Interstitial - The Children of Time

Tomorrow we have a review of Adrian Tchaikovsky's sci-fi opus, The Children of Time.
I'm very excited about this one - it has a compelling narrative, and a truly unique take on alien perspectives.

The Gospel of Loki - Joanne M. Harris

The Gospel of Loki is an interesting twist on the traditional Norse saga’s. Where those have a broader, more heroic context, this narrative is intensely personal. The viewpoint is hardly heroic either – being a first person account, from none other than the titular Loki: Norse god, trickster, general troublemaker. Unsurprisingly, it puts a bit of a different spin on the traditional saga myth. If you’ve absorbed any of those, this will certainly tweak your preconceptions. If you’re coming to Norse mythology fresh, then it’s still a perfectly enjoyable story.

The narrative takes the reader along with Loki, through the creation of the worlds, all the way through to Ragnarok, the end of everything. Its strength is in the narrative voice. Loki narrates the events of the Norse myths entirely in the tone of someone reciting history, or a family anecdote – which is extremely thematically appropriate.  The voice that is used to speak to the reader is informal, wry, and very emotive; it contains the character that the author has drawn for Loki very well.

That character is, really, the core of the book. Given that Loki opens with a piece on the unreliability of all narrators, his own story is thrown into doubt, part of the tradition of conflicting accounts. On the other hand, his actions are consistent with his internal character. He’s an individual torn between two worlds, between the elemental chaos and disorder from which he was formed, and the fascinatingly ordered world of what we see as reality. That dichotomy gets him into quite a lot of trouble;  acting with his nature causes all sorts of problems. But there are some wonderfully complex layers present here. Loki works to be accepted amongst the inhabitants of Asgard, strives to fit in, despite his origins, distinct from their own; that he is rebuffed and, by his own account, abused, helps keep the reader sympathetic as he begins to turn against erstwhile allies.

Much like the allure of Shakespeare’s Othello, the reader is pulled into Loki’s descent into villainy. The self-justifications, the unfortunate actions, the moments of misunderstanding which cause events to fall one way or another. Loki doesn’t come off as human, particularly, but he does come off as understandable and even, at least some of the time, likable.  The reader is left wondering if their narrator is justified after all. What the author has done here is take a previously unrepentant individual, and given them more depth, more drives, made them visible and sympathetic to the reader. And it works very well.

The other characters aren’t given much of the same depth in Loki’s narration. The female goddesses of Asgard, in particular, come off as ciphers. On the other hand, this may well be intentional – they’re not  very well represented in the source material either, and Loki isn’t really the most empathetic of characters anyway. Most of the cast seem to serve as foils for, or levers on, our narrator. Then again, this is Loki’s story, and the reader is already adrift in Loki’s internal monologue, so this may be acceptable as a narrative device. Still, it would have been nice to have a little more flesh on the bones of Odin, Heimdall and the rest.

The story cleaves close to the original text of the Saga’s, and remains engaging and entertaining throughout. I won’t spoil it here, but will say that there’s quite a lot of action and adventure along the way. There’s also a fair amount of scheming – almost all of it on Loki’s part, but it heightens the dramatic tension nicely. The story trots along at a good pace, and given that the prose itself is so engaging, it’s quite difficult to put down.

Overall, a really nice character piece, on one of the more sympathetic and engaging “villains” of the last few millennia. Very easy to read, with a plot that both informs and entertains the reader. Worth looking into.

Interstitial - The Gospel of Loki

Tomorrow we have Joanne M Harris's The Gospel of Loki. A somewhat irreverent remix of Norse saga's, as retold by Loki, the trickster-god an dgeneral malcontent. It made me nod approvingly, wince, and laugh out loud in equal measure. More tomorrow!

Cities and Thrones - Carrie Patel

Cities and Thrones is the second in Carrie Patel’s Recolleta series, the first of which I reviewed earlier in the year, here.

Cities and Thrones has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor was Carrie Patel’s debut, which put together several elements – a claustrophobic underground city, several conspiracy-theory-worthy dark secrets, a string of brutal murders – and spun them in unexpected directions. The sequel strives to provide the same originality, whilst telling a different –if complementary – story. For the most part, it succeeds.

The setting was always one of the strengths of the first book – Patel crafted a city which was ruled by a fear of chaos, an almost pathological need for everything to be done within the existing system. A confined, limited environment which teetered on the edge of stagnation.

Recolleta in this second book is just as effectively drawn, but the picture is somewhat different. L iesl Malone, one of the protagonists from the first book, is now the chief of police for Recolleta. The city is now scarred by the catastrophic events near the close of the first book. Law enforcement has been decimated, and doesn’t have the manpower to maintain order across the city. Areas are going dark. Standard utilities are failing. The social order has been overturned – the rich brought low by the poorer sections of society, who are now looking to grow into their new found freedoms. Supply lines from the farming communities are stretched at best, tenuous at worst. The government, which Malone now sits in, is populated by people largely trying their best to deal with intractable systemic problems, and still keep their own heads above water. The demagogue who led the revolution is becoming increasingly paranoid and autocratic. Overall, the whole thing is a spark, just waiting for the match.

What Patel is giving the characters (and the reader) in this changed portrayal is an understanding of consequences. The old Recolleta is dead, but the birth pains of the new one aren’t especially pretty. Still, from a setting point of view, Patel has spun together a vivid world, one which is different enough from our own to be fascinating, and similar enough that we empathise with the characters as they struggle within it.

The reader is also given a broader view of the setting this time, taken out of Recolleta and into the surrounding countryside, the largely unmentioned Outside. We’re taken here along with Jane, one of the characters from the first book, now on the run after her part in events in the first book. It’s interesting to get a view of the farming communities that feed the urban hub, to see how and why they operate as they do – and Patel manages to cast them effectively, with a broader, but paradoxically more prosaic view of things.

We’re also introduced to other cities; these were briefly alluded to in The Buried Life, but have a stronger part to play in this sequel. They’re still largely an enigma, but at least one is further fleshed out; in doing so, it’s almost in direct contrast to Recolleta, thematically – it feels ordered, spacious, but also controlled. It’s also a haven of the nest-of-vipers politicking which the Recolletans can’t now really afford; through Jane, the reader starts with a fly-on-the-wall view of the machinations of the other urban areas as they adjust to the new Recolleta – but Jane, like Malone, quickly finds herself in over her head, to say the least.

Along with Malone and Jane there are a few other returning characters, but those are the two that get star billing. They’ve both shifted somewhat since the first book, a sign of the way in which the civic upheaval has created change; Malone is still austere, but seems to have lost at least someof the cloaked spark of joy that she carried in the first book; on the other hand, she’s grasped the nettle of responsibility, and the way in which she becomes accustomed to that, and then the way in which she directs it to achieve the ends which she desires is one of the key arcs of the book – as is her search to define exactly it is she wants to do with the power that came along with that responsibility. It would have been nice to have explored this dichotomy in a bit more depth, but the way in which it was wrapped into the narrative made the character arc work as part of the whole – and it’s absolutely intriguing as it is.

Jane’s arc is different; her character shows us a view from the lower decks, as it were. Malone deals in politics, in broader sweeps, but it’s Jane whom we track as she attempts to make a name and a role for herself in a new city, as she struggles to earn the trust of a variety of new employers, and as she decides how far she is willing to go to acquire peace and security. Jane is the everyman of the story, but she’s not just that – she feels more reactive than Malone, but her determination to make her own choices, to wring herself a new reality out of the catastrophic convuslions of Recolleta – those ring true, as does her fear, her willingness to compromise to keep what she has managed to create for herself.

Patel has made a pair of intriguing protagonists, ones whom it’s a joy to follow along with. I laughed at their jokes, was emotionally wrung out by Jane’s flight from Recolleta. Understood the cold calculus of Malone’s efforts to prevent further disruption. Some of the decisions were perhaps a little weak, more in service to the plot, and some of the discoveries made seemed a little convenient, but overall, they both felt exceptionally human, which is all one can ask for.

The plot rattles along nicely as well. It’s great to see a series which doesn’t just end with a triumphal victory. Instead we spent the majority of this book looking at what happens next. Social  eruptions. Political instability. External politics. Vultures circling, and the previously weak discovering they have unexpected means of leverage. Patel explores what happens after other series ends, and does so in an uncompromising manner which carries a lot of truth along with it. It’s a grim read some of the time, but it’s unflinchingly human in the horrors and delights that are conveyed.

Overall, Cities and Thrones has taken the next steps required after The Buried Life. The setting is still gorgeously drab, but we’ve got a broader view of it now. The characters are wonderfully human, and evolving in an understandable, believable, organic fashion. The plot is interesting enough, and kept me turning the pages;  there’s enough action, scheming and mystery for anyone. If you’ve not read the first book in the series, you’d want to do that before moving to this one. If you have, I encourage you to give this sequel a try – it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

Interstitital - Cities and Thrones

Tomorrow will have a review of Carrie Patel's second book in her Recoletta series. It's a solid entry - uniformly excellent prose, interesting characters, some wonderfully tense moments, and some action sequences to leaven out the mix. More tomorrow!

Collected Fiction - Hannu Rajaniemi

Hannu Rajaniemi is a new name to conjure with in genre circles. A mathematical physicist, his “The Quantum Thief” made serious waves in 2010; it was well observed, the characters believable, the science was accurate, and the narrative compelling.  He went on to write several more texts in the same trilogy, and has now released a collection of his short fiction.

There’s something in the area of seventeen short stories in the collection, and they cover a startling amount of conceptual ground. From the nano-enhanced pets looking to resurrect their master, to a man who is drawn into marriage with a sea-spirit, there’s something here from all ends of the spectrum.  Many of the stories have a post-human theme, looking at how people react and evolve (sometimes literally), when something occurs which changes the state of society out of recognition. Whilst some of the concepts are a little lower down the latter, or perhaps didn’t click with me as well as others, there were some works which ran with high-concept ideas (for example, the ‘God Plague’, allowing people to do, create, change whatever they wanted, including each other), fleshed them out, and provided a strong narrative around them – all in a few thousand words.

Hannu also writes good characters. Some of the stories show this off to better advantage than others, though. Probably this is a function of the story format, rather than anything else – trying to cover plot, world and character all within such compressed form. The story of a man whose family return to life one day a year is a great example of this – the character is well drawn, understated, and feels entirely human. There are other examples, and Rajaniemi managed to make me care about each of his characters, giving them room to breathe, even in such limited narrative space.

The worlds are similarly well-crafted. The reader only has a small window onto them, and typically it isn’t one blaring about the setting. Instead, there’s a quiet whisper, dropped asides by characters, worlds constructed by inference, rather than statement. The majority of the construction is left ot the imagination – and it works well.

The prose is always well done – easily readable, and lots of scientific background is made available without feeling like a technobabble infodump. Rajaniemi gives the words a more liquid, easy-flowing flavour, and they’re largely a pleasure to read. There was the odd awkward construction, but overall, the stories always had me turning pages, and the language always seemed to flow well.

The only sticking point for me is some of the experimental constructions in the text. The stories done by Twitter have a nice introduction, and they actually work quite well, as micro-narratives. I was less sure about the story designed to be read alongside virtual reality augmentation. I suspect it needed to have that more visual medium alongside it to really work – still, a brave experiment.

Overall, each of these works, individually, ranges from perfectly good up to excellent little gems of high-concept, high delivery prose. They make the reader think, they provide a new way to do that, and they tell great stories – I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Interstitial - Collected Stories of Hannu Rajaniemi

Tomorrow sees a review of the collected short fiction of Hannu Rajaniemi. It's all very, very clever, and interesting stuff. It also has a lot of transcendental, transhuman themes tied up in it which made it (for me at least) doubly so.