How to carefully avoid doing anything productive
An unintentional exclusively sci-fi/fantasy book diet recently…
Stamping Butterflies - Jon Courtenay Grimwood. This is more directly sci-fi than any of his previous books, though it has a very similar feel to his ‘Arabesk’ trilogy. It’s laid out in three intertwined, self-referential strands, and the structure is fairly reminiscent of M. John Harrison’s ‘Light’ even though the focus is pretty different.
The first two threads, set 30-odd years apart, centre on the same character in and around Marrakech. The book really drags you into the place. Grimwood apparently lived in Northern Africa for a while, and the whole ambience of the story seems incredibly convincing, without the feeling that the author is just creating a setting specifically to fit the story. The Arabesk books managed a similar trick while being set in a fictionalised version of Alexandria. The final strand is set in a Dyson sphere, ruled by a Chinese emperor in the far-flung future, and (intentionally) feels much more alien.
Like in most of his books, the characters all get a pretty tough time of it, and the whole tone is pretty bleak. It’s not as unremittingly oppressive as redRobe (which was too one-dimensionally brutal to really be enjoyable,) but it’s definitely not a happy book. It is really well done, and I enjoyed it a lot, but don’t expect to come out of it feeling especially positive.
Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross. A follow up to Singularity Sky, with the central characters from that book being sent off on another space-hopping rush to help prevent an impending genocide while trying to avoid any attention from the Eschaton, a weakly god-like AI construct which tends to stomp on cultures who look like they’re about to violate causality.
It’s very entertaining without being hugely deep. It mainly revolves around unravelling the motivations and intentions of various stripes of fanatics involved in the incident. Since there are no signs of him writing any more books in this setting any time soon, it’s a little disappointing that we don’t really find out much more about the creation and intentions of the Eschaton, and some of the more interesting characters don’t really get much face time (for instance, there’s a perfect illustration of why kids instinctively find party clowns kind of creepy.) It’s not that much of a gripe though, as the whole thing flies by satisfyingly enough.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke. An alternate-history fairy-tale set in 19th century London. This got a huge amount of hype, and glowing reviews from all corners amid rumours of the author being paid an unheard of advance by the publisher for her first book. It’s the story of two magicians trying to revive the practice of magic in England, which had been in decline since the disappearance of the most famous magician in the land.
I did like it quite a lot, but it was really heavy going. It took me absolutely ages to read, and not just because it’s a long book. For some reason, the whole feel of the book reminded me a lot of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. But where those books had me stopping every couple of pages to look up some interesting fact thrown in as an aside and then diving back in, this one just didn’t keep my attention for long periods. Part of the problem is that none of the main characters are especially likeable, and you’re always aware that you’ll never be able to look up any more about the interesting bits of the fictional history that are hinted at. I did like the book, but probably not as much as every other reviewer seems to have done.
Orcs - Stan Nicholls. Where Susanna Clarke proves you can write an interesting 700-page book that feels like wading through treacle, Stan Nicholls has written a so-so one that you can easily fly through in a couple of sittings without having to think about it too much. It follows a war-band of orcs who have been exiled, and are trying to bring down their evil ruler. It’s big and dumb and has lots of things being hit hard with swords. I don’t think I could really recommend buying it, but if you can borrow it (like I did) then it’ll do an ok job of killing a long train journey or something.