Intrusion by Ken MacLeod

Review: Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit, 2012)

They say that the best dystopian fiction should always be uncomfortably close to home. Brave New World and 1984, the two shining examples of the genre, dressed up the social concerns of their days in futuristic garb which, laughably dated and inaccurate as they may seem to modern eyes, did not detract at all from the books’ core warnings. In his latest novel, Intrusion, Scottish sci-fi legend Ken MacLeod concocts a heady and hypnotising brew of politics, science and religion to serve as a warning for our times. While he is already respected as much for his scientific and political nous as for his literary talents, is Ken up to joining the likes of Orwell and Huxley?

On it’s surface, Intrusion is the tale of Hope Morrison, and perfectly average resident of a near-future London. Married to Hugh, mother of Nick and with another child on the way, her life is a picture of domestic normalcy. Unlike much recent speculative fiction, this world is rather benign. Yes climate change has caused problems but advances in molecular and genetic engineering have worked wonders. Solar power has increased in efficiency to the point where even wind turbines now seem wasteful and are being dismantled by the farmload. Fuel use is all but outlawed but on the bright side, forests of New Wood – grown to design for structural purposes – and readily available sheet diamond (for all your reinforcement needs) at least partially alleviate the inconvenience. There are the usual nods to current technological fads as well – Google Glass is, of course, ubiquitous and any information you could ever need about your current whereabouts and company are but a blink away.

There have also been medical advances. Pregnant women now have the option of taking The Fix, a miraculous pill which repairs deleterious DNA mutations, making hereditary disease a thing of the past. There is of course an opt-out for religious believers but in Hope’s case she simply doesn’t like the idea of messing with her or Hugh’s genes, of taking that part of them away from her child for better or worse. It’s not compulsory though. Or is it? Before long the loving arms of government begin to squeeze and what began for her as simply exercising her rights as a citizen soon turns into a nightmare threatening to rob her of her children as well as her freedom.

Where Orwell envisioned an overtly totalitarian state attempting to brainwash its citizens, Intrusion‘s vision of hell is far more subtle and not a million miles from what we currently experience. The nanny state has been taken to extremes by a government embracing the concept of libertarian paternalism, explained beautifully in the novel but boiling down to “do whatever you want as long as it’s the option we selected in your best interests”. Smoking has been all but outlawed, necessitating the creation of fly-by-night smoke-easies operating out of friendly kitchens. Those with child wear monitor rings which deliver small tingles to alert the wearer to the presence of toxins in the environment – as well as reporting any alcohol intake to the relevant authorities.

Hope’s predicament would not seem out of place in a Kafka novel, with her repeated attempts to implement reason in a world where reason no longer seems to apply. No disagreement with the State can be brooked because the State has carefully considered what’s in your best interests, and failure to recognise this is simply evidence that you are deluded. In these discussion MacLeod makes no bones about comparing the policies and direction of current western governments to those we once railed against in Soviet Russia and Communist China. Consent of the masses is required in order to sustain peace and harmony, therefore dissent must be quashed. But why would anyone dissent from such a glorious system? Surely their very disagreement must mark them as enemies. Anyone who has read or taken the recent UK Citizenship Tests surely feels a shiver about now…

While Intrusion is chiefly concerned with the implications of Hope’s principled stance, MacLeod also uses a couple of sub-plots to discuss further related issues. Hope’s predicament is both aided and abetted by Geena, a social researcher at a nearby biotech firm whose gall in daring to be slightly dark of skin brings down the wrath of the government. In a truly chilling segment we are shown the lengths the State will go to in order to maintain the narrative of “them vs us” and the fear necessary to keep it stoked. In retaliation she sets events in motion which, despite good intentions, spell serious trouble for Hope and her family.

Speaking of which there is also Hugh. A former resident of Lewis, he is a taciturn, gentle soul but not without issues. Issues like seeing people who aren’t really there, images apparently of a past long forgotten, of glaciers and animal-hide boats. Hugh keeps this ‘second sight’ a secret even from his wife but does not realise the part it will soon play in their life. When discussing this and the other technological advances, MacLeod’s scientific understanding really comes to the fore, breaking complex issues down into easily digestible chunks without patronising the reader. Even the subtleties of religion get a look in as Hugh’s father, although not an island native by birth, is now a member of the local Wee Free Kirk and the expected father-son theological disputes play out with good humour.

As a standard work of speculative sci-fi, Intrusion is a winner. Well-paced throughout with excellent characterisation and and thorough grounding in modern science and politics it is difficult to find fault. Now and again I found myself annoyed with Hope’s reactions to her circumstances, wondering what the hell she was playing at until I placed myself in her shoes and the penny dropped. Her questionable actions always boil down to restricted options in an unwinnable scenario, a political Kobayashi-Maaru. As a modern-day companion to the great works of dystopian literature Intrusion fares almost as well. MacLeod is always careful to ensure that we know where the danger lies – with those who legislate technology’s uses, rather than with the technology itself – and never overstates the case for his views. However, in this jaded age that may almost be a failing. With current Western levels of cynicism and apathy (despite the media coverage of Anonymous, Occupy, et al) it’s difficult to imagine this or any other book being anything like the iconic rallying cry to vigilance and action that was 1984. More’s the pity, since the need may now be greater than ever.

All You Need Is Kill

Review: All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (VIZ Media LLC, 2009)

Keiji Kiriya, a raw recruit in the Japanese Defense Forces, is sampling his first taste of battle against the Mimics, squat amphibian creatures with a remarkable tenacity, and it looks like it’s going to be his last. His squad hopelessly outnumbered, his battlesuit almost out of power and ammo, he’s facing near-certain doom when suddenly a veritable Valkyrie in crimson armour towers above him, shredding Mimics with an enormous axe. The respite is merely temporary though, his wounds already placing him beyond help. The American heroine stays with him for comfort (and to scavenge his suit’s battery), swapping small-talk about Japanese tea customs before he slips away to the great beyond…

…and wakes up in his bunk the day before the battle.

Understandably confused, Keiji gets on with his day. A pervading sense of deja vu follows his every move, although he manages to put it down to the remarkably intense dream he just had. Every conversation, every action, has a ring of familiarity about it, right down to the moment he joins the battle once again and recognises the mortal danger his friend is in. The slightest change in events and suddenly the hypersonic javelin is embedding itself not in … but in Keiji’s own stomach. Game over. At least until he wakes in is bunk the day before the battle.

You’ve guessed it already, All You Need Is Kill is Groundhog Day but with mech-suits, aliens and buckets of blood in place of Andie McDowell and twee sentimentality. From his third reincarnation Keiji recognises what is happening – at least the ‘what’, the ‘why’ has to wait – and begins to experiment. His first realisation is that no matter what he does the Mimic threat is real and that he has no choice in the matter – either fight or go AWOL he will end up dead unless he can change the future.

The key to his survival lies in his saviour from the first fateful battle, the crimson goddess known as Rita, or the Full Metal Bitch. The nature off the enemy – essentially four-limbed barrels filled with conductive sand and nanobots – makes them almost impossible to kill with conventional weaponry yet Rita and her axe have notched up more dead Mimics than his whole division combined. From this point he strives to get close to this war machine, training with her and honing his skills through death after death, awakening each time with another lesson learned and becoming a more lethal killer.

But one niggling question remains – just how did Rita get this good? What training did she have which the rest of the world’s forces seems to have been denied? Slowly Keiji puts the pieces together and understands that he’s not the only one to have been caught in a loop. Despite being the only one privy to this particular anomaly and therefore having to deal with a memory-wiped Rita every day he soon discovers what he must do to break out of the loop and end this battle once and for all.

So far, so ridiculous?

Yes it is indeed, and All You Need Is Kill is no less the novel for that. Short and insanely fast-paced it is unashamedly sheer entertainment and has no pretensions to be anything more. It wears its influences on its sleeve and makes no bones about it – I discovered this book through recommendations based on my purchase of Armor, the rest is equal parts Groundhog Day and video games as the author admits after the ending. It’s all about fantasy and imagination, Sakurazaka having immense fun with the battlesuits, the carnage wrought by the Mimics and artificial history of the war.

Unfortunately he does let the side down when it comes to the explanation for the time-loop phenomena. In trying to wrap it up as part of the technology invented by the Mimics’ parent race, a time-travelling early warning system of sorts, he gets a bit muddled. The upshot is an explanation which obscures as much as it enlightens and part of me almost wishes he’d just left it a mystery, a McGuffin around which the rest of the novel revolves. Another downside is that some of the dialogue seems to have been mangled in translation, coming across as more juvenile than the tone of the book warrants.

Still, these are minor niggles, nitpicking and nothing more. All You Need Is Kill does exactly what it says on the tin. Any fan of sci-fi, time travel or just readers in need of a one-sitting quick fix should devour this book as I did. There are moments of outright hilarity countered by the weight of Keiji’s predicament. The scenes of exposition and discovery act as the perfect complement to the dizzying adrenaline rush of the perfectly scripted battles. Woven between the lines are some meditations on Keiji’s loneliness but they never detract from the pacing or become too heavy, at least until after the finale has passed. All You Need Is Kill is never going to win a Nobel prize for literature but who cares when you’re having so much anime-inspired fun?

(PS – All You Need Is Kill will soon be an all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood blockbuster featuring that actor whose name is a death knell to sci-fi films, Tom “Hail Xenu” Cruise. Production stills look god-awful and predictably they’ve made the heroes American instead of Japanese. Please spend your money on the book instead…)

The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart

Review: The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington (Orbit, 2009)

So, having finished reading and reviewing Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark And Grimm for Mountains Of Instead I found myself in the mood for something in a similar vein (fairytales wrenched from their recently sanitised moorings and draped in darker attire) I picked up the only remotely suitable book in my collection – The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart, debut novel of Jesse Bullington. Admittedly the cover alone was enough to tempt me, apparently even more impressive in dead-tree format, but nothing could have prepared me for what lay between the pages. Where Gidwitz took the beloved tales of the Brothers Grimm and wrapped them in robes of humour and Hammer-style blood and guts, Bullington has travelled down an altogether darker route. Drawing on no particular tales he has crafted his own medieval Gothic Illiad, taking several well-worn archetypes and bonding them together with a paste of blood, entrails, vomit and foul language. Suffice to say it was right up my alley.

The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart starts as it means to continue, with murder most foul. The self-orphaned twins Hegel and Manfried and, descended from a proud line of violent, illiterate grave robbers, run afoul of a rural farmer, Heinrich, in their Germanic homeland. In a staggeringly cruel and vicious opening act they massacre his young family by blade and fire, leaving him alive as an act of either mercy or torture, it’s hard to say which. Following their rampage they embark upon a quest to seek out one of their more eccentric ancestors in ‘Gyptland, rumoured to contain tombs the like of which they have never clapped eyes on, all ripe for the plunder. Armed with brute strength, Hegel’s uncanny ability to sense impending danger and a conviction that the Virgin Mary (not her pathetic molly-coddled offspring) is looking out for them they pursue their goal with a religious zeal which will suffer no obstacles.

Of course this is the real world and crimes as grotesque as theirs cannot be seen to go unpunished. Soon they find themselves pursued by Heinrich’s townsfolk, sparking yet another bloody slaughter. Retreating into the woods to lick their wounds following their hard-won victory things take a turn for the strange. From nowhere a manticore – part man, part beast – attacks, mortally wounding Manfried before they can dispatch it. Stumbling through the snow they finally find a cottage inhabited by a twisted crone of a witch who can cure Manfried – for a price. Having feasted on her previous litters of children she is in need of more offspring, a task for which she requires Hegel’s, erm, assistance in one of the more stomach-churning scenes of modern literature. With Manfried recovered the brothers set upon the vile harpy, leaving her for dead but little realising that their failure to complete the deed will result in Hell being unleashed to follow them.

The ensuing odyssey seems like the result of an absinthe-drenched drinking session comprising the Marquis de Sade, Comte de Lautreamont, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. No taboo is left inviolate and there is no recess of the human spirit too dark to explore. The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart is an exercise in gleeful malevolence, happily mocking the idea of just desserts and nice guys finishing first. As the scope of the novel expands to take in demonic possession, pirates, sirens, false Popes and fallen priests you soon find you have discarded any sense of disbelief and – shockingly – may sometimes actually sympathise with these two magnificently warped creations. Having the imagination and literary knowledge to tell such a familiar yet undeniably original tale is talent enough but to have it suck the reader in to quite this degree.

Aside from the gore it is easy to overlook the fact that Bullington must be something of a Gothic scholar, so wonderfully detailed is the world he’s created. Dirt and disease line every single page and you can almost smell the decay and waste in even the most opulent of the book’s settings. The tattered clothes of the villagers, the drunken fellow travellers, the crooks and swindler, princes and (mostly) paupers and above all the sense of living in an era which the gods forgot, they’re all perfectly rendered here. At one point I actually couldn’t get Monty Python and the Holy Grail out of my head while reading – “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” – the levels of squalor and insanity being roughly parallel.

Being James Bullington’s first full-length attempt it is no surprise that The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart (damn, even typing that name makes me wish Nick Cave and t’other Warren Ellis would write a score for it) isn’t quite perfect. Despite an utterly unrelenting and exhausting opening the book unfortunately loses its way around the halfway mark. On reaching a speedbump in their quest the storytelling itself seems to stumble and you can’t help wishing Bullington would just move to the next chapter – instead there is an overly long period of stagnation and political manoeuvring where you are craving more profanity, flying limbs and spurting fluids. Thankfully it doesn’t last forever and we’re eventually treated to something of a double climax and a bizarrely abrupt ending which is rendered all the more humorous and poignant for its brevity.

Should you read this book? It’s a good question. There’s no doubt that the content may be regarded or puerile by some and simply offensive by others. If child murder, drugged-up witch-fucking, extreme blasphemy, torture, maiming, murder and many-mouthed, plague-ridden hellspawns born of hatred and babyteeth give you the heebie-jeebies then by all means stay away. If however you are made of sterner stuff, don’t take your literature too seriously or felt that all de Sade needed was a few more dick jokes then seriously, this is the book for you.

Oh, and their beards are amazing.

Roadside Picnic

Review: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Gollancz, 2012)

Imagine an overgrowing patch of ground by the side of a quiet country road, surrounded by beautiful scenery yet far from the constant thrumming of the city and the choking fumes of its attendant freeways. What a perfect spot for taking a break, stretching your legs and having a mid-journey picnic. You wind down, recharge your concentration and hit the road again, doing your best to be a conscientious traveller but inevitably neglecting to pick up the odd carton, dead battery, cigarette lighter, stray set of headphones and other debris. Imagine now some kind of sentient hedgerow-dweller stumbling across these items. What could it possibly make of them? Even if it could somehow divine their purpose could it ever manage to use or misuse them?

The Strugatsky brothers ask this very question in Roadside Picnic, their most famous novel. In a future past, the late 20th century, six mysterious Zones have been discovered in various parts of the world. Though seemingly unrelated in location they share two common elements: a surfeit of bizarre artefacts, some inert though others possessed of properties which defy our current understanding of science; and a tendency to gruesomely kill anyone who strays inside without exercising extreme caution. The only ones brave or foolish enough to enter the Zones are known as stalkers, risking their lives to get their hands on the treasure they contain and sell them off to the research institutes which have sprung up around them. Stalking, although technically illegal due to the extreme and unpredictable danger, is the only means for eager scientists to examine these clearly alien objects and unravel the physics-warping secrets they conceal.

One such stalker is Red Schuhart, an old hand at stalking the Canadian Zone and a veritable oracle regarding its traps and snares, is wearying of his profession when he is betrayed by his colleagues and imprisoned.  On his release a former rival and stalker approaches him with one last mission. Red is to venture once more into the Zone and retrieve a mysterious golden orb reputed to grant the wishes of its owner, an intergalactic genie. With a family to provide for in a world slowly going to hell around him he has little choice but to strap on his boots and get to work.

Hailing as they do from the former Soviet Union the brothers Strugatsky bring a unique flavour to Roadside Picnic, a refreshing change from the comfortable Western sci-fi in which I’ve recently been ensconced. No sprawling space operas or cosmic battlezones, rather an intellectually satisfying rumination on the nature of mankind, scientific progress and our place in the universe.

In the notoriously censorious USSR it was nigh-on impossible to criticise the regime but the Strugatskys seem to have achieved this through subterfuge. One of the central themes in Roadside Picnic seems at first to be the iconic Soviet struggle of the everyman against the sprawling powers of Western government and capitalist policies, Red’s engagements with law enforcement and institutional red tape being a prime example. However, lurking under the surface seems to be a suggestion that this is more about a potential utopia squandering its resources and betraying its citizens. The devices steadily pouring out of the Zone are initially viewed with awe and wonder but are soon merely commodities to be hoarded and traded. Likewise the USSR started off with heady ideals but these were soon subverted in the name of power and prestige. Like the former Soviet government, the Zone conspires to entangle itself in every aspect of his life, down to the form of his only daughter, controlling his destiny in every way. Maybe I’m reading it wrong but there seemed to be a lot written between the lines in this book.

Even disregarding the political angle there is still a lot here to chew on itself. The Zones are works of artistic wonder, haunting in a manner resembling a David Lynch movie written by Burroughs and scored by Aphex Twin on bad drugs. Stalkers must contend with ‘mosquito mange’, patches of almost invisible supergravity lying ready to crush any trespassers to a pulp, and ‘witches’ jelly’, whose luminous strands will reduce the human form to boneless jelly. The wonders hidden there range from self-contained gravity jars to perpetual motion devices but are far outweighed by the eclectic horrors on display. Combined with the Strugastkys’ stark literary stylings, this lends a creeping, sinister atmosphere to the novel, blending perfectly with the desperation of its characters.

The passage in which the titular Roadside Picnic concept is discussed is pure sci-fi manna. How could we ever know if we were being visited by galactic neighbours? Could we ever communicate with them, let alone recognise their existence? The question brings to mind Arthur C Clarke’s famous rumination that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Compared to our cosmic cousins we may be the roadside insects marvelling at the movements of a watch’s hands. That such technical and philosophical prose reads so smoothly and naturally is a testament to the quality of this translation.

Weighing in at only 160 pages, Roadside Picnic is not a demanding read but it’s one that will keep your brain running in high gear for the duration. Ideas and inspiration pop out of every page, leaving you wondering why the hell we ever read Western authors at all.

Armor

Review: Armor by John Steakley (DW, 1984)

I’ll get this out of the way right at the beginning. When you pick up Armor it will be approximately ten pages before you start asking yourself “Why am I reading the novelisation of the Starship Troopers movie?” Yes, I know the movie was based on Robert Heinlein’s novel but the two bore only a passing resemblance. Armor, on the other hand, has it all: the attack on South America; the inhospitable planet; the relentless insectoid army; the lone survivor. However, Armor is far more than the source material for a mediocre sci-fi movie.

Split into two overlapping tales, the first concerns Felix, a raw recruit into the futuristic military. Designated as a Scout, an exceedingly low-survival-rate position, Felix is sent on his first drop to Banshee. Due to military blunders his unit are transported right into the heart of an enemy horde. These foes resemble nothing less than 8-foot tall humanoid ant creatures capable of ripping humans limb from limb. Felix’s forces level the playing field with their key asset, the titular armor – all-enclosing survival suits bestowing superhuman speed and strength and boasting ferocious firepower.

Despite the armor his unit is quickly annihilated, leaving him stranded. On his rescue an unfortunate computer error results in him being recalled for drop after drop after drop with little or no respite. Despite his statistical odds of surviving being more or less zero he continues to pull through, relying on a kind of split personality he dubs The Engine to take over, turning him into a killing machine. As a character Felix is remarkably blank, it’s as if his psyche has been gutted, torched clean by the horrors he has experienced, leaving barely able to comprehend events unfolding around him. Author John Steakley compensates for this with some of the most visceral and literally gut-wrenching battle scenes put to paper. It takes quite a mind to make the gruelling carnage so palatable, simultaneously decrying and revelling in the monotonous banality of evil.

With no warning Steakley wrenches us from Felix’s world and moves the clock forward a few years. The focus switches to Jack Crow, a space pirate who has escaped from a penal colony and is seeking true freedom. To this end he strikes a bargain with a crime boss, accepting a mission to a planet off the Space Fleet’s radar. The mission, an elaborate energy heist, requires that he take a military artefact as a gift for a collector. A suit of armor. Guess whose? And for the record, if the name seems familiar then substitute Crow for a somewhat smaller bird. You’ll find precious few differences between this pirate and one more renowned for Caribbean escapades.

The Jack Crow section of Armor couldn’t be more different. Suddenly we’re dealing with a cast of genuine characters, several conflicting motives and psychological and political maneuvering. In fact for a while you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an entirely different novel, until Jack and his acquaintances discover that they can ‘plug in’ to the suit and experience its memories. Thus the plot is deftly woven together with that of Felix whom we soon rejoin for one of the novel’s big reveals.

So if this novel contains source material for two major movie franchises then why isn’t it more widely known? Well, Armor certainly isn’t without its flaws. Felix’s story can sometimes feel overbearing, almost claustrophobic. His isolation and fatalism serve to distance the reader, while the action around him is resoundingly grim. Everyone dies, everyone but Felix. All the time. It’s a lot to take. There’s a lot more levity to be found in Crow’s story but this has its own issues. While the characters are more fully developed they often fail to make any kind of sense whatsoever. I had to backtrack in the story several times to see if I had missed some crucial event which would explain the actions of Jack and his marks. None was to be found, often their motivation is entirely inexplicable.

That said I simply could not stop reading. My copy of the book was a terribly corrupted epub, riddled with bad punctuation (every apostrophe and inverted comma was replaced with a square) and spelling errors, normally a distraction which leads me to hit ‘Delete’ and find a new book. However, Armor was different. Something about Felix’s steadfast determination despite his growing fear and a desire to see Crow redeem himself for his heinous betrayal kept me turning pages until the book was over before I knew it. The effort was worth it with a rather obvious twist ending turning into a poignant finale, lending serious weight to all which had come before.

What is Armor all about? To be honest I have no idea. John Steakley was clearly trying to say something important and deeply personal. Two things in fact, both of which seem entirely contradictory. The characters of Felix and Jack were entirely at odds with each other, making deciphering the message more a case of guesswork than anything else. I will say this though – for me to burn through a book this quickly and still have it prodding my grey matter so long afterwards is enough to earn it a special place on the digital bookshelf. It may not be a perfect read but there certainly aren’t many reading experiences quite like Armor and that is a damn shame.

The Mongoliad: Books 1 & 2

Review: The Mongoliad (Books 1 & 2) by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, E.D. DeBirmingham and Cooper Moo (47 North, 2012)

On first hearing the notion of The Mongoliad my initial reaction was excitement at the prospect of new material from Neal Stephenson. My favourite author of recent years taking on the Crusades and the offspring of Genghis Khan? Bring it on!  However, the fervour was soon tempered by the presence of co-writers. How could seven individuals possibly cooperate to produce a coherent narrative? How could their individual styles blend together without the seams becoming distractingly apparent? The answer, I’m pleased to say, is near-perfectly.

The Mongoliad is a pioneering attempt at collaborative fiction using every modern medium at the authors’ disposal. The group – including Stephenson and such sci-fi luminaries as Greg Bear and author/blogger Mark Teppo – initially began crafting the story chapter-by-chapter in an online serialisation. From this sprouted a website and active fan community and the eventual collection of the tales into three paperback and digital volumes.

As for the story itself, the team has delivered a masterful piece of historical fiction, set in the 13th Century against a backdrop of Genghis Khan’s conquest of the known world. In Karkorum his son, Ogedei, is struggling with his position as Khagan, the Khan of Khans. Haunted by his brother’s sacrifice to save his life he drowns himself in alcohol, threatening to destabilise the Mongolian Empire as they flounder under a laughing stock of a leader. Meanwhile in the West his surviving brothers continue their assault on Christendom, Ongwhe staging a tournament promising to spare Europe further devastation of their greatest champions can best his own in single combat.

Amongst those taking up the challenge are the Shield Brethren, a monastic order of knights sworn to protect those in need and whose martial skills are unmatched across the land. Becoming suspicious of Ongwhe’s circus they decide that the only way to remove the hordes from their homeland is too cause the Khagan’s brothers to return home. Only one event could spur such a retreat – the death of the Khagan himself. The knights divide their forces, the majority remaining at the tournament to provide cover while a handful embark on an impossible, suicidal mission across thousands of miles of hostile territory.

Meanwhile back in Ogedei’s court his slide into self-destruction has not gone unnoticed. Members of his inner circle use his perpetually clouded judgement to further their own ambitions while the Empire crumbles around them. In an attempt to mitigate the damage one of his brothers sends an envoy with a mission to part him from the bottle at all costs. Gansukh, a fierce warrior of the steppes, is ill-suited for court life and assigned the Chinese slave Lian to educate him in politics, history and guile.

The first book of The Mongoliad weaves these three strands – the tournament, the quest and the court – into a gripping story brimming with the action and political intrigue beloved of fans of George RR Martin. Given the serialised nature of the undertaking each chapter deals with a single story thread, typically presenting the reader with a good old-fashioned cliffhanger to keep them salivating until the following two chapters are completed. In fact so deft is the storytelling that it’s almost an annoyance to be forced to leave one group of characters for a couple of dozen pages at a time – until, that is, you remember that the other sub-plots are equally captivating. It’s a masterful juggling act and never once do the team fail to keep all the balls in the air.

By the time the second book rolls around – which will be in the space  of a couple of days if you devour the first as ravenously as I did – then we find The Mongoliad’s world expanding in scope. We’re treated to some expository flashbacks involving Francis Of Assisi before joining a whole new plot taking us to the heart of the Christian Empire, Rome itself. Here the machinations of the political elite in trying to influence the election of a new Pope bring an altogether more Machiavellian flavour to the novel. You’ll also notice that the authors have become more comfortable in their world, with the seriousness of the first instalment giving way to more humour and numerous subtle genre references.

As mentioned before my interest in The Mongoliad was piqued by the involvement of Neal Stephenson, an author who has proven his skills with labyrinthine plots in The Baroque Cycle and Anathem and with fast-paced action sequences in Reamde (to be reviewed shortly). The Mongoliad passes the action and intrigue tests with aplomb, never once falling victim to the endless inconsequential tangents of Martin or the dreary descriptive prose of Tolkien. In the action sequences this is largely due to the laudable dedication of the authors themselves, having thrown themselves into weeks of gruelling martial training purely to allow them to write more accurately and honestly.

I’ll conclude this review here before I start drooling like an obsessed fanboy. Suffice to say that parts one and two of The Mongoliad far surpassed my inflated expectations, making a mockery of complaints that there was a dearth of action and that it was essentially the tale of an extended journey to the east. Far from it, this is one of the most vibrant and exciting novels of recent years, sinking its claws into you from the opening chapters and refusing to reliquish its hold till long after the last page is turned. Now if you’ll excuse me, the third and final chapter begs my attention.

The Electric Church

Review: The Electric Church by Jeff Somers (Orbit, 2007)

“After hours of Pick’s gin, the world was made of soft rubber; everything was hard to accomplish but nothing hurt too badly, so what the fuck.”

50′s noir detective vibes drip off the pages of The Electric Church, Jeff Somers’ riveting first novel and first entry in the saga of Avery Cates, gunner extraordinaire, and his struggle against The System. The scene above in Pickering’s gin-joint conjures up images of Bogart hunched over a bar as readily as Han blasting Greedo in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Mashing up flatfoot fiction with near-future dystopian sci-fi is bold move, so does he pull it off? First, let’s dial it back a notch.

The date is a few decades from now following a global upheaval known as The Unification. That’s right, one-world government arrived and it was sure bloody. Rather than freeing the people from their shackles the result of the ultimate centralisation of power has been to turn the world in Escape From New York on a planetary scale. The 1% lucky enough to possess monetary wealth live decadent lives, lording it up in their high castles and occasionally donning filthy disguise for the thrill of slumming it with the poor. Of which there are many. The rules are simple in this world: you’re either rich, a cop or less than zero.

For the latter, the 99%, life is brutish and short with lifespans over a few decades drawing admiration or disbelief. However you can always count on religion, Marx’s famed opiate, to prey on the desperate when times are dark. Enter The Electric Church, whose mission is to grant eternal life in this world to its followers – after all, even an eternity alive may not be enough to repent for our heinous sins. How exactly is this achieved? Simple – remove the brain and implant it in a cybernetic body, replete with sinister Auton-esque mask and unnecessarily violent attachments. These Electric Monks divide their time between proselytising on street corners and ushering the converted to their new existences, feared and mocked by the populace in equal doses yet protected by the ironclad religious protection act.

One dissatisfied denizen of the transformed New York in which the novel opens is Avery Cates, hired gun and prematurely jaded rebel with a penchant for the old, honourable ways of doing things. After a hit gone wrong Cates finds himself on the run from the vicious System Pigs, now a wanted cop-killer with his name on every bulletin board. He seems a sure thing for cashing in his chips at the ripe old age of 27 until an offer appears from an unlikely source. The head of the System Pigs own Internal Affairs bureau – the head honcho, the big cheese – will grant him immunity, a clean slate and an insane amount of money if he’ll assassinate Dennis Squalor, head of The Electric Church. It’s suicide, plain and simple, but he has no choice. The System Pigs will find him and proceed to tear him limb from limb, probably while alive, in repayment for killing their comrades. So Cates sets about assembling a team to help him sneak and fight their way past a global army of robots to the inner sanctum of the most heavily protected man on the planet. That’s an awful lot of shit to be flying around near such oversized fans…

If the set-up sounds equally insane and implausible then you’re absolutely correct and let me assure you – that’s part of the fun. The Electric Church is an oil-burning page-turner playing like a pulp novel yet with a serious literary bent. Jeff Somers obviously spent some large portion of his life wolfing down Hammett, Chandler and their lesser-known ilk and portrays bustling, seedy dives and wandering, down-on-their-luck loners with a natural ease. Cates is such a grim, sardonic anti-hero that he often seems in danger of falling into caricature before saving himself with his stark insights into the rigged nature of the game he’s forced to play.The team of broken, conniving rejects he rounds up as his crack team and the decaying world they inhabit all contribute to the atmosphere of hopelessness which all must overcome.

The Electric Monks themselves are a cornerstone of the novel. They’re what you would expect to come charging at you if William Gibson wrote an episode of Doctor Who; identikit automatons, serene on the surface but harbouring hidden power, endlessly repeating their insane litanies until they time comes to excavate your skull. A week after finishing The Electric Church I still find their frozen rictus grins lurking at the corner of my nightmares, their fearsomeness abated only by the deliciously snarky subtext that inside every religious drone was once a sane person, finally driven mad by the pressure of the nonsensical dogma pumped into their skulls.

As the first in a series The Electric Church does a solid job of setting up the background for the novels to come, bringing the major players in this shattered world into view while keeping enough hidden to encourage further exploration. As a stand-alone novel it’s equally worthy of attention, perfectly blending sci-fi and noir set-pieces with the most reluctant and resigned of hero figures It’s a fast read and none too taxing on the intellect but totally engaging throughout and leaves you feeling satisfied rather than as if you’d just visited sci-fi McDonald’s. Chalk me up for part two…