Robin Hobb: The Golden Fool (2002)

Edition: HarperCollins, 2003
Review number: 1232

Hobb's policy of making life unpleasant for her protagonists has wavered somewhat in the second novel of her third trilogy, though she does not end up falling into the trap typical of the middle parts of fantasy series where often very little happens. (A typical trilogy is organised as: volume one, set up a quest; volume two, travelling to destination; volume three, carrying out task which is the purpose of the quest. This means that volume two either has to have a lot of scenery, character development or action to keep the pace up.) The release of pressure actually works rather well as this novel is in a large part the story of how Robb's protagonist Fitz begins to cope with the death of the animal with which he had a magical bond through the Wit, the wolf Night-Eyes.

The fight which ended the first novel in the Tawny Man trilogy, Fool's Errand (in which Fitz saved the life of Prince Dutiful at the cost of Night-Eyes) has thrust him right back into the forefront of the secret world that maintains the Farseer regime in the Six Duchies. The various elements which make up this novel have to be fitted around Fitz's public identity, as servant Tim Badgerlock to Lord Golden. He is also expected to train Prince Dutiful in the use of the Skill, the other major branch of magic known in the Six Duchies, spy over the delegation from the Outislands who are negotiating to marry the Prince to one of their heiresses to cement the treaty which ended war between the islands and the Six Duchies, advise the queen on her quest to bring an end to the persecution of the Witted, and protect the Prince from the Piebalds who sought his life. At the same time, he has concerns in his private life, in addition to coming to terms with his grief; he has to look out for his foster son, Hap, now an apprentice, and he is in the middle of a stuttering love affair.

There is a lot going on in The Golden Fool, but even with its complex little plot lines Hobb finds space to expand on her characters and their relationships. Most of the plot remains unresolved, as is only to be expected in the middle of a trilogy, and, likewise, much is not going to make as much sense to a reader who hasn't read Fool's Errand (and it would be helpful to have read the Farseer Trilogy as well). There are many fantasy authors who would be well advised to read The Golden Fool and think about how Hobb has put it together; it is a paradigm of how to hold the reader's interest in the middle of a series.

Len Deighton: Close-Up (1972)

Edition: Pan, 1974
Review number: 1230

This is the last of Deighton's experiments outside the spy genre for a long time, and it is the only one of his novels which cannot be described as a thriller of one sort or another. Close-Up is a satirical portrait of the Hollywood film industry, based presumably on stories heard or impressions gained during the filming of many of Deighton's novels during the sixties. (I would hesitate to say, particularly given the clear disclaimer at the start of the novel, that the characters are based on any real individuals.)

Close-Up is the story of superstar Marshall Stone who, in the early seventies after twenty years a star is frightened - that his career is coming to an end, of the young up-and-coming actors who might take the roles he regards as his own. Then there is what the press think is a romance with young model turned actress Suzy Delft, though in a twist typical of the novel, she is in fact his daughter from an affair hushed up by the studios at the beginning of his career. The whole novel is about how different the reality of the film business is from the image fed to (and eagerly lapped up by) the media. Stone, for example, may be charming, but he is also an utterly self centred hypochondriac. His real name, Eddie Brummage, points to the difference between appearance and reality - "brummagem" was slang for shoddy mass produced goods.

The subtle aspect of the novel is the way in which the reader is given insights into why Stone is the way he is - how his insecurities made him a great screen actor, and how his success in turn feeds his psychological problems. This blunts the edge of the satire - the film The Player, for example, is much more vicious - but makes Close-Up more effective as a piece of fiction about characters who seem real.

Close-Up may not be the most immediately appealing Len Deighton novel, because it is so different from anything else he wrote. It is in this way similar to John le Carré's The Naive and Sentimental Lover, but is less ambitious and, partly as a result, much more successful. This is one of Deighton's best novels - it is just not a thriller.

Ian R. MacLeod: The Light Ages (2003)

Edition: Earthlight, 2003
Review number: 1231

The small number of books that I would consider my favourite serious fantasy novels (E.R. Eddison's Mistress of Mistresses, Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series, Jack Vance's Lyonesse, John Crowley's Little, Big) share one important quality - atmosphere. There are other novels with similar power that I don't actually like very much, notably China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, and at least one series that I suspect would join the list if I got round to reading it, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Now The Light Ages has to join the list; it will surely also establish itself as one of the classics of the genre.

The setting of The Light Ages is an alternative industrial England, a place where the essence of magic, a mineral named aether, is mined alongside iron and coal. It is the story of a man born in a Yorkshire town which is a centre of aether mining, and how he travels to London and becomes part of a train of events which threaten the power of the Guildsmen who are the magnates of the Age, the Third Age of Industry that many think is coming to its end.

This background is itself enough to make The Light Ages stand out as an original fantasy novel. Alternate histories are almost always fit better into the science fiction genre than fantasy, with a special version of the "What if..." question that is the core of the genre. It is almost commonplace to ask questions like "What might have happened if Nazi Germany and Japan had wone the Second World War?" (Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle) or "What might England be like if the Reformation had never happened?" (Keith Roberts' Pavane). But almost always these are straight extrapolations from the science and technology of the time, without the extra magical dimension used here. Where magic is interpolated into the real world, or a background as clearly related to the real world, it tends to be at the fringes, "beyond the fields we know" or in an unseen world underpinning the everyday, as in Neil Gaiman's novels. The Light Ages is pretty much unique as an alternate history which seriously looks at how things might be different if magic is real. (The only novel I can think of comparable in terms of the use of magic in an alternative reality is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - a children's classic in the genre.) The Light Ages is also one of only a small number of fantasy novels in which magic is an industrial raw material used in processes which produce pollution. (Saruman's industrialisation in The Lord of the Rings is easily the best known example, though there and in The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant it is the misuse of magic which pollutes. Holly Lisle has also set her novels in a world contaminated by fallout from an ancient war between wizards.)

The England portrayed in The Light Ages is very much the polluted, industrial and worker-exploiting England of the Victorian era, Dickensian in inspiration though MacLeod is able to be more explicit in his depiction of squalor than Dickens ever did. While the quality of his evocation in places approaches Dickens, its attention to the industrial poor and radical politics is more akin to the writing of Elizabeth Gaskell. This fantasy novel is one of the best ever written, and any reader of the genre would be well advised to pick it up. They may find that it's too slow for their tastes, but I just found it magical.

Len Deighton: Declarations of War (1971)

Edition: Panther, 1973 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1229

This collection of short stories is the only one published by Deighton; I don't know of other, uncollected tales, so this seems to be something of an experiment in his output (as were several other books he published in the early seventies). As the title suggests, they are all war stories, though all of them have something a little unusual about them. The little twists include such ideas as having a story of air combat in the First World War, very much apparently in the style of W.E. Johns, turn out to be about the Germans. (This particular trick is repeated in another story as well, with the added element that student unrest in the thirties is used to evoke the student agitation of the late sixties.)

The stories are all very short, and they are constructed so that the twist is the most important aspect of every one of them (something more commonly considered a feature of science fiction than other genres - though writers like Frederick Forsyth do this frequently in the thriller). All that most of the stories do is set up the situation, then reveal the twist. This makes them a little short of space for characterisation and so they are filled with stereotypes.

The best story in the collection is the first one, It Must Have Been Two Other Fellows, which has a premise rather similar to the song I Remember It Well. Two men meet in a garage where one is working on his car in his spare time after the Second World War, and they recognise each other - they were together in a tank action in North Africa. Or were they? As they reminisce about it, it becomes clear that their memories of what happened are mutually contradictory. So the reader is left guessing whether they are remembering different, yet similar, events, their mutual recognition being a mistake; or whether the War was a time that neither remembers clearly, even its most exciting moments.

Generally, though, these stories are fun to read once and individually. They do pall a bit read all in one go, even though, as no prior publication details are given, the assumption is that they were intended to form part of this collection from their conception. They are too similar to feel inventive to anyone who reads all the way through, and I was left, as someone who has now read them twice, feeling that Deighton is a novelist trying a little too hard at the unfamiliar craft of short story writing.

Mike Jay: The Air Loom Gang (2003)

Edition: Bantam, 2003
Review number: 1228

The most famously insane person of the eighteenth century was of course George III, one of the most celebrated madmen of all time. Yet his case is not as interesting in itself (rather than for who the patient was) as that of a contemporary Englishman, James Tilly Matthews. The turn of the nineteenth century was a pivotal time in the history of the treatment of the insane, as asyla began to be built which were more like hospitals than the prison-like buildings which preceded them, and the way in which Matthews was incarcerated turned out to be important in the precipitation of this change. Matthews' life and delusions are fascinating in themselves, as well as being unusually well documented (this fact meaning that he is one of the first cases where psychologists have been able to attempt to make a modern diagnosis).

The Matthews case basically begins, as does Jay's book, with a disturbance at the Houses of Parliament. Matthews interrupted the closing stages of a debate in the early 1790s, the one which lead to the declaration of war with revolutionary France, by shouting out "Treason!" from the Visitors' Gallery. He was led away and committed to Bethlem Hospital, the place that is the origin of the term "Bedlam". He remained there for a couple of decades until just before his death. His delusions were principally that a secret organisation was using a device called an "Air Loom" to control people's thoughts and precipitate a war between France and Britain. The really odd thing is that Matthews had actually been involved in secret negotiations with the revolutionary government, so that his delusions had some basis in reality. That of course was not acknowledged by the British government of the time.

So many elements come together in the Matthews case that it is easy to see why Jay chose him as the subject of his book. He has responded to the story with a book which is exciting as well as fascinating. In places it even seems as though it is a historical thriller rather than a non-fictional narrative. (It reminded me of "steampunk" novels, like K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, for example; this is partly because of the science fiction resonances of the air loom device.) The Air Loom Gang is very highly recommended; wonderfully written, engrossing.

Iain M. Banks: Excession (1997)

Edition: Orbit, 1997 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1227

After a couple of novels which, though they seem similar, were not set in Banks' favourite science fiction background, Excession returns to the Culture. Like all the Culture novels, Excession is about how the Culture interacts with outsiders - only this time things are different. In the earlier novels, these contacts are with groups which are technologically inferior, and can be read partly as commentaries on the relationship between the former colonial powers and the cultures with which they came into contact. Here, though, the contact is with something called an Outside Context Event, a potentially disastrous meeting with an alien entity far ahead of the Culture's technology. This takes the form of an excession, the entry of an object into normal space from an unknown origin (excession literally means "going beyond").

The Culture are not the only galactic civilization interested in this alien object. Such analysis as is possible points to incredible potential developments in physics, applicable in technologies such as instantaneous travel, or almost incomprehensible weaponry including the means to subvert the Minds (artificial intelligences) of the Culture, not just an advanced civilization but one very different (one assumes) from that of the object's origin. Apart from Culture splinter group the Elench, the main competitors are the Affronters, whose general behaviour is reminiscent of the most drunken rugby club dinner. There are also complicated political games between the Culture Minds that are involved. The story is, however, told mainly through the experiences of the humans manipulated by the massively more intelligent Minds, punctuated by messages passed between the Minds themselves. (This is typical of the Culture novels, and basically makes it easier for a human reader to identify with characters while feeling that there is more going on behind the scenes than the text reveals.)

Banks' writing in Excession is up to his highest standard, and it has an extremely clever ending. It is the best of the Culture stories and is probably one of the main touchstones for the new school of space opera which is currently popular.

Damon Galgut: The Good Doctor (2003)

Edition: Atlantic, 2003
Review number: 1226

During the apartheid regime in South Africa, the regions set aside as "homelands" were supposed to be some kind of showcase for the idea that there was some measure of freedom for black people. (The phrase used was "self-determination for native peoples".) Even then, they generally seem to have been rather sad places; the South African government used some of the less appealing land in the country for the homelands, much like the land provided by the US government for native American reservations in the nineteenth century. After the fall of the regime, the homelands were quietly reabsorbed; few other countries had even recognised their existence as independent states. The most famous place in a homeland was Sun City in Bophuthatswana, the Las Vegas of South Africa and somewhere which allowed foreigners to visit the country and have the homeland status as a sop to their consciences (but which inspired the protest song I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City).

This is the first of Damon Galgut's novels I have come across, though I gather he is quite an established South African writer. The Good Doctor is set in one of the former homelands, which remains unnamed, in a hospital in its one-time capital. The area is forgotten, the town virtually a ghost town and the hospital is empty, run by a small group of doctors well aware that a job there is a dead end posting. The place is so run down that all the difficult cases are immediately transferred to the much better equipped hospital just across the line which used to be the border.

Frank, the narrator, is a middle aged doctor who has been at the hospital for some time. He has sunk into a slothful state, in a stasis because the job promised him on arrival - to take over as head of the hospital - has not materialised even after several years. He, like the other doctors, has his own reasons for accepting the pointless life he leads at the hospital (the opposite of the stereotypical picture of doctors as dedicated), and he is quite comfortable in a settled and slothful kind of way.

But then the hospital is changed utterly by the arrival of Lawrence, a young, naive and dangerously keen doctor, newly qualified, starting a year's placement there. Because of a lack of usable space, he has to share Frank's room; the accommodation is as run down as the patient care. The Good Doctor is an account of their strange friendship, a kind of companionship based around their major differences in outlook and personality. (These differences are perhaps meant to say something about the changes apparent in personalities shaped before and after the end of apartheid.)

The Good Doctor is a slow novel, as might be expected from the location in a forgotten backwater. What is is about is more atmosphere; it is one of the best depictions of melancholy inertia I have ever read. Mind you, inertia is not that popular a topic for a novel, but it is certainly a difficult task - to make the central theme of a novel something which militates against a dynamic plot. The doctors are unhappy, but are unable to make the effort of will required to move on. The hospital, like the rest of the former homeland, is forgotten and decaying. There are echoes of other writers - the style made me think of a downbeat version of Alexander McCall Smith, and I was also reminded of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter. (Part of both these reminders are probably due to the African setting common to all three novels - though of course I don't think that the continent is not as uniform as this might suggest!) Even with these echoes, though, The Good Doctor is an original and powerful novel.