A Fistful of Shells

 

My other half has been playing Animal Crossing lately. The value of this to a book review of a history that re-evaluates West Africa over the longe duree might not seem obvious at first, but I noticed after a while that she was traipsing up and down a beach, collecting cowries for sale in exchange for hard cash. That I was reading Toby Green's recent book at the same time struck a chord; here was a point in action, how value changes hands.

OK, so it isn't that simple, but the central argument of this magnificent book is. Ignore the detail for a moment. Ignore the way in which Green rehistoricises Africa. Ignore the dense economic arguments against just for a moment. West Africa has been rendered one of the poorest areas on earth as a result of several factors: the differeing values between traders of Europe and Africa; the shift of surplus labour through the slave trades of the Sahara and the Atlantic; and the unrest caused by the above.

I have oversimplified there, in my way. The story as a whole is much more complex, and yet it is not. European traders arrived in the fifteenth century and traded in various currencies - including cowries - in exchange for gold. Surplus capital accumulated in Europe, moving away from Africa. Imports to Africa of European cloth undermined the African economy, which valued things based on utility rather than capital value. As the economy was undermined, with locally-made goods being replaced by traded European goods, the thing with the greatest capital value was the labour of local men and women - who all too often found themselves captured and enslaved.

Add to that, many West African societies used a wide range of currencies not based on gold, as the dominant economic system in use today does. Cowries were valuable, as were strips of cloth and bars of iron and copper. Those bars of iron and copper could then be worked into something of practical use. Their value, once again, was in utility and not capital. Almost by accident, Europe accumulated the capital that would allow it to set the agenda on an economic level in the centuries following these trades.

Green's work is both accessible and acadamic. He builds these arguments over almost 500 pages, but he rarely forgets another of his central arguments: Africa has been largely made ahistorical by Western historians. In the introcution, his disdain for such thinking is made clear. Africa has been ignored by mainstream Western historians for years; these are people who have often seen Africa as an unchanging place, dominated by the same forces in 1800 as it was in 1000. What Green does is show decisively the shifts in political, social and economic fabrics that make up Africa, showing both the diversity of West Africa and the region-wide forces that acted on its history, from the Islam-influenced Senegambian region to the south of the area, the growing polities of Dahomey (as a result, in no small part, of the transatlantic slave trade) and Benin.

It's rare that a book truly broadens or challenges my own understanding, but like most white British people I know - or knew - very little of the historical forces that came to create modern West Africa, left it impoverished by a lack of economic capital due to the differing values with the European traders who took advantage of this difference, and who would in time subject it to the evils and depradations of the slave trade.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A Fistful of Shells is a single-volume masterwork of modern history that can act both as a primer for the uninitiated, and as a compelling argument for someone who may have a little more knowledge. It is a challenge to the Western world to consider more than just European history, and it successfully re-historicises an Africa that had been lost in the mists of our own ignorance.

The Last of Us

I want you to imagine a world where morality, brutality, necessity and mercy combine. It's a world where humanity has been reduced to a shadow of its former self thanks to a disease which turns those it infects into mindless zombies. Society and civilisation have broken down. Martial law dominates the last bastions of human society. In the hinterlands, lawlessness is king, with bands of hunters having their territory, killing anyone who enters it. It is into this world that a girl finds herself becoming infected but, in a remarkable twist, finds herself to be immune to the infection. As people in one southern USA stronghold realise, this could change everything.

This is The Last of Us. It's a survival horror game originally for the PS3 which was remastered for the PS4, and it is completely and utterly brilliant.

A description of the plot doesn't do justice to the real centrepiece of the game's storytelling, the growing relationship between Joel, a borderline mercenary charged with smuggling the girl across America to the Fireflies, a freedom fighting group who will be able to engineer a vaccine from the wounds, and Ellie, the girl. It's a father-daughter relationship which grows steadily. Joel is initially cold to Ellie, as she brings up memories of his own daughter, Sarah, who died in the first outbreak.

Both characters are superb, filling their roles magnificently. Ellie is young and vulnerable, but possessed of enough ingenuity to help and the innocence to throw Joel's often brutal actions into sharp relief. For his part, Joel plays the father figure - a man prepared to do anything for his daughter - to perfection, despite the occasionally rocky relationship the two have. Along the way, the duo meet and are assisted (or hintered) by other equally balanced characters. One of the great triumphs of The Last of Us is undoubtedly its excellent writing, which takes the game beyond the bog-standard survival horrors and makes it into a character drama as compelling as any TV series or film. None of the characters annoy or frustrate, at least from a writing standpoint, and it actually feels like a privilege to watch the bond grow between Joel and Ellie.

It's important to be able to contrast the two characters because they are so different. Joel has blood on his hands, and gets more on them throughout the course of what is at times a completely brutal game. By the end of my playthrough, the kill count - mostly of humans, not infected - stood at around 400. His almost relaxed attitude to killing is contrasted with Ellie, who isn't immune to the horrors of death like Joel, although she hardens significantly as the journey progresses. Unlike Joel, however, she gets upset at times when she is forced to take action. When the violence is from Joel, some of it feels like putting the infected out of their misery while every human death is simply a necessity; Ellie, on the other hand, is hard to kill with, somehow, as though she is losing her innocence there and then.

One of the things that most of The Last of Us's detractors have jumped on is the violence. And it's true that it's a violent game. Often the violence is graphic and visceral. Yet it never feels like violence for the sake of violence. There's a necessity to it as well as an inevitability - this is life on the edge of civilisation. As humanity trembles on the precipice of the abyss, the worst of humanity has come out. Whether Joel is a part of that is a question best left to the individual player.

Before I move on to talking about the gameplay, I should say a word about the atmosphere the game builds: it's grim. The sense of bleakness meant that I never played the 15-hour game for longer than an hour or so at a time, as much as anything to stop the bleakness of the world getting on top of me as anything. There's a palpable despair in the characters, a lack of hope for the future that is probably the scariest thing about the game: forget the dozens of tense stealth sections where a single noise will alert a clicker - an infected so far gone that they're basically a walking human fungus without eyesight and which will deliver a one-hit kill - and the pulse-pounding action sequences where a single slip spells death, it's the despair which creates the real horror, not least horror for and of what humanity is capable of.

That isn't to say that hope isn't present. Ellie provides the brightest of the bright sparks, not just as hope for humanity, but as hope for Joel. Watching as she becomes more like him (or does she? It's a question that has to be asked) is another of the game's horrors. Yet she never loses her sense of wonder and hope, despite the brutality. One wonderful scene sees her marvel as a herd of escaped giraffes makes its way through an abandoned, ruined city. For all she's seen and done, she's a child and she's the future.

She's also a useful partner when it comes to the gameplay. Often games which have a character being escorted from one place to the other end with that NPC being a hindrance rather than a help. Or they end like Resident Evil 5, where the NPC is far too helpful, force-feeding you healing herbs when you don't want to us them. Ellie is a real help for the majority of the game, and I have to say the NPC AI in general is excellent. Also excellent is the enemy AI. One wrong step will see them onto you. Make a noise in the wrong place and you can expect a horde of clickers to descend, or for a pack of human hunters to start a relentless search.

Action takes place through an over the shoulder perspective on the player character. Occasionally this results in a restrictive view, but problems are few and far between. Gameplay in fact compensates for this with things like Joel's listen mode, which can help to pinpoint enemies, and having NPCs shout warnings.

Gameplay mixes between exploration, stealth and combat. Exploration is mostly down relatively linear paths (albeit paths which don't feel linear and which you do occasionally get lost down), through which you find most of your raw items for crafting and upgrades. There's a satisfying feel to the exploration, not least because the environments are varied and beautifully realised. You really feel like you're rooting through someone's old home and through dead towns - faded posters for old films hang on walls, stained bathtubs occupy bathrooms. People have left all sorts lying around - alcohol, rags, explosives, sugar, scissors, tape, pills, weapons, ammo, raw remodelling materials, tools... All of this can be used to craft a number of different things, including Molotov cocktails and smoke bombs. Each item can be used at different times; nothing is redundant, but most of it is scarce.

Stealth feels satisfying but is remarkably tricky to get right. I only mastered it at the end, when outwitting heavily armed guards by the dozen (the thought of sudden death at the hands of a platoon armed with automatic rifles didn't encourage gung-ho exploits). Otherwise, it's trial and error. Sometimes fear can paralyse you in one place, not least when you're protecting Ellie from a number of clickers and you want to time a dash properly.

Combat in some scenarios may seem preferable, but the lack of supplies means it's to be avoided where possible. When combat does happen, however, it is superb: fast-paced, brutal and uncompromising. Gun combat can be hit and miss with the auto-aim off and irritatingly imprecise when you need accuracy with it on, but there is something about the combat which means it's possible to be sucked into it completely. Its intensity is its biggest strength. When battling a small army of infected you have to live in the moment or risk being killed.

It's difficult to think of a game I've ever been more impressed by. The experience was one I won't be forgetting any time soon. It's as memorable a game as I've ever played, as well as being technically superb. It blends gameplay and story seamlessly. It makes you care for the characters whilst pulling no punches - emotionally or otherwise. Indeed, I think I might just have a new favourite game.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

If nothing else Becky Chambers' debut novel provides an inspiring story for the aspiring writer. Faced with the choice between keeping a roof over her head or finishing her book, she started a Kickstarter to fund her writing and was able to do both, going on to initially self-publish The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet in 2014 before it was picked up by Hodder in 2015. Since then, she's been able to work as a technical writer, meaning that the second book in the series is out in about two months. Triumph over adversity indeed.

Of course, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet has a lot more to it than an interesting and inspiring backstory. There's a lot to recommend it. It's a space opera which focuses strongly on the varied personalities aboard the Wayfarer and their interactions on a long-term deep space trip. The Wayfarer is a tunnel ship, effectively drilling wormholes for swift travel throughout the galaxy. Rosemary Harper joins the crew, running from her own past, just as the ship is given a year-long mission into what could be hostile territory.

It isn't a novel of the unknown. If you like novels charting something new, where the science and exploration aspects dominate the plot, this isn't the book you're looking for. Emphasis is squarely on the crew of the Wayfarer, their pasts, their presents, their hopes and their dreams. The bond between the crew is thoroughly examined.

I've seen articles strongly criticising The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for being nauseatingly liberal. Different species and races rub along quite nicely in a confined space, with respect for each other and each other's beliefs in a way they wouldn't in real life, according to these criticisms. These are criticisms I reject. What is science fiction if it feels it cannot show us a glimpse of society where everyone does have that respect? For decades Star Trek held the progressive torch of science fiction, promoting a future utopia of co-operation and showing that respect could take relations - both personal and diplomatic - a long way. It was idealistic, it's true, but that's not to say it couldn't happen. And sometimes in the world we need to be reminded that different cultures can and do co-operate. There's enough war and discord in the world to want to escape from it.

This is The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet's great triumph. It is escapist, whilst presenting a vision of the world that uplifts and affirms positivity. It succeeds in pulling the emotional heartstrings whilst also providing hope. In many ways, it emulates Star Trek at its best.

That said, I could still point out problems with it. I found the lack of focus in the plot to be slightly disconcerting. Although the driving narrative is there, it's broken up into episodic chapters which break the flow slightly. At times the characters are a little too positive and forget to be living, breathing beings. But these are complaints which can be overlooked.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is well worth reading and is a rare treat. In a field which in recent years has had a negative outlook, it is a positive delight.

Blackout/All Clear

A quick glance at my bookcase(s) should tell you that I'm no stranger to either the doorstopper or the epic series. So when I start a review talking about a book's length, you need to bear in mind that I got A Dance With Dragons in hardback on release day, read The Stand in under a fortnight, am in the process of re-reading Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series, and in general don't mind a good long read.

Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear is certainly a long read. It's one of few novels I've read that's had to be split into two heft volumes, such is its length - 1,400 pages of time travelling, the Blitz, and agonising over whether the course of history has been changed.

For such is its premise. A group of historians are sent to England in 1940 on separate assignments from the time travelling labs at the University of Oxford in 2060. Once there, they find they can't get back home. The greatest worry of the protagonists - Polly, Eileen, and Mike, to use their 1940s cover names - is that they might do something that cost the Allies the War through their actions in the Blitz.

If that sounds like it isn't enough to fill a 1,400 page novel, you'd probably be right. There's a large incidental cast of characters, and the plot isn't quite as simple as it sounds from above (more of that later), but my main complaint does come down to the fact that there's about 400 pages of filler over the two volumes. Willis would no doubt argue that her world-building (which is excellent) and character development (which is less so) justifies the length, and she'd have a fair argument. What could be argued on the other hand is that she'd done so much research that she felt obliged to include it, hence the dragging middle section.

For that criticism, however, it does have to be said that the research is put to good effect. Although much of it fails to advance the action, it lends an authentic feel to events. Constant references to real bombings slipped in to speech remind the reader that the Blitz is a real and present danger in 1940, and the day-to-day lives of Londoners in the Blitz are faithfully represented in the shelters and the department stores where the protagonists sleep and work. However, it's as if Willis felt every aspect of her research had to be represented, hence long sections where little happens but characters point out things that were bombed in the middle of repetitive conversations about how they'll return to Oxford, or make side-journeys that serve only to bog down the pace.

But when the action does advance, it can be exhilarating. There's a section surrounding 29th December 1940, the night the fire watch saved St Paul's Cathedral, which is tense and fraught and genuinely exciting. Multiple plot threads come together and are expertly handled in a brilliant sequence which takes place while bombs hit London and characters are forced away from their introspection and into decisive action.

And, of course, there's the plotting. Connie Willis needs congratulating on her handling of a dozen intricate plot-threads. Some twists can be seen coming from a mile off, it has to be admitted, but when everything comes together it can be seen how well the novel works as a unit. Time travel as a plot device does give a writer licence to obfuscate and then reveal, and if done badly it can be painful to read, but Willis does it quite beautifully.

Blackout/All Clear is too long by some distance. But when it gets things right, which is more often than not, it proves to be an excellent read. As the winner of the Hugo for best novel in 2011, I was expecting a good read, and so it proved to be. It's difficult to think of too many books I've read this year that either equal or better it. And to quote a great man, you'll like it if you're into the wibbly wobbley timey wimey... stuff.

Wolves of the Calla and other thoughts

In his introduction to the Dark Tower series, Stephen King discusses being nineteen and its influence on the work that follows. He's right. It's a good age to be. Indeed, it was the age I was when I read The Gunslinger for the first time, and embarked on the quest for the Dark Tower with Roland - the perfect age to immerse myself into Mid-World, given the significance of the number in King's magnum opus.

But no man remains nineteen forever. And I turned twenty - that age of maturity and professionalism - while reading Wolves of the Calla, book 5 of The Dark Tower. Perhaps it's ironic, but what I've read since I turned twenty hasn't had the quality of what I read before that date. When I was nineteen, the number associated most closely with the Tower (alongside ninety-nine).

This isn't a review. I'm not going to assess the qualities of Wolves of the Calla like I've tried to with other books. Instead, I'm going to go through why, in my opinion, this is where The Dark Tower loses its way. If you've not read the series, I'll warn you now: I'll be talking about events that are spoilers.

Wolves of the Calla follows a plot most of us would be familiar with, because it's most clearly inspired by The Magnificent Seven (with a shout-out being made to this by Eddie Dean of New York in the next volume, Song of Susannah). Our ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy come to the Callas, small towns dogged by raiders who take their children for purposes unknown. The ka-tet meets Father Callahan, formerly of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, and agree to defend the towns and stop the Wolves - those who raid the towns.

For almost seven hundred pages it's as good as The Dark Tower gets (Wizard and Glass aside). There's the mix of SF, horror, westerns, and fantasy that made the world so haunting and believable. It touches our own world a number of times, with characters slipping through more of the doors we saw in The Drawing of the Three. And there's the growing sense of drawing close to the Tower itself, with the whole story taking place on the threshold of End-World, where the Tower stands.

It's another slow-burn building to a climax (with pacing for the most part that worked brilliantly in Wizard and Glass - my favourite of the series), but unlike previous volumes that climax ends in disappointment. The battle with the Wolves is all over - after hundreds of pages of build-up - inside twenty rushed pages. There's no excitement there. Again, returning to Wizard and Glass: book 4 ended with a triple climax, one a thrilling battle where there's a real sense of danger to the characters, an emotional climax that leaves you shattered, and then to top it off another emotional climax that gives you a punch to the gut and makes you want to jack it in - but you have to because you're already so invested in the characters and the world. Wolves of the Calla has none of those things. We can pretty much guarantee the ka-tet's survival, and even the emotional climax and resultant cliffhanger with Eddie and Susannah falls flat and hurried.

I think it falls flat because the whole ending sequence feels cheap. The Wolves are robots, which is believable enough in Mid-World. But they carry lightsabres and grenades called 'sneetches' - and if that latter sounds familiar, I'll add that they're the Harry Potter version. It jars. It cheapens. And then there's the final punch to the gut: a novel called 'Salem's Lot by a certain Stephen King comes into the possession of the ka-tet, making Callahan realise he's a character in a book.

Whilst I'm not against a writer giving himself credit (especially after a project he's invested thirty years of his life in nears its conclusion), but the effect of this cheapens not only the whole conclusion of this book, but overshadows the whole series. Suspension of disbelief is required for immersion in another person's world; when that person reminds you that someone wrote it, the characters you've grown to love seem to become so much less than they were.

King later inserts himself into Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower as a key character. I don't think it's an act of ego, like many other writers who have put themselves in their own work; rather, it's a writer acknowledging how much the series took from him. But the effect is to go within an ace of ruining the last three books. Immersion is lost when you're reminded that a book is fiction.

It's a shame. King as a character isn't that bad. He's not a hero (far from it), and he's not painted in a positive light. But I wonder how much his inclusion is as a result of rushing through the conclusion of what should have been one of the finest fantasy series of all time following his near-fatal accident in 1999. I'll always enjoy the first four books. They were books written by a writer who wanted to write them, and who had allowed the stories to mature and tell themselves. King himself doesn't like plotting, and from Wolves of the Calla on they have the feel of a writer going against his instincts by doing just that.

However, they're still worth a read. Some people will love the final volumes. As for me, I'll always be disappointed with how they turned out, and I hope The Wind Through the Keyhole is a return to form for The Dark Tower.

Little Brother

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

-The American Declaration of Indepencence

People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

-V For Vendetta

The Americans have got a lot wrong when it comes to human rights and civil liberties. In fact, in recent times it's become a habit of mine to read a headline related to American justice and predict the story. The continued existence of the death penalty is a particular bone of contention of mine - how can a nation that thinks of itself as civilised maintain such a barbarous way of dispensing 'justice'? I can point you in the direction of Guantanamo Bay for another human rights abuse. Hundreds of men have been held without indefinitely in a detention facility, to face trial in a military tribunal rather than in a open civilian court. And then there are the civil rights abuses which you still hear about, where a black man is apparently worth less than his white contemporary and a gay man can still be pilloried in the courts of public opinion for his sexuality.

A lot of work needs to be done to make America the proud nation it should have been.

The saddest thing about it is that there are so many fantastic underlying principles that any civil liberties or democracy campaigner could admire. Just look at the Constitution. As a modern document it has its problems, but in setting out the inalienable rights of the governed it acts as a barrier against tyranny and blazes a trail future documents - such as the European Convention on Human Rights - have been able to continue along. By modern standards it's grossly outdated and needs an overhaul, but it was the trendsetter that the entire free world should look to as the venerable grandfather of human rights legislation.

It also set out the principles of American government (based famously on Montesquieu's principle of the separation of powers, one of the first things any politics or law student learns at the start of their degree), along the lines of the declaration of independence. The attitudes of the people who use it may leave a lot to be desired politically, and its execution is somewhat overcomplicated and self-defeating at times, but the document itself is still a thing to be admired in its principles. With a man like Josiah Bartlet in charge (allied with a seismic shift in attitudes towards the left wing, finally getting rid of the American loathing of socialism), America's political and social future, with this document at its heart, could put it at the forefront of the world's developing attitudes.

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian writer who uses this vision of an ideal America to influence his 2008 novel Little Brother. Doctorow is a name well-known in SF circles, having come to attention in recent years with many excellent short stories and a number of novels. In Little Brother he focuses on the post-9/11 world, on civil liberties and increasing security measures - and on what powers the people have to take back their rights.

Ostensibly, Little Brother is a young adult SF novel, but no one should let that put them off. It's a sophisticated novel which harks back to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, among others. In it, a terrorist attack hits San Francisco, killing thousands. Marcus, a seventeen-year-old high school student and tech-wizard is caught up in the attack with a group of his friends, only to find himself arrested by the Department of Homeland Security, detained for several days, interrogated and eventually set free with a warning that he'll have his every move watched. On the outside again, he finds his country transformed into a police state, with everyone's movements tracked, communications monitored, and free speech curtailed. So he decides to do something - bring down the DHS.

Most YA readers will enjoy the story of one boy sticking it to the man. It certainly has enough to keep the more mature readers of that age group engaged, even if they're not looking for a novel that investigates the erosion of civil liberties. There's an everyman protagonist in Marcus, who has an interesting group of friends and even does a bit of dating in the name of growing up. It's not a difficult read by any stretch, either, but there's enough depth to make it satisfying even to the casual reader.

But to glean the most from it you shouldn't read it as a casual read. Read it with human rights, governmental powers and the Big Brother world in mind. To a point, it's a love letter to the rights of every man in the West and the ideal America, best summed up by Marcus's outburst against the government's actions in combating terrorism by curtailing rights on page 203 of the Harper Voyager edition:

"The whole point of America is that we're the country where dissent is welcome. We're a country of dissidents and fighters and university dropouts and free speech people."

The sentiment is idealistic in the extreme. No reader will read that and think that the country depicted is the true America - the land where being socialist is almost a crime and where not too long back having the wrong colour skin made you ineligible to vote and pushed you to the back of a bus - but it's what civil liberties campaigners would love to see.

The other thread running through the book asks the question of how far a government should go in order to protect its people. In this case, it instigates a surveillance society - that has already been encroaching on some liberties even before the terror attack - with ever-more heavy-handed tactics. Arresting dissidents and disappearing others is the tactic of a totalitarian society that inspires terror in its people - with the government to a point becoming the terrorists. Marcus also notes this early on. It all provides food for thought.

People are the power in democracy, another theme that runs through the book. Doctorow shows the power one individual can hold if they are determined enough. He shows that a government does indeed rule with the consent of the governed (see again, idealistic vision of the United States).

So how highly would I recommend Little Brother? Extremely. With the exception of Embassytown, it's the best thing I've read so far this year. There are a few problems with the writing, but that shouldn't put anyone off. Read it and think.

And even better, it's available off Cory Doctorow's website for free. (Spot the mug who paid £7.99...)

Heart-Shaped Box

I have 18 minutes to write a coherent review before Not Going Out starts on the telly. So here we go.

Heart-Shaped Box is a 2008 horror novel written by the son of Stephen King. I, like many other reviewers, appear to have started by pushing aside the pseudonym Joe Hill and revealing Joseph King. Who understandably doesn't want to have his father's name hanging over him. And with good reason: on this evidence, he's better.

I'm not knocking Stephen King. When he writes well, he's a good read, and some of his works have had me properly enthralled. Misery was a visceral, engaging horror novel. The Dark Tower is a fantasy classic, and will be for years to come (provided that The Wind Through the Keyhole and any subsequent additions are up to scratch). 'Salem's Lot can reasonably stake its claim to be the best vampire novel of modern times. But it's when he's off-colour that the problems start: bloated middle sections (The Stand), rambling sequences, irritating protagonists and Song of Susannah are just some of the less good parts of his work.

King Junior (hereafter to be referred to as Joe Hill) has some of his father's habits. There's an easy readability to his style, which occasionally meanders when it doesn't need to. His characters seem to very much do their own thing and drive the story rather than events overtaking their importance. Pop culture references make more appearances than they probably need to.

But he's also got the knack of writing much tighter, focussed prose. Heart-Shaped Box isn't a short book (403 pages), but it has a drive to it and doesn't meander like some of King Senior's works, and there isn't the same lightness that seems to dog even King's heaviest works. The pacing is superb.

The book starts with Judas Coyne, ageing rock god, buying a ghost off the internet. As a concept for horror, it's not the most original, but it evolves from that point into a thoroughly engaging and suitably haunting ghost story. There's nothing fluffy to it either; don't have visions of gothic creepers in the night, this ghost is a hypnotic ex-soldier who twists minds and drives people to suicide. And it's out to get Judas Coyne.

It may not be my longest - or most coherent - review, but I appear to have managed it with 4 minutes to spare. Not bad.

The Chrysalids

One thing that may be said of the best SF is that it has the quality of transcending the time in which it was written. It remains relevant in a way contemporary mainstream literature can't, because by its very definition it has to be stuck in its time (whereas SF isn't). A good example of a piece of SF that remains relevant is Dune, which has the same thematic relevance now as it did on its publication in 1965.

Another novel from half a century ago that retains its relevance despite its age is The Chrysalids, written by the author of The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham. First published in 1955, it's a story about intolerance that should be read by anyone who goes out into the world and deals with people on a day-by-day basis.

David Strorm is the son of the local community's chief preacher in a post-nuclear apocalypse world, where mutations are commonplace and religious zealotry rules over reason. Anything that differs from the norm is regarded as an offence against God, and has to be destroyed - including people. David and several of his contemporaries have a psychic link that they keep secret, fearing discovery as mutants. David's father is the biggest zealot of the community, urging his flock to stay pure and blaming any mutation on the weakness of others who slip into sin.

It may be because I haven't read The Day of the Triffids or The Midwich Cuckoos for quite a while, but Wyndham's writing feels different. There's far less 1950s sensationalism, and it's far more fluent than what I've come across from him before. On a sentence level alone it's a good read, without having the detailed exploration of intolerance and the actions of the intolerant. Throw in a compelling story and you've got a top-notch read, possibly finer than what are widely regarded as Wyndham's greatest works.

So how does The Chrysalids relate to the modern world? Even today, intolerance is rife, because we don't understand the differences between peoples. In Wyndham's devastated future, we see physical differences marking people out as being less than pure, and therefore inhuman. Such people are, at the very least, ostracised and sent into exile in the Fringes, lands affected more badly by the unspecified disaster that led to the breakdown of civilisation in the first place. In cases where it's felt the difference poses a risk to the way of life, people are hunted down and disposed of. There are so many analogies that could be drawn. Were it written today, Wyndham could have been writing about religious intolerances in places like Saudi Arabia. He could be talking about racial tensions in the Deep South in the 1930s. But as it is the broad analogy may be applied to any number of situations. In truth, it does make it required reading for living in the modern world, where tolerance is still sadly lacking.

One final word: the cover of the edition you're most likely to pick up at the moment is an interesting exercise in spotting the artist's error.

The Wise Man's Fear

Patrick Rothfuss's beard is fantastic. In the moody black and white photos of him on his website, it's clearly the star performer. Even the 'Joss Whedon is my master now' t-shirt can't topple something of such wild beauty. Had Galen Tyrol's fledgling stubble in Battlestar Galactica been allowed to grow to its fullest extent, it would surely have matched it, but as it is it stands alone, its facial follicles unsurpassed.

You're probably getting tired of hearing about Patrick Rothfuss's beard at this point. I'm pretty sick of writing about it. I certainly grew tired of one thing in particular in The Wise Man's Fear, the second novel of Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles: hearing about Kvothe's hair.

Let's start at the beginning. The Name of the Wind was the first novel from Rothfuss. It focussed on a barman, Kote, telling of his past as the legendary Kvothe, before he started to live in hiding as a red-headed landlord. As is standard in fantasy novels, Kvothe was orphaned and lived rough for a few years before, through sheer nerve, blagging his way into a prestigious educational institution, the University, to study to become an arcanist, the world's equivalent of a sorcerer. It was an enjoyable read, being fast-paced, with interesting characters and a well-realised world, ticking all the basic fantasy boxes and then taking a step beyond as it unfolded to become a story told with flair.

Did I mention that Kvothe was red-headed?

The storytelling medium is Kvothe himself, talking to a travelling chronicler. The first novel covers the first day of Kvothe telling his tale. In between times, other things happen in the present - this is a story told on two apparently separate (but I suspect otherwise) levels, one happening while Chronicler takes down Kvothe's memoirs, the other the memoirs themselves. The Wise Man's Fear follows the same narrative structure - as presumably the rest of the series will be as well - and picks up where The Name of the Wind left off.

By the way, Kvothe is a flame-haired magiciany bloke.

Being quite honest, it feels at times like the story barely moves on. But we do at least get to see the development of a character first-hand. We were told in the first volume that Kvothe was a fearsome warrior and magician, and throughout The Wise Man's Fear he grows into this role. He was a young and relatively innocent boy at the start. Two years down the line, we're starting to see a hardened man who is far easier to reconcile with the barkeeper telling the story. And the joy of it is that the development feels natural. Offhand, there aren't any sudden breaks in his development where Kvothe suddenly leaps from being one thing to another. Transition is smooth and barely noticeable. Even when he seems to do something out of character (as he does twice), there is a reasonable explanation that doesn't hinder the book.

The other characters are interesting as well. The enigmatic Denna provides a focal point for Kvothe's attentions, and she retains her mercurial air throughout. Elodin, Master Namer at the University (for a fuller explanation, read the books - it's easier that way), is also enigmatic, but he's also convincingly borderline insane. And then there are others.

But that's a problem. The location shifts on a regular basis. Whilst the University provides a base of sorts, we're taken elsewhere several times and this means we're introduced to a new set of characters, who need to be fleshed out and developed. In terms of the scale of the cast, it's large enough to rival George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, but Rothfuss has yet to develop Martin's mastery of a large set of characters. Many characters feel paper-thin. Too many appear and then suddenly disappear, never to be heard from again. Rothfuss is on occasion reduced to telling us facts about these characters and then advancing. In some ways, he's been over-ambitious, writing things above his ability.

He also indulges in a few irritating habits. He insists on telling us Kvothe's skills time and again (as well as the fact he's red-headed). I certainly didn't forget that Kvothe's a fantastic musician; but it's like Rothfuss doesn't trust his audience. He didn't do this in his first book (or if he did, I didn't notice). I accept that the second novel is tough after a successful first, but Rothfuss doesn't quite do himself justice.

It's still not bad. At times, it can be very good. Kvothe is a sympathetic character, and it's easy to like his cheek and wit. But I was hoping for more.

The Forever War

There's a set of clichés that attach themselves to war stories like limpets to rock. 'War is hell'. 'Soldiering is nine-tenths boredom and one-tenth terror'. 'Somewhere there's a bullet with your name on it'. Sometimes something is produced that manages transcend the clichés and become truly memorable for its particular depiction of war - an obvious example is Blackadder Goes Forth - although more often than not we're left with the same tired depictions which come back to the same old sayings. It's not to say that those idioms aren't true - because they clearly are - but I'd argue that we've all heard them so often that we've become desensitised. Which is why when something exceptional does come along we heap well-deserved praise on the book or film or series.

The Forever War is hardly new. It was written in the mid-1970s by Joe Haldeman, a veteran of the Vietnam war. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and became the first title to be released as part of the SF Masterworks imprint from Gollancz. Rumour even has it that it was written as a response to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

It's not even new to me. I read it when I was 17, just after I first read Dune. At the time I was struck by the violence. Some of the emotional impact was fairly hopelessly lost on me, as was much of the cultural significance of what Haldeman was saying. All I knew was that I was being treated to a rip-roaring story about the horrors of war.

I've grown up since then, but it hasn't stopped me enjoying the re-read. The story remains as strong as ever. William Mandella is a young man conscripted to the United Nations Explorer Force (UNEF) following the Elite Conscription Act. He has an IQ of over 150 and the physical attributes needed to fight humanity's newly-discovered enemy, the Taurans. He - and 99 others - are trained up (which is where we come in, with the memorable opening line, 'Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man'), and then sent off to fight in a series of hellish encounters.

Thanks to time dilation (a topic I'm not convinced is covered accurately by Haldeman, but I'm no expert on the subject), when the recruits get back to Earth decades have passed while they have only aged a matter of a couple of years. Mandella is incapable of adjusting to the new Earth, being alienated by the massive changes in society, and chooses to re-enter the army with Marygay Potter. Yet more military fun and frolics ensue.

The whole book is good. The action scenes are brutal, with matter-of-fact descriptions of horrific injuries. In between, we have the military discipline and turmoil of a man who doesn't particularly want to be there. Mandella is a sympathetic character, and he's easy enough to like.

But, for me, the most haunting part of it isn't anything to do with the battles or the science or the sex (and there's quite a bit of that, on the quiet). It's the return to Earth. The soldiers are warned beforehand of the changes, but it's jarring once they get there. Mandella's inability to adjust to the planet he has been fighting for is almost heartbreaking. There's a palpable sense of almost traumatic alienation throughout the sequence, which only lasts for 30 pages or so, but which sticks with me more strongly than any of the blood and guts. All he has throughout is the companionship of Marygay, one of his co-enlisted. Eventually, the couple choose to join up again, the army being the only thing they're adjusted for.

It's this which marks The Forever War out as an exceptional war novel. Haldeman's own experiences come through strongly (and some feel that The Forever War has an autobiographical element to it - I for one wouldn't disagree with them), and they leave an almost bitter taste in the mouth. It's a war novel that makes you think beyond the battlefield, and one I'd recommend to anyone. Whilst the clichés are there, Haldeman works expertly with them to bring home more than just the bombs and bullets.

Sadly for Haldeman, I've yet to come across anything else which even comes close to The Forever War. Its sequel, Forever Free, was a train-wreck of a novel, the companion novel Forever Peace merely passable and the short stories I've read have been underwhelming. But if you're going to write one great novel, it's better that it's something like The Forever War.

Son of Heaven (Chung Kuo Recast 1)

It may be that I come to regret these words, but I don't think I'll be racing back to David Wingrove's Chung Kuo Recast series to devour the next volume as a matter of any urgency. There is, of course, every chance that I'll pick up Daylight on Iron Mountain at some point in the future, but it's not on my essential reads list.

To be fair, Son of Heaven wasn't on my essential reads list either. I was aware of it after it got a good write-up in Interzone, but I already had a dozen books to be getting on with (including the peerless The Windup Girl). But it was only when it became available as Amazon's daily Kindle deal that I felt compelled to splash out the princely sum of 99p for the privilege of having it sit unread on my Kindle for the best part of six months.

Son of Heaven is the first volume of the recast series. Chung Kuo was first released as an eight-book series in the late 80s and into the 90s. I've never read it, but as I understand it it gained a strong following as it told its tale of the rise of China in the future. David Wingrove took the decision to rewrite it as a 20-book series (do you see one reason why I'm a bit reluctant to get stuck in to the whole series?), and Son of Heaven appeared in the middle of 2011.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Dorset village for the most part, Son of Heaven follows Jake Reed and his family and friends. We find out the nature of the catastrophe that has seen a return to almost-feudal times in the Western world, and follow the day-to-day existence of the village for the rest of the time. I have a bit of a problem with this, or, more specifically, with the way it's structured. I don't have a problem with flashbacks and telling the backstory (as the apocalypse itself is told), but I do have a problem when it results in a complete change of pace and focus. It would have been better, in my opinion, to have somehow interspersed the apocalypse with the main narrative, keeping the pacing going and not rendering the idling early scenes almost irrelevant.

Being quite honest, there are around 100 pages that could have done with cutting or restructuring. It may be my own personal taste, but it felt like nothing happened for the opening third of the book only to be plunged into the flashbacks where it was all action. Looked at as a whole, the structure just about works, providing ample prelude to what eventually comes about in the end. But it could be improved so it doesn't feel like reading it is a drag. When things do happen they feel nastily out of place.

Wingrove is actually a pretty good writer. His style is brisk and readable. I just found myself annoyed by the amount of profanity he used. Seldom did a page go by without a 'fuck' or some other strong profanity. I get it, strong language is realistic, but did he have to make it so noticeable? Another issue with his writing I had was his almost-embarrassed handling of sex scenes. I'm confident I could write several better than at least one of them in Son of Heaven (and there are a few, let me tell you). 'Her hands cupped his sex' is about as good as it gets. And then there were the unintentionally hilarious moments ('the odious Wang' being my personal favourite).

So it's fair to say I didn't enjoy Son of Heaven as much as I would have liked. It had its moments, but to me they felt like they were few and far between. If I see the next volume going cheap, I might pick it up because it did feel, towards the end, like there was real promise in Chung Kuo Recast. The premise of a rising China is in itself interesting and relevant. I just wish there hadn't been so much mucking about at first.

The Thing On The Shore

I've never been one to believe hype that much, especially when it comes to publishers and what they say about their writers. After one good book too many people will jump on the bandwagon and declare a young writer the talent of his or her generation. Whilst that book may be exceptional, it is only one book and should be viewed as such, unless the writer already has a body of other work behind him. There's nothing wrong with lauding the début of a writer, but can reviewers please wait until after book two or three before declaring him as having that kind of talent?

Tom Fletcher is a writer who was described as the most promising horror writer for a generation in the wake of his début novel The Leaping, an unconventional take on the werewolf legend. In it, a group of uni friends working at a call centre in Manchester get caught up in a chain of events leading to the eponymous Leaping. It was good, but I found myself frustrated by the annoying characters, which didn't help me to feel all that invested in the story. That said, the writing was good and the horror suitably visceral.

The Thing on the Shore is a sequel of sorts, whilst also being a standalone novel. Artemis Black, manager of the call centre in The Leaping, is assigned to a call centre in Whitehaven where the other characters work. One thing I noticed from the off was that the characters were far more human in The Thing on the Shore - no longer were they weird caricatures of people. And one of Fletcher's strengths lies in his characterisation, in particular of Arthur, the protagonist, and his father, Harry. He gets into his characters heads and works them over, pushing and prodding them into real reactions. It's easy to empathise with them - or hate them, as is appropriate.

Fletcher can write. He writes in clean, mostly unfussy prose with an elegance all of its own. He even has the gift of florid, fluid descriptions without losing any of his pacing and characterisation. In some ways, it's like reading pared-down HP Lovecraft, but superior by far. His variation makes it interesting to read.

But for me there's a problem. The first 2/3 of the novel are a little aimless. Mindless drudgery with a sinister boss can be horrifying in itself, but this ground was covered in The Leaping. That we have characters in the same dead-end jobs smacks of Stephen King at his worst - rehashing the 'he's a writer' thing for his main characters. Only when we get into the final third do we start to see a real pattern emerging.

It's not to say that what went before is bad, because it isn't. Fletcher's style makes it an easy read and the characters are superbly fleshed out. The idea of the whole community being dead and strangely grotesque is in itself horrifying enough to carry the can for quite a bit of time while hints are dropped about what's really going on.

On balance, The Thing on the Shore is a good read. Unfortunately, its failings are there to be seen clearly. But it does provide a step up from The Leaping, and I'm certain Fletcher is going to have a long, productive career as one of the foremost horror writers of his age, becoming one of the wonderkid writers who actually go on to fulfil their early potential.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

I first read Alastair Reynolds' début novel Revelation Space last year. At the time, I'll confess to being underwhelmed for much of the book's 500+ page duration. There was no doubt in my mind that Reynolds could write, but that he had a problem with his pacing. What's the point of an exhilarating last 100 pages or so when the 400 before are glacial to the point of sending the reader to sleep? Events were slow and carefully constructed, but it was almost as if that care had sucked the energy from it.

However, I'm a quite a fan of Reynolds' short fiction. Over the past 18 months I've come across half a dozen short stories and novelettes by the Welsh writer, each of which has entertained me. Reynolds' style suits the short form very well; it is very correct, with a satisfying brevity to it, but that brevity doesn't undermine some excellent evocations of fantastic environments.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days was my first foray into Reynolds' longer fiction since Revelation Space. It's a single volume containing two novellas, both set in the same universe as Revelation Space.

The first of those novellas, Diamond Dogs, is the better of the two (at least, it is for me). Anyone who's read Robert Browning's epic poem 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' will instantly see the inspiration behind it. Through the eyes of Richard Swift we see an expedition under the leadership of Roland Childe to the uninhabitable world of Golgotha where there's a mysterious Blood Spire, complete with layers of challenges.

I may be spectacularly misreading this, but I read Diamond Dogs as being Alastair Reynolds' take on Browning's poem, just as The Dark Tower is Stephen King's. In each case there's an obsession about the object at the heart of the tale; in each case, that object is a tower of some description. Reynolds' take is wildly different from King's and Browning's in that the focus of the tale isn't so much the Blood Spire, but, rather, is the interactions going on around the setting. It's a bleak story, but one that's thoroughly worth reading.

The second novella is a little less impressive and a little more abstract. In fairness to it, it's actually a more complex tale than Diamond Dogs, but Turquoise Days just doesn't quite manage to do justice to the concept behind it. Had I more of an understanding of the Revelation Space universe I might appreciate it a little more, however, I can only work with what I've got. For that reason, a couple of the concepts - perhaps familiar to veterans of the series - were slightly lost on me.

Take the Pattern Jugglers. I understood what they were on a basic level - a form of collective waterborne life with a quasi-consciousness which have an alternative understanding of mathematics - but I needed to reference what I already knew about the series and its universe. A newcomer would struggle.

In all fairness, Turquoise Days would be a satisfyingly complex novella to a veteran of the series, containing subterfuge and subtleties suited to much longer books. And these two novellas have done much to re-ignite my interest in Alastair Reynolds' longer works. I have noticed that the difference between now and the time I read Revelation Space is that at the moment I'm not pre-occupied with work and I've got the chance to get my head round it a bit more, so it's probably a good time to give it a second chance.

So, if you're a veteran of the series, give Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days a spin. You'll enjoy it. If you're a newcomer, you might struggle with the latter story, but if you like dark, thoughtful space opera with a literary twist you'll enjoy Diamond Dogs.

The Lost World

Seemingly at every turn I'm confronted by dinosaurs. The BBC in particular seems keen to shove its Planet Dinosaur series in my face at every opportunity (despite the fact it's a cheap and less good version of Walking With Dinosaurs). So it's perhaps natural that, when stuck for something to read, I turned to the classic SF collection on my Kindle for entertainment.

Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for Sherlock Holmes. The Lost World is hardly unknown, however, and comes almost as highly-recommended as Baker Street's finest detective. It was first published in 1912, being serialised in one of the major publications of the day prior to being published in book form. The story is fairly well known: irascible Professor Challenger claims to have found a place in the Amazon where prehistoric life still exists, and forms an expedition to the isolated plateau, where dangers of varying varieties await the intrepid explorers.

The story is told through the diary/correspondence of one Edward Malone, a journalist who tagged along with the expedition. It bears many of the staples of SF of that era: the writing is bombastic and a little pompous, with the narrator given to exclamations which no modern writer would make. But it's not a bad thing when used well, as it is here, and it helps to place the book in its time. To compare the styles of different eras is a fool's analysis. However, I can't help but mention that the narrator tells us far too many of the characteristics of his fellow explorers, rather than showing them, as is the modern style. There's plenty of the good old 'said-bookism' on display, which always annoys me. Let the dialogue speak for itself! But still, it was the style of the time so a certain amount of overlooking has to go on.

The story is set in its time as well. Ninety-nine years after its publication we know that dinosaurs died out 65.5 million years ago. We know that there's no undiscovered plateau in South America where they could live. These days we'd see genetically engineered monsters in a theme park with some sort of technobabble explanation behind them. In 1912, however, it didn't take too much to suspend the incredulity of the reader and make them believe in this plateau, because it wasn't totally beyond the bounds of possibility that it could exist; there were vast tracts of land unexplored, away from which modern satellites and air travel have taken the mystery.

But anyway, back to the story. Ten years ago I'd have loved The Lost World, and it feels like I missed an opportunity to have a favourite book back then. Dinosaurs attacking, wars between primitive peoples and other such tales of high adventure would have piqued my immature interest. The story is suitably exciting for the 'boys own' audience, and for younger readers there's plenty to get stuck into. But as a slightly older reader, who has read plenty of better SF from a similar time period, it doesn't quite get me all excited as I would once have been. Which is a real pity.

The Ghost Brigades

Why did it take me so long to get round to reading The Ghost Brigades? Old Man's War was as good a military SF novel as I've ever read (even including The Forever War, but that stands apart on different grounds), with engaging characters, an interesting story and a well-realised universe.

On this evidence, John Scalzi could write the handbook on writing accessible, engaging, compelling SF in the twenty-first century. The Ghost Brigades continues on where Old Man's War left off, both in terms of the story and stylistically. Scalzi doesn't overcomplicate his language, and some would criticise him for perhaps not stretching his abilities as he should... but why would he do that when he writes crisp, clear English with just the right amount of quirk as it is? True, he's not going to win awards for use of poetic language, but it works just fine as it is, thank you very much. The result is that a casual reader would do well to pick up Scalzi's work as a gateway to modern SF.

Old Man's War introduced humanity's colonies, the CDF, and the ghost brigades themselves. I'm not going to go into too much depth about them - read the book to find out more (and you'll enjoy it, believe me). And now the world is nicely fleshed out we can progress deeper into its depths. Relatively speaking, Old Man's War was a simple tale of a man going to war; The Ghost Brigades goes several steps further, with a far more complex story, which also offers the humanity we've come to expect from Scalzi.

We have a traitor who has left his consciousness behind. In an attempt to get to the bottom of his treachery, Special Forces try to transfer the consciousness into a Special Forces soldier. It doesn't take, and so Jared Dirac (that's his name) ends up in the ghost brigades, fighting to defend humanity's interests in space.

What Scalzi does particularly well is create characters who at one level have to be identical, but on another, completely different, level need to be individuals, suited to different roles in the narrative. There is one character who comes into the book already well established in-universe, and Scalzi keeps her character consistent with what went before, but he creates another half-dozen or so well-drawn characters. Even those he doesn't go into depth with are left with distinct personality traits which mark them out as different.

It's possible to connect with those characters because they are well-written and distinct individuals. Moments that shock the characters are felt by the reader (well, by this reader, at least), and every triumph and defeat is met by an emotional response.

At its heart, The Ghost Brigades is a good old-fashioned adventure story set in space. In many ways it's what the Star Wars prequel trilogy should have been if it was literature and not a set of undercooked films with too many special effects. And I don't think I can pay it a higher compliment than that.

The Fall of Hyperion

After my gushing praise of Hyperion back in January, it's perhaps a surprise to many (well, both of my readers) to hear that it's taken me until now to get round to reading its sequel. This surprise will be compounded by the fact The Fall of Hyperion has been sat on my bookcase waiting to be picked up since May. Surely I'd want to know the ending while the events of Hyperion were fresh in my mind?

Well, yes, but there has been plenty to read in the mean time. The Scar. Iron Council. Helliconia. A Dance With Dragons. You get the picture. Besides, I didn't want to get to the end of The Fall of Hyperion and find I didn't like it. I was so emotionally connected to certain characters that I didn't want an unsatisfying end to their tales.

Whether the conclusions of those individual threads of narrative were satisfying or not is for you to find out. Read The Fall of Hyperion. Read it now. Rush out of the house without setting the alarm and camp outside Waterstones if you have to. (Or just buy it on the Kindle, which is easier and probably much cheaper). Because The Fall of Hyperion is a worthy successor to Hyperion.

The first thing to note is that the narrative structure is much-changed. The Canterbury Tales style of the first volume of the Hyperion Cantos served its time and was released in favour of a more conventional, linear style. The background tale has been told and from now on it's only forward, with events quickly unfolding.

The events of the first volume - not counting the prologue - covered around six days. The events of this volume last around a fortnight, by my reckoning. It's a fraught three weeks. This instalment introduces a cybrid of poet John Keats, who serves as the main narrator. It's through him that we hear the events unfolding which surround the Shrike pilgrims and the other events which plunge the Web into chaos in the face of war with the Ousters.

This is the volume where the action is. For the 471 pages of Hyperion we got back story, set-up, exposition - call it what you will. For the 535 pages of The Fall of Hyperion we get that back story placed into context, twisted, linked, like sand being melted into glass, with all becoming clear. Anyone who has only read the first volume should read it again and try to predict the twists which follow - they're unexpected, but work superbly. The pace of events is relentless, and Simmons does well to not get bogged down at times.

Simmons writes with clarity and sharpness. He's very technically correct, but his characters lose nothing for it. I criticised Alastair Reynolds' debut novel Revelation Space once upon a time for having excellent prose but very little character, but Simmons doesn't fall into that trap (and I'll be the first to admit to really liking Reynolds' short fiction, which doesn't have the same problem). There's still a pathos to each individual character. And one of the best things about them is that they're all different. Whilst there are one or two caricatures to be found in the minor characters (a la Iain M. Banks), by and large each character is well-rounded and human. They have motivations for everything they do and there aren't any moments I can think of where a character does something that has me asking 'why'. Their reasoning may be flawed... but it is at least reasoning and not irrationality.

And the ending? Did I find it satisfying? There were a few problems with it, to be honest. After 970 pages, the final 35 or so struggled with having to finish off the whole shebang. The climax had been reached already, the major revelations unveiled and all that was left to be done was the tying off of loose ends. It felt typically post-climactic and was frustrating in that regard. But considering that standard of what went before it's not perhaps too much of a surprise. Simmons made a rod for his own back with his own standards of storytelling.

So, what do we have? We have a space opera of the highest standard, vying for a place alongside Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons in the SF hall of fame. Disappointing final few pages aside, it's as gripping a story as I've read all year. I'll be moving on to the second part of the Hyperion Cantos soon: roll on Endymion!

Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five is a funny book. In many ways it was not enjoyable. It was stark, bleak, depressing. The style in which it was written was no-nonsense, straight to the point. It was jumpy and inconsistent. And yet, despite all that, despite my own feelings of disgust at the blasé way things were depicted, I could feel its ideas influencing me.

Of course, all the above is deliberate on the part of the author. It's a semi-autobiographical work with features of science fiction, set around the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Those events, at least, happened. As did the capture of Kurt Vonnegut at the Battle of the Bulge, and many of the events described at the concentration camp. It's impossible to write a book around those events which doesn't inspire feelings of disgust. And it's meant to - it's meant to show the author's disgust with war.

Fundamentally, Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war novel. It runs deeper than that, however, analysing the illogical and irrational nature of the human race. It adopts the life of one Billy Pilgrim (supposedly a campmate of Vonnegut in his POW days) as a vessel through which to tell its story and get its point across. Through a temporal anomaly as a result of kidnap by aliens, his life unfolds in a non-linear fashion. One second he's in the concentration camp, the next he's on honeymoon with his wife, or an exhibit on an alien world.

The way the narrative jumps about is jarring. It's unconventional. And in the context of the themes the book tries to get across, it works. I'll admit to getting frustrated by the constant scene breaks (as a fan of a flowing narrative, without scene breaks apart from where strictly necessary), but otherwise the structure is well-suited to the story.

Some things in the book do stick with me. What was written on Montana Wildhack's locket, for instance (and its thematic significance), or the description of the bombed Dresden as being like the moon. But admiring a book is different from liking it. It was a gripping read, one which affected me, but I couldn't bring myself to like it in the slightest.

And for Kindle owners - I got my copy on the Kindle for £2.86. If you want to get it and read it at that price, it's more than worth it.

Helliconia

I want you to picture the scene: two figures prowl the ice-bound land, blizzards around them reducing their silhouettes to little more than dark outlines in the whiteout. One of them carries a spear, a crude instrument of flint and wood hardened by fire. They come to a bluff, look down, and see a sight beyond their wildest dreams.

This is the opening of the three-volume novel Helliconia. Written between 1978 and 1985 by Brian Aldiss, one of the contemporaries of Arthur C. Clarke, it tells the story of a 'Great Year' on Helliconia, a planet orbiting a binary star system. Each of these Great Years lasts 1,825 'Small Years', or around 2,500 Terran years. As the blurb of the SF Masterworks edition points out, cultures are born in the spring, flourish in the summer, and eventually die out in the winter.

Helliconia focuses on a mix of the people, the planet, the science, and the politics which make up the planet's history. We start at the end of a winter, with Yuli. From him we go on to the early societies, then to the advancement of technology and religion, to the eventual fall of human civilisation.

It's a remarkable achievement. Ambitious in its scope, it would have been easy for Aldiss to alienate a reader by introducing too much. I only read it in the summer and on holiday because I felt that at any other time taking on the challenge of reading it would render me incapable of understanding or following it. Perhaps some readers will be alienated - who knows? The fact is that he manages to pull off everything he tries, and in my book that makes this book something of a monument to ambition. Why write small when you can write big?

I won't pretend that at times it isn't slow, difficult going. Much of the time it is. That blend of ideas and theories mixing together means that sometimes the plot - insofar as events pertaining to human protagonists make up the plot - moves at a glacial pace. This is especially noticeable in the second part, Helliconia Summer. But ultimately the standard of writing never drops and it's a rewarding experience.

Central to the whole work is this idea of the cycle. The most notable cycle is that Phagors - humanity's traditional enemy on Helliconia - dominate throughout winter, but fall under the yoke of human control in the spring and summer. Plans are laid to eliminate the Phagors - and for by the Phagors to overthrow the humans - but none comes to fruition. There are the diseases - bone fever and fat death - which are vital to the ecology of the planet but against which humanity fights, again, fruitlessly.

Earth is watching Helliconia through its observation station, Avernus, and through its observations we see another side of humanity, where everything isn't caught in a cycle. We see destruction and rebirth. We see the whole spectrum of humanity through various lenses, through the sweeping observations of life on Earth or Avernus, and the close scrutiny of Helliconian life.

Helliconia isn't a book about wonderful adventure or the everyday human dramas of life, much as it does have those things in it. It's got a grand majesty to it, being about something larger and greater. Ultimately, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it had me interested and engaged. Much as I was pleased to see it end (it's 1,300 pages long - anyone would be quite pleased to move on!), I'm not averse to reentering its world and exploring Helliconia a little more

The Steep Approach to Garbadale (Iain Banks)

Iain M. Banks may be a familiar name to anyone who has browsed my bookcases. It's a prolific name; each and every one of the twelve books published under that name appear in various places. The nine Culture volumes take pride of place on the shelves above my desk, as one of my most-oft-referred-to series.

Banks' mainstream alter-ego, however, doesn't make so many appearances. Prior to picking up The Steep Approach to Garbadale, Banks' 2007 novel, I'd read just The Wasp Factory, his debut, and Transition, the SF novel published using his mainstream name. Both were good. The Wasp Factory was a compelling - if short - horror set on the isles on the Atlantic coast of Scotland; Transition an accomplished SF novel which utilised parallel worlds, even if it was occasionally heavy-handed with its criticisms of modern society.

I recently criticised Feersum Endjinn. To date, that's the only Banks novel I've read which I've not enjoyed. I feel that it's necessary to say this, because I have my complaints about The Steep Approach to Garbadale.

The story is set around the Wopuld family, which earned its fortune in days gone by through the success of its board game, Empire!, a game which can best be described as a variant of Risk. Over the generations, that success has gone from board games to video games. And now an American corporation wishes to buy them out. An EGM has been called, with all the family congregating at Garbadale, the ancestral home.

Our protagonist is Alban, disillusioned family member. He has unanswered questions in his life. Some are answers which he must find within himself - the main one of these being how does he feel about his cousin Sophie, the girl with whom he lost his virginity at 15, the supposed love of his life. Others are questions for others to answer - such as why did his mother commit suicide.

The novel's structure is a hodge-podge of past and present scenes coming to a climax at Garbadale. Alban's past is occasionally affecting and emotional, but often a little too convoluted. There's even one side-plot which could easily have been cut completely to avoid confusion. I'm not sure whether it is meant to demonstrate how one character appears to the rest of the world, but it's unnecessary. At its best - and when Banks is at his best - the story is fluent and well-told, but for too much of the time you're trying to piece events together in the chronology in an attempt to get a clear picture. Even the one crystallising moment of clarity at the end doesn't make up for the prior annoyance.

There's also a few features which irritate me. The idea of the board game of territories has been used before - The Player of Games, possibly Banks' finest work, used it as the core story motivation. Re-hashing the idea felt lazy outside of a Culture setting. The weakness of Alban as a character also got to me in the end. Whilst some might find it difficult to move on following a love-affair in their youth, a normal person doesn't spend fifteen or twenty years obsessing over it and the object of their desire. Regrets may live on, but an obsession doesn't transcend time, space, distance and normal social barriers.

Then there's the heavy-handedness of the political rhetoric behind much of the novel. Banks uses Alban to expound on problems with America's foreign policy. Straight out, no metaphor, no veiling. While that's fine to an extent, it feels weak after Look to Windward's subtlety. Both work in-depth with a serious real-world problem, but one uses the tools at its disposal so much better than the other (for me, Windward is one of the finest books of its type around). Allegory is out of the window, and it frustrates me. The constraints of the literary genre are more than apparent.

But at its best, The Steep Approach to Garbadale is a good book. It's not at its best too much - a majority of the time is distinctly average by Banks' standards - but it's far from a bad book, and I did enjoy the fluency of Banks' prose and his ability to make me care about characters, even if I wasn't a fan of them. But I can think of many better things I've read this year.

The Scar

When I reviewed Perdido Street Station at the beginning of the year I was keen to get my hands on the sequels. It doesn't feel six months since I said it. It certainly didn't feel like I'd been out of Bas-Lag six months when I started reading The Scar.

It's a slow starter. China Miéville builds his world up again with great care and attention to detail. The journey away from New Crobuzon by one of the renegades connected with events in Perdido Street Station is initially to reintroduce the world and get a feel before the real action gets started. And that takes 200 pages. Not that it's a bad read at this stage. The conflicts Bellis Coldwine, the protagonist, feels draw you in to the character and introduce the mysteries of characters who will play a prominent part in future events.

And then we reach Armada.

Armada is a remarkable creation. I don't normally comment, simply because many steampunk locales have a vaguely similar feel even if they're portrayed differently. New Crobuzon itself is a remarkable achievement, being possessed of its own intrigues and a unique feel, but the floating city of Armada surpasses even that.

Armada is a city comprised of hundreds of vessels lashed together and built upon, turned into a floating city moving gradually around the open seas. Its people are pirates and pressganged, arranged into their districts. No one leaves; should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself kidnapped by the pirates who range on missions for Armada, then that's it. Your life will be spent in the city. Your loyalties will be dictated by your district. It's a city portrayed visually as something out of the ordinary, which Miéville's writing makes it easy to see in your mind's eye.

Then there's the people. There's a vast range of races, mostly humanoid, but some vastly different from the norm. Miéville makes up races for fun: there's the Cactacae, the Vodyanoi, the Khepri, Scabmettlers, Remade, Vampir... Each brings something new to the eclectic mix. And then there's the characters themselves. Mysterious, with hidden agendas aplenty. We only find out the truth of them late in proceedings.

Armada seems to lurch from place to place, guided by the schemes of its leaders. One thing leads seamlessly to the next. On the way through the 800-page novel there are dramatic uses of the sciento-magic thaumaturgy, quests, subterfuges, battles a plenty (both with and without hardy pirate cutlasses being involved). It's a book of great range, epic in its scope. At once it can be intensely personal and grandly epic in the same way as significant historical events. It has a life of its own.

So would I recommend The Scar? Heartily. It's something remarkable. It's not a book to read so much as you experience it. Miéville's writing means you can smell each and every moment as well as visualise it. It is immersive and once it's over you'll feel like you've lost a part of you. It's something to cherish.