A Colder War (2000)
The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1) (2004)
The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files #2) (2006)
Halting State (Halting State #1) (2007)
Charles Stross
Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity #1) (2006)
Justina Robson
The Devil You Know (Felix Castor, #1) (2006)
Vicious Circle (Felix Castor #2) (2006)
Dead Men's Boots (Felix Castor #3) (2007)
God Save The Queen (Graphic Novel: The Sandman Presents #32) (2008)
Thicker Than Water (Felix Castor #4) (2009)
The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009)
Mike Carey
The Execution Channel (2007)
Ken Macleod
The Red Men (2008)
Matthew De Abaitua
The Bastion Prosecutor (Kalahari #2) (2009)
A. J Marshall
The mid-2000s were quite a good period for British popular fantasy-horror-science fiction genre writing. These books should not be neglected simply because time passes. What is curious is how a sex demon appears in two of them (and elven eroticism in a third) which is either coincidence in the cases of sex demons in 2006 or tells us something about the fantasies that sold (at least in publishers' eyes) in the halcyon days just before the 2008 crash. I have no interpretation of that, just the observation.
Charles Stross' A Colder War may be one of the finest short story
applications of the Lovecraftian in the current century. It has already become a classic in those circles that appreciate the Lovecraftian. The cleverness
lies in taking the 'Mountains of Madness' tale as a starting point for
an alternate history that tells the story of the Cold War in terms of
the Cthulhu mythos. Where it scores is in building a degree of
documentary realism centred on a rewriting of the Iran Contra affair as
seen through the eyes of a CIA officer who has gone beyond the horrors
of nuclear war to see a deeper horror lurking beneath the power games
that fuelled US-Soviet confrontation.
There is not much more to
say. It is grim, an expansion of the fear of nuclear annihilation into
an even more disturbing vision of a cosmic annihilation that brings a
darker hell to earth and it is certainly not optimistic in tone. A treat, therefore,
for politically educated Lovecraftians. Several commentators
have noted the similarity to Tim Powers' 'Declare' published in the same
year (2000) and I am happy to note how Marvel has gone down similar Lovecraftian routes with 'Agents of Shield' and the King in Black. The similarities are remarkable with Powers are remarkable although 'Declare' is a long
and even better novel. Assuming pure coincidence, one can only
surmise similar thoughts were triggered on two continents (a
synchronicity that should appeal to Powers) in response to the
apocalyptic idea of the Millennium. Lovecraftian and Cold War
apocalypse are perhaps natural absurd bedfellows.
Stross, a new writer on the block in the 2000s, provided us with a flood of books appearing in the SciFi/Horror category. The Atrocity Archives is an early one (the first in a series) and needed a bit of
work on the writing/editing front but was well worth the reading with one
section that is particularly challenging in terms of sheer horror. It grows naturally out of the themes in A Colder War. It is a
curious hybrid of Len Deighton, Neal Stephenson and H.P Lovecraft with a
geek anti-hero and a sense of the grubbiness of the bureaucratic
mind-set. Not a masterpiece but a promising talent and a good read with a
few moments where you will know that you did the right thing in reading
it.
** spoiler alert ** The Jennifer Morgue, the next in that particular series, is better written than The Atrocity Archives - less babble. It is a
bit of fun but you do need to know the Ian Fleming 'universe' to 'get
it'. Maybe the joke gets a bit over extended at times and the
girl demon who kills through sex is a little too like Mike Carey's
succubus (which came first? Carey's is the one I would choose if that is
the way I have to go) but it is a good light read with some real
'moments'.
However, the greatest treat came at the end where
Stross writes a clever essay demonstrating that Blofeld was maybe not
such a bad guy, that SPECTRE won the Cold War and that none of us seem
to mind since the superpower nuclear madness was so much more scary. This is very
clever and a new take on the transvaluation of values anyone over 50
has gone through since the end of the era of social democracy and upper class
clubbability that was 'normal' in thriller literature until the 1970s. It made you wonder
what might come next from Stross. Having done Deighton and Fleming, I had hoped he might do Le Carre meeting Cthulhu.
A bit later, in Halting State, the prolific Stross shifted gear a
little, moving into a Scotland of the near future (his homeland) and to something more political and more obviously science fiction.
Scotland is an independent member of the EU although it is an odd sort
of independence that has at least two layers of power on security
matters above it at UK and EU level. There is an interesting political realism in this conceit.
The country is policed
through high technology in a way that, for once in British Sci-Fi, does
not fall into the trap of being automatically dystopian. On the
contrary, all this fine technology seems to limit the police much more
than it limits the local 'neds'. Everyone is painfully aware of best
practice and good management. If something goes wrong, you can generally
put it down to the sort of corporate or bureaucratic incompetence or
misjudgement that the ancient Egyptians would have recognised as par for
the course. So far so good as an imaginative rendering of contemporary trends.
The 'blurb' on the back of my edition might imply to
the unwary that this is a fantasy in the making with the reader watching a
crime perpetrated in-world within a game. Well, yes, there is that
aspect but it is only the hook and nothing more. In fact, it is
part-social satire (the blundering of the EU figures will appeal to any
eurosceptic), part sci-fi imagining of the nature of future crime in a
high tech world and part spy thriller (this part, though central
to the book, is least well handled which is odd given the practice that Stross had with The Atrocity Archives).
It is certainly well written if occasionally a bit dense in the writing. Stross tries to play with
language in a way that constantly threatens to confuse and limit the
plot but somehow does not - but only just! If anything, his tendency to do
this is getting worse rather than better. There is also a wry nerdy
humour, very ironic and British, that makes one smile but somehow can
never be read out loud for a laugh.
But, still, Stross was
'growing up'. Some of his previous novels were hybrid romps that
mixed and matched the spy thriller with the horror genre in a way that
was undoubtedly fun but was also very shallow. Without offering any
spoilers, this latest offering gently merges the police procedural and
the virtual world sci fi genres (William Gibson endorses the book as
does Vernor Vinge) into a much more satisfing and demanding whole.
His
characterisation was also improving by leaps and bounds - the women were
far more believable and the hero-nerd downplayed slightly to give equal
prominence to a group of three characters whose viewpoints are those of
ordinary people involved in extraordinary events. The transitions
between 'voices' are near-seamless. No, this is not going to be
in the Penguin Modern Classics series in fifty years' time but it is a
good and imaginative thriller with strong ideas and decent (if somewhat
excessively obscure) writing. You like the characters and you are sorry
at the abrupt and perhaps under-explained end.
Halting State is recommended for
its entertainment value, but only if you are prepared to engage your brain cells
to hold on to both plot and local colour. Stross is on his way to
something better still if he can only resist the temptation to show us
his full range of technical acronyms, explains some of his obscurities
as he goes along and concentrate a little bit more on the craft of plot
and characterisation. As in his other novels, the postscript (this one
in the form of an interview) is intelligent and illuminating.
Justina Robson's Keeping It Real is a lot of fun. It postulates a surprisingly believable
universe of humans, demons, faeries, elementals and elves (and all sorts)
with a hard science (of sorts) back story. The heroine is a
tough girly fantasy figure but not stupidly so. She's a bit of a lonely
ladette and I suppose she's been written up for the modern twenty
somethings rather than old salts like this reviewer. But she seems real
enough and characterisation is good. Be prepared for some
genuinely raunchy sex scenes (find out how elves make out with humans)
and a bit of violence so this is not for the kids - but well worth a try.
I might well be reading the next in the series if I ever get the time. Recommended
The Devil You Know is the first of five Felix Castor novels - the two following are
Vicious Circle and the Dead Men's Boots. If you enjoy the first, then you will be hooked on the
next two at least which create a distinctive 'universe' in which the dead return
as ghosts, zombies and loup-garous. Demons lurk in the wings -
include a rather sexy succubus (see The Jennifer Morgue above).
The
books are long even if you take account of the need to rehearse past
plots for new readers. Other writers would get the action into a third
of the space but, because it is well written (the writing gets better
with each book although the plotting becomes more leisurely), with occasionally
laugh-out-loud humour, and because it is determined to show you in words
what a comic book can show you in pictures, it reads like a light
entertainment version of a Victorian doorstopper. Carey ought to have considered tightening up the story lines or these books would just
have settled into comfort food but then maybe that is all that we want - easy leisurely reads. So far in the series, these books could be recommended as a coherent universe you can
lose yourself in - but strictly for fun
However, I want to dwell on the fourth book in the series, Thicker Than Water, because, contrary to the rule that sequels get worse with time, it is even better than the three preceding novels. And why is that? Because he is adept here at pulling together all his themes into a very cogent
universe with a hint at a big back story to come. A major twist at the
end of the book tells us something important about his demon world that
shifts our perception and reminds us that this is the graphic novelist
who brought us Constantine. I can't tell you more because I am not into
spoilers. The surprise is part of the fun.
But, more than this,
he is maturing as a writer, moving away from relying on the wise crack.
He is also getting off that kick of describing each frame as if he was
determined to tell us a tale for Vertigo and misses the pictures. This
book is a hybrid between the sharp, imaginative but ultimately
formulaic first novel and something like a proper novel set in some
imagined next year. There are sections where he visits Liverpool and
looks back on it as the wasteland of Thatcher's Britain that go way
beyond what we usually expect from a genre writer.
It is almost
as if the kid who wrote comic books out of post-adolescent passion is
turning into a literary man as his own kids grow up (there is a revealing
and interesting interview with Carey at the back of this edition). Fantasy
is now only half the story that he tells. The state of Britain and what
makes a man have started to intrude as themes. Some of the more outre
characters of past novels only get a walk-on part although the succubus
Juliet (on whom he clearly has a crush) and Asmodeus, the demon who
inhabits his best friend, are central. Demons get all the best parts in
Carey novels.
The characterisation of the 'humans' also shifts
between the expected and some exceptional development of personality.
The inhabitants of this novel are real and recognisable whether on the
South London Council Estate where most of the story is set, in Liverpool
or as nurses and policemen who keep the plot going. This is a
top notch genre writer shifting between his preferred genre and
something both much broader and more intimate, a writer who could yet
'mature' into writing a 'novel' that contained only sufficient
supernatural and horror to give an angle to, say, social comment or the
inner life of a denizen of his tightly plotted universe. Whether we want
him to do this is a moot point but he probably could if he willed it
so.
I
have written nothing of the story. Why? Because to tell too much would
ruin the atmosphere. In essence, demonic evil is afoot in the heart of
South London's under class, that's all you need to know. You ought to
read the three previous books in the series but you don't really need
to. Carey's slightly laboured determination (his only weakness) to make
sure you are never left guessing as to the facts of the matter means
that all the salient facts from the previous novels are provided in the
first quarter of the book - by fair means or foul. Funny
one-liners are sprinkled throughout - though you have to be British for
the best ones. Imagine Raymond Chandler but with that English
self-deprecating irony for which we notoriously love ourselves.
But,
although more of a detective story than previous tales (why is it that
'going respectable' for fantasy writers always appears to involve
writing crime fiction!?), the flow between crime story and horror is
well managed because, after three previous outings, the universe hangs
together. The coppers have got used to zombies, ghosts,
loups-garous, demons and radicalised off-balance sheet Catholic
excommunication squads. So, it would seem, have the general public. The
level of threat from these supernatural forces is nuanced so that public
life is conducted in atmosphere of mild confusion rather than fear. Much
recommended for those who love mildly dystopian British culture and
fantasy-horror set in urban grey and with a few world-weary laughs
added.
The ending strongly implied the next Felix Castor novel. He set himself up to demonstrate some sensitivity beyond the wise
cracks but you also get the feeling that the flip over to 'literature'
may take a while yet. Carey's love affair with demons is not over. There
is something he is working through here and there is probably a decade
of work in it yet, though perhaps not always with Felix Castor in tow.
Although nominated for a British Fantasy Award, the fifth in the series (The Naming of the Beast) is a little disappointing in the wake of Thicker than Water. It
is still a good basic read - a supernatural thriller (though with very little
'real' horror). It has all the favourite characters, a consistent
universe, a generally coherent story line and the usual grounding in a
Central London that Londoners would recognise. But it is still a bit of a
potboiler, albeit one with some good set pieces (like the fear monster
living just off the Strand and a visit to Macedonia).
What
happened? In #4, Carey was on the cusp of something better. There was a
dash of JG Ballard in there, character development had gone beyond the
formulaic and he introduced some interesting new ideas on the origin of
demons and on ambiguities in the universal balance of good and evil that
boded well for a cracking sequel. Yet none of these creative ideas are
followed through in #5 - the demons are mcguffins to move the plot
along. Asmodeus is a thug and little more.
The tale, a natural
continuation of previous novels, is like the comfort food of American
supernatural TV series. This may not be a bad thing if you just want to
be entertained: Carey is, after all, primarily a graphic novel 'auteur'.
But a sudden inadequately explained change of allegiance of a leading
enemy to move the plot along is the sort of thing that the mindless
drift of TV can permit but which irritates in a text. It looks and reads
as lazy and bored. Either Carey's publisher dragged him back to
safe harbour to please the fans and/or the booksellers (or to increase
the chances of TV take-up) or Carey himself got bored and taken his
best ideas elsewhere - or he has abandoned them altogether.
This
is not a reason not to read the book. It is still superior to the vast
acreage of books by women for women in which the reader can fantasise a)
bonking, b) being or c) killing a vampire that crowd out more
imaginative literature. Horror has reached a recessionary nadir when
Jane Austen's heroes meet zombies, vampires and creatures from the
Lovecraftian deeps. Carey's determined maintenance of the
adventure genre in this context is admirable and welcome but it is
scarcely 'horror' any more.
As with Christopher Fowler's once-admirable
Bryant & May series, the market drives 'masculine' writing away from
the horror shelves and inexorably towards the thriller section of the
larger crime shelves. #4 was an imaginative novel of supernatural horror
with urban crime overtones. #5 is a pedestrian thriller with
supernatural overtones. Still, all his old characters are here -
both heroes and villains. The wit is diminished but Carey can still make
you chuckle out loud. Londoners can mentally trace movements in real
streets and Carey writes well of location - a journey down the abandoned
Kingsway tram tunnel is a minor tour de force. The disappointment is
merely relative from someone from whom we had hoped for more - so buy it, read
it, enjoy it, move on and, if there is only room for one Felix Castor, go for Thicker Than Water.
Between
the first three Felix Castor tales and the admirable fourth novel, we may as well note Carey's graphic novel God Save the Queen for comparison. It is a fairly simple tale of demonic faerydom, drugs
and teenage angst in contemporary North London. It is not a masterpiece but the artwork by John Bolton can be
powerful at times with the right balance between dark fantasy and
something close to graphic photo-realism. Carey can be literate but, at
the end of the day, it is adolescent, the artist likes to show more girl
flesh than is truly helpful to the story and the total effect owes an
edge too much to filmic expectations. It is tolerable but no more.
Ken Macleod, like Stross, is a Scot with an observant interest in politics. The Execution Channel is serious outing from a writer previously
associated with slightly demented but highly entertaining space operas.
This novel has some serious politics embedded within a story set in a Britain
not quite so different from the one we feared was about to emerge under
the rule of the Dear Leader, Tony Blair. This captures a moment of anxiety in
British political culture and bears comparison with Christopher Priest's
masterful equivalent from the 1970s, Fugue for a Darkening Island, and with Halting State.
The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua is another superior gnostic sci-fi horror which weaves
the anomie of modern corporate man and a satire on the world of business
guru-dom with chaos magick and a dark seam of esoteric horror. Clearly there was a strong trend in British genre fiction at this time. There
are shades of J. G Ballard here as well and, if you can get past the knowing
comic writing that is now de rigueur in any post-modern science fiction
that deals with inner rather than outer space (and sadly reminds us of the risk of repeating that dead end of scifi jocularity that plagued American science fiction in the 1950s), there is something
important being said about the way our minds and perceptions are being
changed by the new technologies. Like many other writers in this
genre of sci-fi/horror, he delights in telling a story that unfolds in
real streets you can walk down today- and so it owes something to that
psychogeographic genre created by Sinclair and Ackroyd. It is recommended and
worth stopping occasionally as you read it to think about where our
culture is heading ...
This leads us to an enjoyable bad book. The Bastion Prosecutor is the second book in a five part series. Its scale and its ambition are massive but
God knows who the Bastion Prosecutor is or why the Bastion needed
prosecuting in the first place! It is set in a near future world
that is somewhat implausibly still running with minimal energy. Space
flight is a norm, the military are important and honourable America
remains our great ally. Big corporations are the bad guys. There
is advanced AI. There are aliens. There is cryogenics. All this, Ancient Egypt and the Ark of the Covenant are mixed up with the usual
mildly autistic appreciation of hardware beloved of old-fashioned
thriller writers, chaste and summarily dealt with love affairs, stock
villains and heroes and civil servants out of the 1950s (one expects
Quatermass to pop up at any minute).
It is utterly British,
utterly old-fashioned and utter nonsense and yet it has a certain rough
charm. The author's almost boyish enthusiasm for his tale makes it the
perfect read for the tired security guard or porter on night shift, the
duty male nurse in a hospital with only rare emergencies or his bed-ridden
patient, befuddled with enough drugs to dull the intellect but not
enough to let him sleep. Despite its lack of literary quality and
the writer's inability to provide a plot that is not a succession of
adventures that seem on more than one occasion to be without rhyme or
reason, I actually liked this book despite my better judgement. It is a
romp. Technically, it could certainly do with a lot of judicious editing yet I wonder if its naivete - about science, about history and about
humanity, all paraded in extended set pieces - is precisely why I liked
it. To improve it might be to destroy it.
I will not read the
rest of the series because life is too short - that is, unless I have a
great deal of time to kill and I am stuck in a mind-numbing job where a
dulled intellect or great tiredness could allow me to revel, in full
suspension of disbelief, in a fantasy of honourable public servants
fighting off the greed of private sector villains in a world of
fantastically implausible technologies and bad robots with German
accents. There is even a stocky Asian sidekick for the nastiest villain. But
you should not be entirely put off by me ... I am clearly a dreadful snob. Under
the right hypnogogic circumstances, the book could well be a perfect
antidote to boredom. As readers move back into the
hurly burly of life, they may rise from their half slumber
inspired by a world of British pluck and, who knows, regain lost values
of service and integrity that might yet reassert themselves in our world
of chav celebrities and tabloid reptiles. I very much like Mr. Marshall
despite his lack of literary merit.