August Books 12) Year’s Best SF 21

12) The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois

Of the various annual collections of sf short fiction, this is surely the best value by far. I’d read a number of these stories already while compiling my survey of this year’s Hugo nominees, and one or two others from having read their original magazine appearance (my old friend Dominic Green’s chilling “Send Me A Mentagram”, for instance). A surprising number of alternate history and time travel stories (by an accident of birth, Stalin ends up running the United States; a backyard electrical accident shunts one narrator into a parallel universe or two; and a story featuring messengers from the future trying to do a deal with Orson Welles is matched by one with a similar plot starring William Randolph Hearst). A few months ago I tried reading William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land and found it unfinishable; I did manage to finish John C. Wright’s story here set in the same universe, but I’m afraid I fell asleep twice while reading it. The best story for me was Steven Popkes’ “The Ice”, looking at questions of cloning and of predestination.

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August Books 11) The Revolution of America

11) The Revolution of America, by the Abbé Raynal

The author of this book offers a prize for the best essay on the following subject, to be organized through the Academy of Sciences, Polite Literature and Arts at Lyons:

Has the diſcovery of America been uſeful or hurtful to mankind?
If advantages have reſulted from it, what are the means to preſerve and increaſe them?
If diſadvantages, what are the means to remedy them?

The prize conſiſts of the ſum of fifty Louis d’or, which will be remitted to the ſucceſsful author, or his aſſigns.

CONDITIONS

…The Academy conſidering the importance of the ſubject, ſets no limits to the length of the compoſition, but only wiſhes the author to write in French or Latin.

No work can be admitted after the firſt of February, 1783.

Unfortunately we’ve all missed the deadline for the competition; I wonder who won, and how they answered the first question?

This curious little book was first published in French in 1780; I’ve been reading the English translation published in Dublin the following year. It’s amazing to think of this actually being written and translated before the war was yet over; it must have fed into the coming revolutionary frenzy – Grattan’s parliament in Ireland a year or so later, and the coming convulsions in the Abbé’s own country.

I’d never heard of the Abbé Raynal before, but I find him as the very first entry in Vol. 19 of our 1938 Encyclopedia Britannica. Born in 1713 (so 67 at the time this book was written) he was a political historian, with early works on Dutch and English politics followed by his 1770 blockbuster on the history of European interaction with the two Indies (ie India and the Caribbean), co-written with Diderot and a bunch of other philosophes, which was banned from France in 1779. In 1780, the year this book on America was published, Raynal went into exile for seven years. He lived to mourn the horrors of the Revolution and died in 1796.

The book is basically a justification of the American revolution, but on his own terms – he doesn’t even refer to the opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence, but then gives verbatim the catalogue of misgovernment which follows, because he is much more in favour of liberty than equality:

There is amongſt men an original inequality which nothing can remedy. It muſt laſt for ever; and all that can be obtained by the beſt legiſlation, is not to deſtroy it, but to prevent the abuſe of it.

He demolishes the British case for the war brutally effectively, by appealing to principles of liberty and humanity, and then gives a twenty-page summary of Common Sense, whose author’s identity he doesn’t seem to know – can that be right?

But he’s also very aware of the contradiction of the alliance between the repressive French government at Versailles and the liberty-loving Americans against the British, whose constitution he rates as much more liberal than the French. His summary of the balance of forces, as of 1780, seems pretty sound; even if the chance factors of weather and fortune of war should, against the odds, deliver the British a military victory, he thinks it would be unsustainable in the short term, never mind the long. But he also thinks it is better for the United States if the British keep Canada, so as to promote unity rather than dissension among the thirteen colonies.

Of course, the most amusing bits are what he gets wrong. In the last chapter he reviews the prospects of the United States, should they gain their independence (note plural – today we refer to the U.S. in the singular). He fails to spot the possibility of what came to be called “manifest destiny” and restricts his comments geographically:

The ſpace occupied by the thirteen republics, between the mountains and the ocean, is but of ſixty-ſeven ſea-leagues; but upon the coaſt their extent is, in a ſtrait line, three hundred and forty five. In this region the lands are, almoſt throughout, bad, or of a middling quality…

We cannot determine, without raſhness, what may one day be the population of the United States. Such a calculation, generally pretty difficult, becomes impracticable for a region where the land degenerates very rapidly, and where the expence of labour and improvement is not proportionably anſwered by the reproduction. If ten millions of men ever find a certain ſubſiſtence in theſe provinces, it will be much.

The combined population of the original thirteen states is now, what, ten times the Abbé Raynal’s predicted maximum? But there are a lot of other things that have happened since that would surprise him too…

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Phone numbers

So I’ve been trying to call the European Commission’s representative office in Helsinki. When I finally get through, the guy at the other end seems to be speaking not Finnish, nor even Swedish, but a Slavic language of some kind. After some negotiation he goes off to find a colleague who speaks English. At this point it occurs to me that while +358 is the code for Finland, and thus +358-9 is the code for Helsinki, +359 is…

Yep, I have in fact been talking to the town hall in the city of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. Next time, make sure I dial all the digits…

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The die is cast

Well, I’ve identified Commissioner Rehn’s incoming chef de cabinet, and spent an hour in a Belfast cybercafe refining the cv, and now have sent it off to him. Wish me luck.

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How (not) to write to your constituents

Paxman quotes the famous letter from Anthony Henley, MP for the rotten borough of Southampton in 1773, to his constituents after they suggested he might like to take their interests into account when voting on the excise bill (I’ve also seen it quoted by Hunter S. Thompson):

Gentlemen,


I received yours and am surprised at your insolence in troubling me about the excise. You know what I very well know, that I bought you.


And I know well what perhaps you think I don’t know, that you are now selling yourselves to somebody else.


And I know what you don’t know, that I am buying another borough.


May God’s curse light upon you all.


May your houses be as open and as common to all excise officers as your wives and daughters were to me when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

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August Books 10) The Demolished Man

10) The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

I think I mistakenly noted that I had already read this on that sf/f books survey the other day. I really did read it last night and this morning, and it really is excellent, to the point that it’s almost impossible to describe without sounding clichéd (… pyrotechnic prose … crazed imagination … far future but recognizable New York … crime novel meets sf …). Not that it is completely without flaws – we are told that there hasn’t been a successful premeditated murder in 79 years, but by the end of the book not one but three people have been killed, and the prevalence of murder weapons and nasty people makes it sem improbable that the murder rate is so very low. The psychic motivations and action of the villainous Ben Reich are vividly narrated but don’t really bear deep scrutiny. The gender relations seem a weird combination of 1950’s morality with occasional lapses into Suetonius. But it really is a great book all the same, driving you on to finish it. Won the first ever Hugo award, in 1953, the year of birth of Dave Langford and Walter Jon Williams.

Hugo Awards
1950s: The Demolished Man (1953) | The Forever Machine (1955) | Double Star (1956) | The Big Time (1958); The Incredible Shrinking Man (1958) | A Case of Conscience (1959)

August Books 9) The Political Animal

9) The Political Animal: An Anatomy, by Jeremy Paxman.

I met Jeremy Paxman, one of Britain’s leading political journalists, twice in 1994, in my capacity as the captain of the Queen’s University of Belfast’s team in University Challenge (the British TV show where teams from different universities take each other on in a general knowledge quiz). He was as acerbic and funny is person as he is on the screen. I remember him growling at me to hurry up and answer a particular question, “Come on, some of us have got homes to go to!” He revealed to us that his least favourite person in the then failing Major government was health secretary Virginia Bottomley. “She never says anything when I interview her.” She was probably as frightened of him as we were. He says in the first chapter,

I have met literally hundreds of politicians. Some I have come to like, others to respect, and one or two I have learned must be handled as if they are radioactive. I know that the last feeling is reciprocated by some, but there is – or ought to be – a natural tension between reporters and politicians, and I am not close to any of them. It is easier that way.

This book is no mere pot-boiler. I get the sense that Paxman is genuinely puzzled by what makes politicians tick; why they subject themselves to humiliation by constituency selection committees, fellow MPs, party leaders, and Paxman and his own colleagues in the press, and why, as Enoch Powell (once our neighbour here in Loughbrickland) observed, all political careers end in failure. He doesn’t come up with a systematic reply but does have a lot of amusing anecdotes and one or two good observations – 24 out of the UK’s 51 prime ministers lost their fathers before the age of 21, for instance. He talks to one of the two people in England with a personal subscription to Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates, and asks him, why? And gets the charming answer, “I’m very old, you know. I’m over ninety. And I think I’m pretty mad.”

To those who know me it’s no big secret that I am attracted to the idea of being a politician. I’ve stood for election twice, in 1990 and 1996, though did pretty dismally both times. One striking thing is that the very academically gifted tend not to do very well in politics. Only one American president, and as far as I know no British prime minister, has gained a PhD. Paxman points out that the three prime ministers of the twentieth century with the best academic qualifications by far were Asquith, Eden and Wilson, none of them howling successes. He has obviously benefited from a long chat with my former mentor John Alderdice, who I always felt was far too intelligent to be at the heart of politics (the fact that he was party leader for almost 11 years, having taken on the job at the age of 33, shows the weakness of the party as much as the strength of his own talent). A political consultant, quoted by Paxman, is told that political parties ought to try and attract “low-fliers” (as Anne points out, not quite the same thing as the academically ungifted).

Paxman spends a lot of time lambasting the primitive set-up of the British political system, especially the entire architecture and procedure of the Westminster parliament. But the only modest reform he supports is to allow ministers who are MPs to be allowed to speak in relevant debates in the House of Lords, and vice versa. Quite apart from the questions one should ask about the composition of the House of Lords, this misses one of the biggest blind spots in the British constitutional tradition – the requirement that ministers must be members of one or other house, carried through slavishly to the Oireachtas and the unicameral chambers in Stormont, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Surely if most of Europe and the U.S. can manage by separating the legislative and executive, the UK and Ireland could consider this too? I need to work up a proper rant about this for publication somewhere

It ends up a bit scrappy but there are a lot of things to like about this book. Paxman retains a certain affection for, and understanding of, Northern Ireland, which he mentions several times (indeed I think he give us proportionally more attention than Wales of Scotland). The bibliography cites a huge number of political memoirs – I estimate roughly a hundred autobiographies and about the same number of biographical studies – but almost all British, with a very few Americans and no continentals (or even Irish). Paxman is gracious enough to acknowledge assistance in this part of the writing by Alex von Tunzelmann, former editor of the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell. I shall look out for her work in future.

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August Books 8) Hard To Swallow

8) Hard to Swallow: The Abandoned Comedy Routines of John Dowie, Illustrated by Hunt Emerson

Picked this up trying to cure insomnia caused by overindulgence at and ‘s wedding. Why are comedy routines never as funny when you read them written down compared to when you see them on stage? (Perhaps because you are usually sober, and not surrounded by other people laughing, when reading them off the page.) Emerson’s cartoons are fun as usual though I suspect nothing like Dowie’s stage act. The one illustrating the script about haemorrhoids will stay with me for a long time.

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Wedding

and ‘s wedding on Friday was great fun. The first registry office wedding we’ve been to in Ireland, though we’ve done them in England and Germany, and this was by far the nicest of the three. No actual readings – the ceremony was very short – but very heartening affirmations of the couple’s love and devotion for each other. As with all these occasions, it reminded us very strongly and happily of our own wedding in 1993. We had time after the registry office bit to go to Hodges Figgis and spend €€€ on books, and then headed in to the Ashling Hotel for the reception. We were at the same table as and , and there may well have been other lj’ers around who I didn’t identify. Also very glad to see Gerry Doyle again, and good chats with Eimear Ni Mhealoid. The speeches were also great – funny and the right sort of length. I shall be on the lookout for a good context to use ‘s closing toast, “Live Long and Prosper!”

Unfortunately I’d been kicked out of bed by our small people, delightful though they are, before six a.m., and then spent the next few hours of the morning worrying intensely about the brewing trouble in South Ossetia and other matters, so simply wasn’t in shape to stick around for the dancing and later celebrations, which was a real shame as it looked like it was going to be excellent. and both looked radiantly happy, though has, startlingly, grown his hair to almost a whole centimetre in length and is a bit thinner after her recent health travails though she otherwise looks in pretty good form. (Bumped into on the way out, though I don’t think he recognised me.) We went back to my mother’s house and were asleep not long after nine.

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Printer saying damn

Finally tracked this down:

“You will find us only on the very best atlases, because we are the smallest country left in Europe… a self-respecting country which deserves and sometimes achieves a colour of its own on the map – usually a dyspeptic mint green, which misses the outline of the frontier by a fraction of an inch, so that one can almost hear the printer saying damn.” – the General, in Peter Ustinov’s play Romanoff and Juliet.

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Commission politics

Well, well, so the Finnish Liberal got the Balkan portfolio, and the Austrian got the European Neighbourhood policy. I’m trying to have a holiday but I have to do some hacking nonetheless…

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August Books 7) Don Quixote

7) The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part I), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I decided to read this because the Norwegian book clubs survey put it at the top of their list of the 100 best novels of all time. It’s surprisingly approachable, for Great Literature, but very long at almost 1000 pages in the Penguin edition, so I’ve given myself a break after finishing the first part, as published in 1605 (almost 400 years ago), and will leave the second part, of 1615, for some later time.

It reminds me of nothing so much as Tristram Shandy, except that it has a far more coherent plot (this is not saying much of course). Don Quixote himself is gloriously delusional, and of course unwittingly plays a satirical role in exposing the workings of society. Interesting too that the distance between his society of 1605 and ours of 2004 seems much less than the distance between 1605 and the medieval world of chivalry which he imagines himself to inhabit. Of course Quixote’s medieval world is a creation of fantasy, and his 1605 is rooted very firmly in contemporary reality.

Apart from the narrative frame of Don Quixote himself and his delusions, there are lots of romantic sub-plots – actually so distinct from one another that you could almost call them novellas – some of which eventually get tied together in a way that is reminiscent of Wodehouse. Added to that, the geopolitical tension of Spain vs the Islamic world of North Africa is eerily reminiscent of another modern genre – the beautiful Zoraida almost seems like an ancestor of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

For all that, I’m not utterly convinced that this really is the best novel of all time. I’m sure it deserves honour and celebration as being the first (or among the first) attempts to write a novel per se. But to say that is a bit like Johnson’s remark about a woman preaching being like a dog walking on its hind legs, the impressive thing being not that it is done well but that it is done at all. Perhaps if I ever get around to the second half it will make more of an impact on me.

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August Books 6) Way Station

6) Way Station, by Clifford Simak

I think I’d read about this book in Stephen King’s novel/collection Hearts in Atlantis, and then found it on various lists of important sf books. A really charming story. Reflects very much the Cold War environment when it was written, but also pulls in themes recognizable from a lot of other sf before and since – the galactic civilization judging Earth, also from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Have Space Suit, Will TravelMore Than Human and Martian Time-SlipFrankenstein. I wonder if Neal Stephenson’s immortal Enoch Root owes his first name to Simak’s hero? I was fooled by a couple of points – Enoch gives his visiting alien friend the name Ulysses, after “a great man of our race”, and of course I thought this referred to the much-travelled Greek hero, but it turns out to be Ulysses S Grant. Also I guessed wrong about how the mysterious Talisman would appear on the scene. Anyway it all adds up to a pleasing and mercifully short package.

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August Books 5) After the King

5) After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed Martin H Greenberg, introduction by Jane Yolen

I picked this up for €5 or so, remaindered in the Leuven bookshop, and was very pleasantly surprised. Nineteen short stories by various fantasy authors, all more or less in the Tolkien vein; two or three clunkers (Dennis McKiernan, Mike Resnick), but the average being very good and several excellent – Stephen Donaldson, Gregory Benford, and a particularly impressive foray by John Brunner, who eschewed the fantasy setting chosen by most of the others and wrote a piece set in England in 1921. I had read the Terry Pratchett piece somewhere else (“She’s always going on about billy goats. I have no knowledge whatsoever about billy goats”) but I am surprised not to have encountered any of the others before – this collection was published in 1992 for the centenary of Tolkien’s birth. Perhaps that just shows how little fantasy I read as compared to sf.

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The latest sf/f book meme

From :


1. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
2. Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, by Frank Herbert
4. Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
5. Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
6. Valis, by Philip K. Dick
7. Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
8. Gateway, by Frederick Pohl
9. Space Merchants, by C.M. Kornbluth & Frederick Pohl
10. Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart
11. Cuckoo’s Egg, by C.J. Cherryh
12. Star Surgeon, by James White (I think)
13. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick
14. Radix, by A.A. Attanasio
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
16. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
17. A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
18. Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon
19. The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
20. Way Station, by Clifford Simak
(Just read it this week)
21. More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon
22. Gray Lensman, by E. E. “Doc” Smith
23. The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
24. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
25. Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock
26. Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
27. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
28. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
29. Heritage of Hastur, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
30. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
31. The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
32. Slan, by A.E. Van Vogt
33. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
34. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
35. In Conquest Born, by C.S. Friedman
36. Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
37. Eon, by Greg Bear
38. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
39. Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
40. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

41. Cosm, by Gregory Benford
42. The Voyage of the Space Beagle, by A.E. Van Vogt
43. Blood Music, by Greg Bear
44. Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress (read the short version)
45. Omnivore, by Piers Anthony
46. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
47. Mission of Gravity, by Hal Clement
48. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
49. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
50. The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold
51. 1984, by George Orwell
52. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
53. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
54. Flesh, by Philip Jose Farmer
55. Cities in Flight, by James Blish
56. Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe

57. Startide Rising, by David Brin
58. Triton, by Samuel R. Delany
59. Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
60. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
61. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
62. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter Miller
63. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
64. No Blade of Grass, by John Christopher
65. The Postman, by David Brin
66. Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany
67. Berserker, by Fred Saberhagen
68. Flatland, by Edwin Abbott
69. Planiverse, by A.K. Dewdney
70. Dragon’s Egg, by Robert L. Forward
71. Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh
72. Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
73. The Puppet Masters, by Robert Heinlein
74. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
75. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
76. Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison
77. Roadside Picnic, by Boris Strugatsky & Arkady Strugatsky
78. The Snow Queen, by Joan Vinge
79. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
80. Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard
81. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
82. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
83. Upanishads, by Various
84. Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
85. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
86. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin
87. The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham
88. Mutant, by Henry Kuttner
89. Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem
90. Ralph 124C41+, by Hugo Gernsback
91. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
92. Timescape, by Gregory Benford
93. The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
94. War with the Newts, by Karl Kapek
95. Mars, by Ben Bova
96. Brain Wave, by Poul Anderson
97. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
98. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
99. Camp Concentration, by Thomas Disch
100. A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Holiday so far

Doing fine – although the boat trip from Holyhead with B was not pleasant, small people seem to be having fun now that we’ve got here, and so are we.

Went to a fantastic restaurant called the Oriel in Gilford, of all places, last night. Best food I’ve had since the Caucasus in May.

Must go to airport to pick up mother-in-law now, while simultaneously doing my fifth telephone interview of the day re yesterday’s Macedonia report…

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August Books 3) Felaheen

3) Felaheen, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The third in Grimwood’s Ashraf Bey trilogy, set in an early 21st century North Africa where the Ottoman and German Empires never fell (though Russia is nonetheless soviet) and which is otherwise not very different from our own time-line (to the extent of having the same computer operating systems). Apart from the alternate history aspect, other sf elements include the hero’s electronic alter ego and the fact that Tunis is under international sanctions for unauthorised genetic manipulation experiments. I like this series as much for the sultry, sensual prose as for the intricate plot and striking characterisations. This one didn’t disappoint. However now that Ashraf Bey has reached a certain point in his political career I hope his creator will move on to other things – as long as they are as enjoyable as this.

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August Books 2) The Great Gatsby

2) The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of the “classics” I’ve set myself as summer reading, and much the shortest of them (the others being Little Women, Crime and Punishment and Don Quixote). Yes, a very good short novel, with the setting of 1920s New York and Long Island vividly described, including barely surreptitious widespread use of alcohol and a surprising amount of promiscuity, but overlying this a much more interesting story of personal aspiration. Strongly recommended.

ObBalkans: Gatsby had a war medal awarded to him by the King of Montenegro.

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August Books 1) The Year of Our War

1) The Year of Our War, by Steph Swainston

Well, this is depressing. A Cambridge graduate, like me, who has dabbled in archaeology, like me, and now works in vaguely international relations stuff, like me, but is about six years younger and has produced a stormingly good first novel. Enough to put whatever writing ambitions I may have entertained skulking back behind the closet where they belong. Thanks to Cheryl Morgan and others for flagging this one up as a first novel to be taken seriously. It is.

My only substantial complaint is that I thought the book was too short for the large number of characters jostling for narrative attention. But various other bits worked really well for me; the narrator with his drug habit, the defenders against an inhuman menace turning on each other, the tension between mortals and immortals in a world where immortality is won by challenge. At first I feared that the habit of yet another unexpected revelation about the back-story every other chapter (characters unexpectedly turning out to be married, that kind of thing) would get tedious but she stopped once we had got the main points established, though this still leaves us wildly surmising about the rest of it.

I wondered why there was something vaguely familiar about the entire set-up, and then I realised that to a certain extent Swainston has based the relations between her characters on what could be observed in any large organisation’s office politics – squabbles over the fringe benefits for spouses, who’s chasing whose job, and the perpetual struggle for the boss’s ear. I would have mild complaints about the names (one minor character is called Leigh Delamere – groan!) which are not really up to George R.R. Martin level, let alone Tolkien, but at least she’s not anywhere near as painful as Robert Jordan. On the whole, pretty good stuff.

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