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.

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.

Hi ho, hi ho, a-novelling we go

I can never work out whether I listen to Feeder because I'm depressed or whether it's because I'm listening to Feeder that I'm depressed. All that needs to be known is that at the end of a long week I'm listening to Feeder and feeling distinctly introspective and deflated. Something tells me I need to listen to something that'll get me fired up.

Unsurprisingly, I've not had much time for writing over the last few weeks. Work has had me exhausted and at the end of most days I've not wanted to pore over many words - it's my job to read thousands of pages of records every week. More often it's been a case of tea, kill time on the internet, watch an episode of Caprica and then bed.

But it's not stopped me doing a little writing. I've managed to get some sent off over the last few weeks, and I've been making sure that I'm gathering Lab Ways influences to me. This has entailed purchasing the full box-set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spending time making pointless notes before finally setting finger to keyboard and writing 300 words last weekend. This weekend I plan on writing more.

How much more? I really don't know. I've occasionally thought of trying to get someone as a reader to encourage me to produce more work rather than ditching the project a few weeks after I start it on grounds of frustration, having tried to draft the opening six or seven times and getting no further than perhaps 6,000 words in (out of a projected 125,000). But I don't really want to do that.

Instead, what I want to do is get rid of the frustrations I have with my own writing and just cut loose. I want a few sessions where I write 2,000 words a time. I want weeks where I write 15,000 words. But I have the problem where my own perfectionist nature will take over. I sometimes think if I can get a buffer of 30,000 words behind me I'll be able to crack on. And so it is once more that I try to get this novel out of the way.

I'll be having a full afternoon on it tomorrow, and probably an hour or two on Sunday. The target is 5,000 words, beginning with Chapter Two. Chapter One will wait until later.

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.

November writings

It's been a busy couple of weeks in my writing life. Not only have I kicked off writing a novel for NaNoWriMo (currently about 12,000 words behind the target, at 13,000 or so), but I've started a hatful of short stories, been planning another novel and I've even been doing workshops for Wrisoc. I wouldn't say I've been rushed off my feet - but it's been good to break the day to day monotony with a couple of hours a day of writing.

Nano first. I've wanted to have a go at it for the last few years, but thanks to uni commitments I've not had the time or the patience to sit down for a month. If I could write 10,000 in a day as some do, then it wouldn't be a problem, but if I get over 1,000 that's a big writing day for me - and one that's generally taken me a couple of hours. 50,000 words in a month is just too much to ask of a Bar Exempting student who just wants to crash when he gets home. This year, though, I've managed to get a good start, even if it has faltered. And it's helped to give me a kick-start to other projects. Although the Nano novel won't be finished, there's plenty for me to plunder for other works. And thanks to write-ins, I've become acquainted with a whole new group of talented writers.

Which brings me on to my second big writing project of this month: the Wrisoc workshop. Standing in front of a seminar room of your peers can be daunting, but when you know quite a few of those people have managed those workshops themselves and there are a few people with more experience present there's an extra edge. But the workshop - focussing on clichés, their identification, and how to avoid them in your work - went well. It was a little on the short side, but that wasn't much of a worry. Hopefully, I'll get the chance to go back and do another one at some point over the next few months.

My biggest project at the moment is the anthology. Shuffle is probably the biggest writing task I've ever taken on, and I don't think I'd be able to manage it without having the help of a band of talented co-editors, who will show their value to the project when we're getting regular submissions. Although it has been tough to get people involved on the writing point of view, things are coming together and soon I should be able to go back to universities and societies to demonstrate that this will happen. Shuffle will hopefully be released next June/July on the Kindle, so if you want to feature in the anthology, pop over to the website/blog (see link to the side) and find our guidelines.

And all of this without mentioning the short stories and other novel. My writing life is busy, indeed!

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.

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.

The City And The Stars

I always struggle when writing titles containing lots of 'ands' and 'thes'. I'm never sure whether to capitalise them or not. In this case, I've gone for the 'yes' option. No doubt before too long I'll be opting in favour of 'no' for a while.

What I'm trying to say is that the title of Arthur C. Clarke's 1955 novel annoys me.

The book focuses on the city of Diaspar, a city apparently existing in perpetuity through the ages. Even by SF standards the setting is a long way in the future, taking place over a billion years in the future. Throughout the preceding billion years Diaspar has sat on 'the breast of the desert' (loved that phrasing) of an otherwise deserted Earth. It's apparently changeless, with even its population recycling itself. The city itself is run by a central computer, into which the city's founders have programmed a plan, the precise details of which are unknown by any of the human characters. In the previous billion years various stories have been passed down about the empire of humanity in the stars, and how the mysterious Invaders ended the empire.

As the population of Diaspar recycles itself, a new person is 'born' only once every deciaeon. This is someone with none of the pre-programmed fears and superstitions of perhaps twenty thousand years of life (each of the recycled people rediscovers all the memories of previous incarnations after 20 years). And the book follows one of these 'Uniques' on his journey beyond Diaspar.

If I had to liken The City And The Stars to another novel, it would have to be Asimov's Foundation. There's something analogous between them, right down to the whole galactic empire thing. Thematically they differ, but the two plots are comparable.

Of all of Clarke's works I've read to date, this is the best-written. The example above included, the use of language is somehow more lyrical than later works such as Rendezvous With Rama. However, it greatly differs from Rama, 2001: A Space Odyssey et al. TCATS is more character-driven, relying on characters to influence events. By contrast, those it's being compared to were written in reaction to the latter part of the Space Race and the later, post-Stalin Cold War. They also had far more emphasis on the hard science of the here and now (relatively speaking).

That being said, there are a few Clarke staples to be had. Unfortunately, I can't say what these are without spoiling the book.

There are weaknesses in the book. For one thing, it takes far too long to get going. Only once our protagonist, Alvin, get out of Diaspar does the pace start to pick up. Of the 256 pages, over 100 feel plodding. As a result, it's not easy to get into. Once it does get going the book flies by (I read the final 150 pages in a sitting), but readers will be put off by the slow start. The book also struggles with one or two loose ends, and would perhaps have benefited from losing one character completely.

However, I enjoyed The City And The Stars. It may not be Arthur C. Clarke's best-ever work (at least, not for my money), but it is a very enjoyable and thought-provoking novel.

Feersum Endjinn

I don't think I've ever said this before for a novel by Iain M. Banks, so here goes:

By heck, that was disappointing.

I went into it with very high hopes. Here was an award-winning novel, for one thing. Here was a novel by Iain M. Banks for another. And I rate Banks, I really do. The Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Look To Windward are all books I could sit down and read from now until Kingdom come. Against A Dark Background, Consider Phlebas, Inversions and The Algebraist aren't far behind. Of course he's produced material I've found disappointing, but that was of a standard compared to his other works.

This, on the other hand, was just plain disappointing by any standards.

It's a sure sign I'm not enjoying a book when it takes me 6 days to read only 279 pages. And this was one of those cases. I found the narrative structure frustrating, switching in a regimented fashion between initially unrelated viewpoints. Chapters split into sub-chapters on a rota basis might help the writer to keep a track of where he's going - but from my perspective I found it artificial and frustrating. The story just wasn't organic enough in its structure.

As usual, the world was well-realised with some excellent writing. Set in the very far future of Earth (a rarity in Banks' SF, Transition aside), the planet is in trouble. The Solar System is about to enter a dust cloud that will blot out the sun (or the Encroachment, as it is known in-universe). Humanity has lost its technological background, with quite a lot of its members having shoved off elsewhere and those still on earth being relatively backward. Even if many of those who remain are connected to another sub-world, the Crypt. It's typically Banksonian in its style with despots and conspiracies abound.

And yet I couldn't get into it. In no small part down to the final one of the four main viewpoint characters, Bascule the Teller. His sections are amongst the most frustrating I've ever read in the English language. For whatever reason Banks has used phonetic English with a Scottish dialect (natural, I suppose, considering his own background) to write from Bascule's perspective. And it makes for incredibly frustrating going. It really breaks the flow of the story when you're having to go back and spend a few moments deciphering what's just been said. Not that there was much flow anyway, arbitrarily cutting between characters.

When it all comes together at the end (as it inevitably does), what's gone before does make sense. But unlike Use of Weapons the sense isn't of, 'ahhhh, now I see, that's brilliant,' but is rather of, 'why didn't you just say that in the first place?' It pains me to not recommend a Banks novel, but this is one I can't recommend. But it's a blip, and isn't going to put me off reading Surface Detail when it comes out in paperback later this month.

He who controls the spice...

At the time of writing, I'm on about my sixth re-read of Dune, Frank Herbert's SF classic. This in itself is unusual; I've been on a binge of broadening my horizons of late, and I've not been going back to old favourites like I used to. But it's a mark of the book's quality that I've read and re-read it so often.

Dune is rightly part of the SF canon. First published in 1965, it tells the story of Paul Atreides, ducal heir his Great House. The Atreides House is sent to Arrakis (Dune... Desert planet...) by the Emperor to oversee the production of the galaxy's most valuable commodity, the spice melange. In doing so, the Atreides take the planet from their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens.

I'm not doing a great job of summarising the plot here. If it sounds deathly dull, I apologise, because it isn't. Dune is one of the most engrossing novels I've ever read. It has its failings, but then so do most books, and most don't have the layered complexity of Dune.

That's where the strength of Dune lies. It can be read as an escapist adventure - like it was by the 16-year-old who first picked it up - or as a piece of classic science fiction literature. On one hand there's the thrilling tale of what's good and right and honourable against corruption and evil. On the other, there's the themes of ecology, zoology, psychology and politics. Dune is a novel staggeringly relevant to the times we live in, especially with regards to what happens in the Middle East.

Perhaps it's ironic that a novel in part about prescience is one of the most prescient ever written in the context of our own world. Or maybe it isn't. Either way, it's an example of SF at its very finest - leading the way for the rest of the world to follow. If you don't possess a copy, go out and get one now. Read it. Then reflect on the influences beyond the pages of a £7.99 paperback.

(Just be certain that if you do enjoy it, to not then read on beyond Children of Dune. Because if you do, you'll be severely disappointed. Read the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov instead.)

Perdido Street Station

Some will remember my gushing praise of China Miéville in my review of The City And The City, the book that shared last year's Hugo award for best novel with Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. I think I said that I'd be revisiting his work sooner rather than later and that I was looking forward to the day I did.

With good reason, as it turns out. I received Perdido Street Station for Christmas and, after finishing a couple of (much) shorter books in the early days of the month I finally sat down to work my way through the 867 pages of it the other Sunday. From the off, I was captivated.

The writing is superb. Miéville paints his world with florid prose that flows with the smoothness of melted chocolate. The world revealed is a place of wonder, vivid and colourful and grotesque. And the fluency is what makes it stand out. It's so easy to read about, even though the language can be high-flown and perhaps beyond more than a few readers. But for yours truly, it was a joy to read writing bursting with originality, with a fluent, easy style. However, I can see an argument that some may make that it's overwritten and bloated by purple prose throughout - I just happen to disagree.

The story of Perdido Street Station focuses on a group of dilettantes, including an artist, a renegade underground journalist and a freelance scientist. From humble beginnings, where a garuda - a winged hunter of the lands away from New Crobuzon, the steampunk city where the book is set - approaches Isaac, the scientist, with a request, the plot picks up pace and scale with the introduction of the inhuman primary antagonists. The oppressive government and militia become involved, along with underworld gangsters and hyperintelligent giant steampunk constructs.

With a novel of this scale, with the grand ideas and spectacular set-pieces, it would be easy for Miéville to have lost sight of his characters on occasion, and it's not an unreasonable accusation to make on rare occasions. However, by and large, the characters remain human (ish), with real emotions and motivations. Isaac and Lin in particular, with their cross-species romance, are always characters I could connect with in their personal struggles. These struggles combined with the overall grand scheme of the plot make for compelling reading throughout

Perdido Street Station is surreal at all times. In the steampunk world, higher forces exist that help to make this more a fantasy novel than SF. The ideas combine with an unorthodox grace in the grotesque world of New Crobuzon. With a less skilled hand, the whole world could easily have collapsed under the weight of phantasmagorical ideas on the brassy frame of steampunk, but Miéville manages to balance it all out quite nicely.

One thing I will say is that at 867 pages this is not a light read. It takes some time and commitment, and as such isn't generally on the highly-recommended list for busy LLB Bar Exempting students. However, I still thoroughly enjoyed it cover to cover, and will be picking up the sequel, The Scar, in due course.

The City & The City

China Miéville wasn't a writer I was particularly aware of until recently. Then I got a recommendation, which declared him the greatest thing since sliced bread. The City & The City is the first book of his I've read, and if that's typical of his works then the recommendation is bang on the money.

Let me start by saying not much I've read this year has left me feeling wowed. It may be that this is the first novel to have me reeling in thought, absolutely stunned by the way it's left me in that state. The City & The City is subtle and intelligent, multi-faceted, encompassing more than the typical SF detective novel.

Set in a fictional city on the edge of Europe with Balkan overtones, the novel focuses on Inspector Borlú, of the Extreme Crimes Squad in Besźel, as he investigates a murder. As is typical in SF detective novels, there's more to this than 'ooh, look, a trollop who's gone and got stabbed by her lover's jealous missus oh dear'. What we get here is a curious concept of two cities encompassing the same topographical location. The politics of these two cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma, as well as the way the two cities coexist, make up the bulk of the novel's intelligent commentary on what we see and don't see in our own society, as well as the alienation in the same.

The concept is original enough, but its execution is superb. What I just told you does not do it justice. That I told you it says it all; Miéville weaves exposition of the world into the plot with such subtlety that no single passage at any stage can be said to be explaining the world. The concept permeates your mind rather than being forced upon it by heavy-handed infodumps. I can imagine that each reader will see their own version of the city and the city, rather than everyone being straightjacketed into one distinct vision. This makes the underlying alienation all the more stark.

At the heart of the story is a relentless pace that grips the reader and leaves them breathless. It has all the ingredients of the whodunnit in the Morse sense (although Morse tended not to have investigations into more than just the case); the culprit's eventual identity doesn't come as a surprise so much, as the point of the novel isn't the murder itself but the surrounding circumstances, but it still holds the attention. For a casual reader of mysteries, uninterested in the philosophies underlying the plot, the case would hold water. But it really is those surrounding circumstances that make the book what it is: brilliantly intelligent, and almost insidiously subtle.

Will I be reading more of China Miéville's work? Undoubtedly, yes. This is a novel that had me captivated in its themes and world more than any other since Look To Windward. I'm hard pushed to find a genuine weakness in Miéville's work, and I can't imagine it'll be too long before I pick up a copy of one of his other works.

Let The Right One In

I've gone and done the usual. A 520-page book has been devoured in about three days, and I have no one to blame but myself. It's a testament to a book when it gets this treatment, to be fair, and it normally shows that I've really enjoyed it.

I certainly did enjoy Let The Right One In. There isn't much more to say. It's a vampire novel set in the Stockholm suburbs in 1981, against the backdrop of an estate (for want of a better word) battling with social problems. The plot focusses mainly on Oskar, who befriends a girl called Eli, while a series of fairly brutal murders take place. It's a poignant story of trust and friendship, and I really can't think of much more to say about it from that point of view.

As you may be able to tell, unless I'm insulting something I struggle to review it.

So, where can the bad stuff be found? It isn't a particularly great translation from the Swedish, so the prose can be clunky and awkward at times, but that's to be expected with translations; barring Crime and Punishment I can't think of any particularly outstanding ones I've read lately. Another complaint might be that at times the violence and bleakness can be a little overwhelming, particularly towards the end.

But these were overlooked. I enjoyed the energy of it, the pathos of the characters, and the driving pace of the story. It was compelling stuff (as evidenced by the fact I read the whole back half of it this afternoon when I was supposed to be dissertationing), and it left me with a sense of fulfilment.

So do I recommend Let The Right One In? Yes, I do. Highly. If you can deal with the depressing subject matter and the occasional clunky bit of prose and want a vampire novel that will get under your skin, go for it.

Now for the film(s)...

Transition and other stuff

It's been a pretty tough day on the writing front, I have to admit. Words have flowed easily over the past few weeks, but there have still been odd days where for whatever reason it's just not come and I've ended up giving it up as a bad job, going off to brood on whatever it was that went wrong. Today has been one of those days. I've managed 800 words - an hour or so of solid writing - but none of those have been saved. Chances are I'll go back and restart the story I'm working on tomorrow, or at least make major revisions to what I have.

As a result of this mini-block, I've spent much of the day reading. Over the past few days I've been reacquainting myself with the dark, sexy underworld of Iain Banks (or his books, at any rate) in the form of Transition, his latest novel, which went paperback a month or so back.

It's an interesting read. Our world forms just one reality in a multiverse which is overseen by the Concern (what is it about Banks and his organisations or civilisations being single words beginning with 'C' - Culture and Concern?) and its operatives. It's a tale of power-plays within the organisations and of good and evil. Perhaps most importantly, it's a novel of our times.

It says it right at the start. This is a novel about the post-9/11 world, about the credit crunch, the banks, counter-terrorism and moralities connected to all of the previously mentioned. A book for kids this ain't. It's adult in every sense of the word, being both intelligent in its analysis of the world around us and also being violent - with graphic depictions of torture among other things - and sexually-charged - the amount of detailed sex scenes is a little on the high side for my taste, it has to be said.

In fact, there are a few things which I'm not happy with. At times it feels like Banks is pontificating about his world view. Adrian the banker is the biggest symptom of this. He's a young banker, a former drug-dealer who still takes some, who indulges in meaningless sex with hundreds of women and lives a generally carefree playboy lifestyle. It feels like Banks is pinning the banking crisis on this one man.

Another problem that I had was that the novel feels like disconnected threads for much of its duration, and that some of those threads could have been cut out. Had it been left up to me, I wouldn't even have had the Philosopher's storyline. I understand what Banks is trying to say, but it feels superfluous. But then again, my own preference has always been for tightly-plotted novels, where every word counts for something towards the conclusion, so that might be something you bear in mind when considering this.

But I did enjoy it, and it's worth remembering this. It whips along at a brisk pace and is skilfully constructed. I'm not going to be put off reading more Iain (M.) Banks at any point in the near future, unless Surface Detail is the worst book in the history of the English language (which it won't be).