"Travelling without moving" by Nathan Jones

 Napalm Erroneous Carton (all the characters have fabulous names, my favourite being Flip Zide, the DJ) lives in Kaputt, a dome world run by Main Computer and largely powered by clockwork. Of all the inhabitants of Kaputt, only he seems able to see the mechanisms by which the world is run: the clockwork lamp that is the sun, the hatches in the sky. 

A brilliant student at the Omniversity, Napalm has manufactured hallucinogenic drugs which enable the takers to collaborate in virtual reality games. He hopes to use these games to find a door to the outside of the dome; his friends hope to use the games to make money. But there is another party interested in hijacking the games: is it ThinkDom, the scientific establishment, MC the Main Computer itself, or Hue, Napalm's identical twin and nemesis?

So we have a variety of levels of reality: the (illusory) reality of the hallucinogenic drugs, the (illusory) reality of the game and the (illusory) reality of the computer-controlled dome to mention just three. Can increasingly drug-addled Nathan work out which is the truth?

This book is hugely ambitious in its conception and there is a large cast and a tortuous plot, and I admit to sometimes getting confused, especially given the shifting chronology of the story. But this is a book with wonderfully weird characters.  The core characters are Napalm's group of omniversity friends. These were perfectly drawn: I know students like these: "think fame and pussy, Liquid, fame and pussy." (C 2). Even more fabulously, there are literally fantastically baroque settings. I loved the fact that every colour has an emotion: eg Vigilance-orange, loathing-purple, angry-red. 

The book reminded me of Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer, though with more humour, or the cult novel Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney. 

I love the descriptions which can be vertiginously over the top but contain a wry downbeat of humour:

• "The smell was awful, chemically floral with undertones of urine." (C 1)
• "Mellow, mid-tempo beats drifted from wall-mounted smart-speakers; Mokey’s pride and joy, imported from The Americas, and again, a gift from Cloche.  Hoodoo-powered, mass-produced crap in his opinion. They reliably misjudged a room’s mood with impeccable timing, like bursting into jazz when someone delivered bad news, or wailing out the blues when you were close to orgasm." (C 2)
• "Bleary-eyed tourists and a slow downhill trudge of overalled locals placed the clock at far too early to care." (C 5)
• "Many of the Dravidian and Sumerian floors of Kaywan redefined filthy. They mugged filthy. Wiped their arse with it, passed it through a blender, imbibed it, and pissed it all over the walls." (C 15)
• "The whiff of breakfast, sizzling in skillets, teased Napalm's nostrils. Dustmen brushed another night’s muck into the gutters as they passed tipplers, topplers, spinouts, grinners and gooners, bumping and mumbling their way down The Spiral to the tune of the last few desperate hollers of colour peddlers." (C 29)

It was this quality of the prose, often as lush and tangled as a rain-forest but always hacked down with the machete of humour, that I most loved about this book.

More memorable moments:

• "He and Mokey were now exiting the cage of lies they existed within as ghosts of their true selves, and were entering into a dreamlike purgatory, a passage formed of his imagination, colours, delusions, and desires. And something else." (C 1)
• "Sunday shone in thick beams through NewRome’s crumbling arches." (C 8)
• "Earth’s skies hung loathing-purple, exactly as reported, except the shade was licked with heavy grief, and the vigilance-orange desert was flecked with rage." (C 8)
• "Napalm felt better. Better, better. One hundred and ten per cent better. No, one hundred and fifty. Instantly revitalised, invigorated, focused, and sharp as a knight’s pike. He felt real, in the realest sense of real, centred on the moment and bio-alchemically maxed. The flexible joints of a ten-year-old, the overflowing spunk of a teenager, the heart of an athlete. He rolled his shoulders, enjoying the satisfying chorography of renewed muscle." (C 13)
• "Curiosity and Hue’s buzz had him horny for whatever game was afoot, but he still understood that bravery and stupidity shared a bed." (C 13)
• "I guess I’m ready for a debriefing, even though I still don’t know what that bloody means, but I am not taking my pants off." (C 18)
• "Going with the flow had taken him nowhere, because the flow wasn’t his anymore." (C 21)
• "The cherry on the cake, of course, was that he had finally attained his dream and stepped through the door, to the place beyond, the final destination or the next step, the escape, transcendence, reality, whatever, and all he’d found was a new shade of hokum, but he couldn’t give a toss." (C 21)
• "The suspected lab coat looked more like a fetishist’s dress-coat-type-thing, something to be worn over kinky underwear, or nothing at all." (C 21)
• "Winners in commerce required much larger sections of the tribe to live and serve as lowly workers" (C 24)
• "It tasted old.  Not rotten old, but the cared-for old of a well-aged cheese." (C 27)
• "The epitome of Twig’s inspired wonderland hung motionless in deep space. A hollow, geometric webwork of tied, nailed, and glued scrapyard trash floated in a backdrop of impossibly dense, twirling galaxies and glinting stars, the illusion so complete the void of space continued seamlessly around the entrance doors’ perimeter. The whole place thrummed, the scent of grease and metal carried on Flip’s musical output." (C 27)
• "Do you really think the winding of a small key can run a vehicle or an elevator?’ ‘Always wondered about that,’ Ranks said. ‘It’s the pulley effect,’ Napalm explained, already doubting his knowledge." (C 29)
• "Hue was more full of shit than the gutters" (C 29)

A hugely enjoyable read. This is an author with a definite voice. I am looking forward to his next novel.

August 2021

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Where sleeps the serpent" by Alexandra Peel

 Steam punk meets Bio punk in the first of the Beneath the Skin books.

The story is told through two alternating narratives:

The biopunk narrative follows the story of a serial killer in late Victorian Paris. It is written in long paragraphs containing many sentence fragments which sometimes use unconventional grammar, for example by dislocating subject and predicate; this creates a disjointed feel which echoes the violence of the murderer. Hugely imaginative, this narrative contains long descriptive passages in which the prose is only just this side of purple ("The crud and slime of the medieval quarter, a chaotic shambles of dreary, grubbily pale structures with their grimy, wan occupants, drinking and fighting, whoring and dying, thieving and conning, who he no more feared than a flame would a moth. Hard, grey faces staring from hard, grey doorways, retching gobbets of phlegm as he passed. Slippery-legged women raising their skirts for onion mouthed, oily haired bundles of belted coats. Cobbles of slime and weary abodes leaning to cover the sky give way to newer rubble. Upright apartments and shopping arcades of polished glass, where people of new money could press their powdered noses, and desire what the person standing next to them desired whilst wearing the latest flounced skirts and trimmed bonnets, turned collars and detachable cuffs. Boulevards running in straight lines as far as the eye could see. Black carriages drawn by horses of flesh and horses of iron flew along the fresh roads, clopping and sparking. Steam hissing from every metal orifice. Steam automobiles, steam trams, steam trains, steam horses, steam ships and steam airships. Carousels, public parks, squares and gardens and everywhere there were people, every space, every street, every room crawled with them. Cackling maws, sticky children, smiles and sidelong glances, lipstick laughs, longing looks, posing and leering and scented and stinking and jostlingandwantingandeatinganddrinkingandpissingandshittingand-breathingandlivingandlivingandli-vingand…") which resonates with the obsessive nature of these episodes. Obsession is also evident in the fact that all the 'killer' episodes are fundamentally the same (man meets girl, strangles girl), an ostinato which could easily prove tedious and the fact that the author manages to keep the reader going must be testament to the quality of the prose. It doesn't always work ("He watched and viewed and collected the sights with his irises";  "His white lab coat flapped angrily about him as he rented his hair, his clothing") but at its best, the 'killer' sections are reminiscent of Baudelaire: "Hello from the gutters of gay Paree, which are filled with scabrous dogs, vermin, mangy cats, the sick and the lame, foul men with moist trouser fronts, putrid whores and rank upon rank of the rank."

The steampunk narrative follows an airship courier as she and her crew transport a suspicious package across late Victorian India. This has a more conventional style. While the killer in the alternative narrative manufactures themselves to be a little more than human, the hero of the steampunk narrative discovers within herself superhuman powers (the subtext suggests that 'natural' = good and 'manufactured' = bad). In stark contrast to the biopunk narrative with its concentrated focus on just a single character, the steampunk sections have multiple characters, few of whom have the space to become fully developed.

The steampunk plot has a classic four-part structure. There are clear turning-points in the story at the 25% mark (when the protagonist first gets into trouble), at the 50% (when she discovers her superpowers) and at the 75% point when much of the conspiracy is explained. Towards the end of the book the two alternating narratives become intertwined but the final pages lead into the second part of what is a duology.

Some of my favourite moments:

• "Chains glinted through scarlet waistcoat buttonholes, attached to pocket watches telling time in which the owners had no interest."
• "His gaze pinned her – a lepidopterist tacking a butterfly."
• "He was a monochrome man. He liked it that way."
• "Kissing like a pair of addicts they found the bed."
• "We have a stowaway.” They swivelled their eyes around the dining room as if they might see someone they had not noticed for a day and a half."
• "He had the erect posture of a corseted parson."
• "That time between twilight and dusk when the sky hinted at the coming dark."

May 2021

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Time to be Gonagain" by A J Farrelly

 This was my first ever steam punk novel. It was a superb introduction to the genre. I must read more; I hope they are all as good as this. 

I was impressed by how well this first-time author avoided common pitfalls. Science fiction stories require careful 'world-building' (because the setting is unfamiliar to the reader) and many first time authors go over the top, explaining everything in huge chunks of prose, but Farrelly drip-fed the settings and left just the right amount for the me to puzzle out on my own. The story was told in the past tense from multiple perspectives and this 'head-hopping' can sometimes become confusing; it didn't in this case because Farrelly kept control of the narrative. The author must also strike the right balance between fast-paced page-turning action and story development and again I thought Farrelly was almost perfectly placed on this spectrum: there was plenty of action but that narrative was never spread so thinly that it became shallow. 

What most impressed me about the book was the lightness of touch. The tone was often playful and the humour such that I sometimes laughed aloud (and regular readers of this blog know how rarely I laugh even when reading so-called comic novels). 

For example, the captain always tells the crew to remember "rule number one"; this changes with the situation and this becomes a running gag:

• “Rule number one,” Gonagain had always said, was, “stay alive.” (Ch 5)
• "He ran his mind through Gonagain’s long list of ‘Rule number ones’. “Rule number one, Bearnárd, always learn from other peoples’ mistakes.”" (Ch 5)
• "Gonagain had broken rule number one – never sleep with one of the crew – but, he rationalised, she was only a temporary member of the crew and besides, the sex was phenomenal." (Ch 13)
• "rule number one: no one gets abandoned.” (Ch 17)
• "There was a pause whilst the crew tried to work out which specific rule number one was most appropriate for this occasion. Gonagain didn’t wait. “Rule number one is ‘No man gets left behind’.” (Ch 19)

One of my favourite moments was when Jao is trying to hide some pulsarnite. She explains to the captain what she has done:

“So, let me get this straight,” he said, “The trunk we brought aboard belongs to Trustworthy?” “Yes.” “And it contained the biggest lump of pulsarnite I’ve ever heard of?” “Yes.” “But now it has a bag of sand in it?” “Yes.” “And you have the key, which you found in this cabin.” “Yes.” “But Trustworthy thinks she has the key in her underwear?” “Yes.” “But it’s really the key to your little trunk?” “Yes.” “And the pulsarnite rock is now in another trunk in your cabin? “Yes.” “And the key to that trunk is…?” “In my underwear.” Gonagain paused thoughtfully. “Show me,” he said eventually. Jao stuttered and blushed for a microday before regaining her composure. “Oh, you mean the pulsarnite.” (Ch 10)

Great characters too: an utterly reckless captain who always thinks of his crew (sometimes lustfully), a female engineer who can fix machines or people, a lady navigator who has learnt much through her long life, mostly from ex-boyfriends (think Ness from Gavin and Stacey), a dog, a robot ('Emily Tutu') learning emotions and a strongman. And assorted other crooks and spies and baddies. 

A criticism? Only that I felt that there were a number of storylines left unresolved at the end, and this was clearly because there is a sequel in the offing. I hope it comes out soon; I'll be reading it.

There were some moments of magic:

• “Where’s the undertakers?” Gonagain asked. “Black Horse Square.” The three of them looked at each other vacantly, then back at the storekeeper. “At the end of Longest Walk Lane.” Again, the three looked nonplussed. “Not far from the hospital.” “Which tavern is it near?” asked Bunty, a little impatiently. “The Vigil and Wake.” “Righty-oh, Skipper, let’s go!” (Ch 2)
• "She had known people like this all her life. They were pretty enough, or educated enough, or Machiavellian enough to manipulate people into giving them what they wanted. Or worse they were just wealthy enough to buy whatever they wanted – whether they needed it or not." (Ch 4)
• "there’s no denying that you’re pitch-perfect, but your voice has the timbre of… a parakeet… in a garotte." (Ch 4)
• "if you can get a message to your navigator, you can tell him our exact location is the middle of flippin’ nowhere.” (Ch 5)
• "That was going to go down like an osmium dirigible back at headquarters." (Ch 14)
• "There was only one thing Gonagain hated more than being wrong, and that was having to admit being wrong." (Ch 14)
• "He was unsure whether he needed to walk faster or slower than usual to be at the entrance at the right time. He ended up with an odd gait that betrayed his sense of urgency without actually adding any speed." (Ch 16)
• "What’s the plan?” “Be careful and get him out.” replied Gonagain impatiently. “Not too much detail then – playing it by ear. Jolly good.” (Ch 17)
• "Charlie emerged from Beagán’s cabin, pulling the gusset of Beagán’s breeches from between his buttocks as he went." (Ch 20) This was included because one of my wife's least favourite words is 'gusset'.
• "a column of crystals which hung from the ceiling exploded into a pendulous chandelier at each floor." (Ch 38)
• "He had vowed at his mother’s grave that he would never leave anyone he cared about again." (Ch 39)

 A beautifully written story. May 2021

This is the debut novel of A J Farrelly

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God