Late Book Reviews - Part 2
A writer takes his wife and baby on a trip to India to attempt to acquire a newly written poem by the supposedly long dead M. Das. They do not have a good time of it.
This is obviously a first novel; it’s fairly straightforward, a lot of the supporting characters are just there to make up the numbers (even the fairly central M. Das who may or may not actually be present in the narrative,) and the start of the book seems mostly concerned with the main character feeling hugely out of place in a new culture. It does build up pace later though, and keeps up a very menacing atmosphere. Horror novels tend to succeed if they keep you reading while never really letting you ‘enjoy’ the experience, and this definitely works on that level - it’s just a shame that it doesn’t push some of its more intense sequences a bit further.
Jay Lake has built up an impressive reputation on the back of a string of short stories that flit around all kinds of settings and styles. His first full novel is a romping “Boy’s Own”-style American post-WW2 Sci-Fi tale, full of Nazi agents, hometown spies and plucky engineers. It’s amazingly exuberant! At the end you’ll be convinced that you’ll have your fully-operational Mechano spaceship finished by tea-time.
It’s so much fun that the abrupt ending feels like running into a brick wall at full tilt. I think I might actually have yelled out in disappointment that there wasn’t more of it, but I guess that’s not the worst feeling to be left with at the end of a book.
This was just flat out fantastic. A modern-day academic accompanies a time-travelling tour group to hear lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810. Obviously, he end up stranded there and has to tromp his way through beggar’s guilds, werewolves, medical abominations and Ancient Egyptian sorcerers on the way to the end of the tale.
It sounds like the plot should be a laughable mess, but the execution proves that enthusiasm goes a long way, and it’s very easy to suspend your disbelief throughout. All of these weird scenarios that get thrown up just seem to happen so naturally, and everything locks together really well.
There are a couple of jarring moments where the story just seems to skip ahead and then slowly fills you in on the details later. By the end you don’t feel like you’ve missed anything, but there were some points along the way where I wondered if my copy had a chapter missing from the binding. Those moments aside, highly recommended.