Empire has become powerful and violent on the back of the power it gives them. But all is not well. The population are revolting - as magic imbued silver powers machines and eases transport. Workers are deskilled, made redundant and driven into poverty by the magic from Oxford, and they are unhappy. But there are further economic troubles on the horizon. Silver is not unlimited and China has much of it and, the power of European languages is fading. Skills are needed from speakers of the languages of Africa, China and India. Which is where our heroes come in.

Robin Swift adopts his name as a boy, because his Chinese name would be unpronounceable to the English. He is taken to Britain, saved by his father from the slums of Canton where plague has devastated almost the whole population. His father, a Babel professor, saves only Swift - he is useful, and potentially profitable. Such is the pattern of Babel and Empire.

Arriving in Oxford after years of forced education, Swift is quickly sucked into the magical realm of knowledge. His lifestyle is luxurious as Babel is fat on the profits of Empire and magic. His friends are also brilliant translators, and they are shaped into a group that will help take the Empire forward. But Swift learns the reality of things quickly - he is pulled into the revolutionary, radical Hermes organisation. A secretive network with the aim of revolution - using Babel's powers to break the British Empire.

Swift moves from naivete to assured rebellion. The powers of Babel resist, though ironically, it is academic hostility to others that proves their final undoing. But Swift, and his friends, have to take on the power of the British Empire - though in their revolution, they do not do so alone. They find allies among the oppressed and downtrodden on Britain itself.

Its a brilliant fantasy, but it is much more than that too. For written into this story is a deeper one - the racism and prejudice of 1830s (and 21st century) Oxford. The limitations of the liberal do-gooders who want to stop war through platitudes, pamphlets and petitions. The frustrations of those self-same white allies who cannot see the reality of racism even inside the privileged, rarefied atmosphere of Babel, where the Asian, Black and Brown scholars are priceless. Kuang has crafted an alternative world, but she has rooted it deep in the history the British Empire - one where the Swing rioters are deported and executed at home, where colonial "subjects" are taunted, dehumanised and mistreated at home and abroad opium is used to destroy an entire country and wars are started to ensure "free trade". Her footnotes, that blend actual history with magical explanations expertly blur the distinction between fact and fiction. It is very much a novel for the Black Lives Matter generation - rooted in part in Kuang's own experiences at the university.

Revolutionary Marxists reading the book will likely pick up on wider themes - not least the question of the state and violence. I was struck, as the book's subtitle suggests, by the clever handling of Swift's journey from activist to terrorist as he seems the impossibility of peaceful reform in the face of the Empire, and Babel's, vested interests. That Kuang places this debate within the context of wider, British, working class activism - albeit in a supporting role, is testament to the nuances of the book. It is, after all, a fantasy, and readers who are concerned about the lack of a "revolutionary party" in the book are missing the point. The rest of you should settle back and stay up all night with this remarkable depiction of the intersection of magic, language and revolution. You'll love it.

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Bethany Clift - Last one at the Party

Regular readers of this blog (there are some, right?) might have spotted my predilection for "end of the world" dystopian fiction. The various threats to the world we live in - pandemic, war and environmental - have stimulated a resurgence in the genre and I have been enjoying their tales of doom. Bethany Clift's take on disaster was begun before Covid-19 impacted humanity, though it features in the opening chapters of her book as the disease she describes 6DM (Six Days Max) erupts out of the United States. "No one wanted to repeat the mistakes of Covid-19" quips her unnamed protagonist, just as governments take rapid, decisive and ultimately pointless action to try and protect their populations.

The United Kingdom as a brief respite from the disease, protected by its island status and a quick decision to blow up the Channel Tunnel, before, inevitably the disease makes its way in and everyone dies. Well everyone that is except for the author of the diary that this book purports to be. This then is the story of the only person left alive, of the minutiae of the end of the world - caring for your dying partner, visiting your dead parents, trying to work out how to find a working car, dealing with the lack of fresh food, and wondering what to do with the rubbish that is no longer taken away. It is a brilliantly believable account, told by a woman who is happy to admit she is completely unprepared for how to deal with this. She "can't change a lightbulb" never mind grow crops. So the story is in someway and account of how she does become equipped to cope with the end of the world, and also a moving account of how our past shapes our attitudes to crises.

Most end of the world novels deal with the fantastical - biker gangs and the like. Last One at the Party considers the mundane - how do we greave for a partner who has died when the relationship was on the rocks? How might our mental health, and the history of our mental health, affect our ability to survive?  How would our actions post disaster be shaped by who we were before the disaster? Clift describes how her character navigates both the loss of electricity and her panic attacks. Its a refreshing antidote to those end of the world novels where the central character is a jack of all trades who is also a crack shot. The book is not the dystopian "chick-lit" that some deride it as, its actually really thoughtful and compelling. Clift's prose is easy to read and we are drawn into a world where survival means remembering to fill the petrol tank on the Land Rover, but also not making irrational decisions about where to travel.

There are some intriguing bits too - the rats and seagull infestations evoked George Stewart's ecological end of the world novel Earth Abides. There's also the brilliant depiction of what happens when the last survivor finally meets another survivor. Last One at the Party was an enjoyable read for me, though I felt the ending was a little rushed and slightly unbelievable. But if you like dystopian nightmares, particularly those that develop the "cosy catastrophe" that John Wyndham excelled in, then this is likely for you.

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Arthur C. Clarke - The Fountains of Paradise

Despite a lifetime spent reading classic science fiction, for some reason I had never read Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise. This 1979 novels is considered one of his best and while I devoured many of his books, this one escaped me. In some ways I am glad I did not read this as a youngster. Then I tended to look for the hard science fiction in works by authors like Clarke. I was particularly fond, for instance, of the spaceship Rama and its secrets in Rendezvous with Rama, and its less successful sequels. True, The Fountains of Paradise, has its giant technological marvel, though in this case the story is much more focused on the people who create it.

The book takes the form of historical fiction, telling the deep story behind the creation of Earth's first space elevator. The book is set on a thinly veiled Sri Kanda which Clarke moves closer to the Earth's equator to make the science, and plot, work better. The elevator is conceived of by the engineer Vannevar Morgan whose earlier work includes the first bridge between Europe and Africa. Morgan's proposal to build an elevator is denied by the religious monks who live on the island's tallest peak. But in a framing story going back into the ancient past Clarke cleverly sets up a reason for the monk's to move, leaving Morgan free to build his tower.

There's no doubt that this is Clarke's greatest work. The three linked stories each need the others in order to work, but in many ways they all deal with the creation of marvels - the first is the building of a giant pleasure garden, the other with the bringing of Earth into a galactic empire. But it is the main story, which frames the building of the space elevator through the story of Morgan's life that is the most poignant. Here Clarke returns to the classic idea that technological development is inseparable from humanity's progress. Morgan exemplifies the urge for humans to push outward to the planets and stars. The reader hears little about the other challenges on Earth - poverty and hunger perhaps - these are neglected for a wider story of progress. But nonetheless Clarke makes Morgan's story a good metaphor for human technological development.

That said readers in the 21st century will be amused by the technology itself. Clarke was a renowned futurologist, who made many predictions and came up with some breakthrough scientific ideas. Here he imagines a space elevator and his character uses technology that mirrors the internet, even to the extent of google news alerts. But there's still only one terminal per house! 

I enjoyed The Fountains of Paradise a great deal. It is a classic of 1970s science fiction, and probably deserves a suitable film version. It is one of the few classic science fiction novels from this era were the characters are not blurred out by the big science object, and retain a real humanity.

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S.A.Chakraborty - The City of Brass

I was looking forward to reading The City of Brass. The cover grabbed me and the outline describing a young woman in eighteenth century Cairo living by swindling and stealing seemed fun. The added bonus, that our hero Nahri, can also magically heal people added to my interest. I do love a good bit of escapism.

Sadly while enjoyable, the book did not live up to my expectations. I enjoyed the idea that Egypt, fought over between European colonialists was also the site for a hidden struggle between spirits and fantastical djinn, whose own cities were torn between struggles between pure blood and others. But the story itself is too complex. The novel follows two threads, that of Nahri who accidentally summons a dead Djinn back to life, and who takes her to the hidden city and Ali, a younger prince of the ruling family in that city, torn between loyalty to his family and concern for the oppressed in the city.

But the overlapping stories, while fun to read, have too much overlapping back story. Understanding the complex rivalries requires getting to grips with some detailed lore that wasn't described well enough for me to remember the nuances. That said there are some great aspects to this book. Nahri is a brilliant hero - we rarely get female, Muslim, main characters in fantasy novels - and I suspect that Chakraborty's depiction of Nahri is one reason for the book's success. I also thought the depiction of oppressed minorities (and the racism directed against them by the elite) and poverty among the masses was well done. And it was good to see the resistance to this also portrayed, even if the rebels came close to caricature. 

I'm unlikely to read the rest of the trilogy. But I appreciate that others will devour them. 

Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17

Following several highly disruptive alien attacks on human military infrastructure, poet, spaceship captain, code-breaker and linguist Rydra Wong is asked by the government to crack a code that has been identified simultaneously with the attacks. Wong quickly realises that this is no code, but a language. She identifies the next site of an attack and hurries there after recruiting a crew at least one of whom proves themselves through a wrestling match and others are, well, dead.

As Rydra learns how to speak Babel-17 she begins to understand that the language has power. Failing to prevent an attack, she and her crew are captured by privateers who prey on alien (and sometimes Earth) vessels one of whom is known as the Butcher. The Butcher already speaks Babel-17 and Rydra notices he never uses the word "I". Teaching the Butcher this is part of Wong's strategy to identify a spy in their midst, but doing so allows the language to full break through. It turns out that Babel-17 is a language that shapes the speakers own mind, transforming their perception of events, time and themselves. Wong herself has been the spy, and was ever since she began to learn the language.

Babel-17 is an intriguing book. Delany uses the novel to explore various concepts of language, in particular the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - the idea that a language shapes the users perception and thought. The problem is that the book is quite complex, the story sparse and large chunks given over the exploring the linguistic aspects of the story. Those more knowledgeable than me about language might find some of this interesting, and the concept shaped several other writers' work. But I found it a drag at times and found myself pausing to wonder "what was going on"! 

At times the book veers toward the surreal, as with the dead crew. In other places it felt almost like Star Trek, with an episodic feel. I was left feeling that the book was very much of its time, when the author and readers were more willing to experiment with form over content. In the final section, Rydra leaves a note "the war will end in six months", hoping it will encourage pacifist tendencies among the military authorities. I wondered if this was a reaction to the Vietnam War, and perhaps Delany himself was hoping that this use of language might influence readers. Whatever the truth of that, Babel-17 is part of classic SF literature, but it may not appeal to the modern readers' taste.