EVERSION, by Alastair Reynolds

I received this novel from Orbit Books through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.

Alastair Reynolds’ name is always enough to make me pay attention to any new book he publishes: so far I’ve learned to expect space opera stories strongly based on science and dealing with a galaxy-wide scope of events, so my curiosity was piqued by the blurb for Eversion, which sounded like a very different take from those themes. It turned out to be a very unexpected, deeply engaging read that held my attention from start to finish and offered a quite unusual story that mixed some Groundhog Day vibes with tales of exploration and an alien mystery shrouded in a quasi-Lovecraftian shade of fear: in short, a story that compelled me to burn the proverbial midnight oil to see where the author would take me.

The novel starts, quite unexpectedly, on a sailing ship from the early 19th Century, the Demeter, traveling through the icy waters of Norway: Dr. Silas Coade, the ship’s surgeon, is the narrating voice of the story as he relates the goal of the expedition, a search for a mysterious construct – named the Edifice – that could be reached through a narrow passage in the ice. The expedition members include, besides the good doctor, the leader of the group, boisterous Master Topolsky; Coronel Ramos, a weapons and explosives expert; tormented mathematician Dupin, and a few others, including Lady Ada Cossile, a noblewoman of great knowledge and prickly disposition.  As their intended destination approaches, we get to know the various members of the group and learn about the frictions generated by such different characters sharing close quarters: once the passage is located, though, and the wreck of a previous visiting ship – the Europa – is discovered, tempers flare in a heated exchange of accusations, and then disaster strikes in a most unexpected way. But it’s not the end, because in the next chapter we find once again Dr. Coade on Demeter, only this time he finds himself on a late 19th Century steamship, forging the waters near Patagonia – and still looking for a mysterious passage and an equally mysterious Edifice…

The pattern repeats itself again as the time frame proceeds forward and Demeter morphs from sail ship to steamship to dirigible to spaceship, always seeking to uncover the mystery of the Edifice, always forging through a dangerous passage and always meeting with disaster in one form or another. Some elements remain the same throughout the various versions of the story, however: the characters and their respective roles; Dr. Coade’s addiction to drugs and his literary aspirations which take the form of speculative fiction in which he imagines more advanced technology; Ramos’ head injury which Coade treats successfully and which leads to a close friendship between the two men; Ada Cossile’s pointed remarks which seem to target the doctor more than anyone else, and the hints that she might know more about him than circumstances seem to warrant.  It all adds to a compelling narrative that kept me reading on as the picture gained more details with each new iteration, until the core of the puzzle was revealed and it opened the door toward the real situation and danger facing the complement of the Demeter.

The buildup of narrative pressure is certainly the strongest element in Eversion: from the moment in which the story resumes after the first catastrophic ending, although in a slightly different form, it’s clear that there is more at work here than meets the eye, and obtaining the answers to the many questions posed by the story becomes the main attraction in this compelling novel, where the new elements manage only to tease the readers’ imagination, leading them to formulate hypotheses that most of the times prove wrong. When I previously mentioned the Groundhog Day vibes I might have made this story sound like a series of repetitions, but it’s far from that, not only because of the changes in temporal and technological setting for each iteration, but also because there is always some new detail that adds something to the overall picture, while never offering a way to pierce the mystery.  Being kept guessing might prove somewhat frustrating, but it’s also a sure way to compel you to forge ahead and look for the final revelation – which will prove to be quite unexpected.

One of the other intriguing components in this novel is the enigma tied to the Edifice, a place whose size and shape appear almost Lovecraftian in their mind- and space-bending quality and also because of the bothersome messages left by the unfortunate crew of Europa about the horrors waiting there: there is nothing more chilling than an incomplete message about something terrible and inescapable coming from the depths, and here it’s also paired with Dr. Coade recurring dream about a

[…] stumbling progress down a stone tunnel, a scurrying nightmare charged with the terrible conviction that I myself were already dead.

which will get a startling but consistent explanation once the veil will be pierced.

Compared to Alastair Reynolds’ previous works, Eversion lacks the sense of galactic vastness one can find in them, but it’s the rather confined background of this story which allows him to explore in greater depth the characters (something which I felt was somewhat missing from his other novels) and to linger on their interactions and personalities. There is a greater focus here on friendship and interpersonal relationships, mixed with some intriguing discussions about ethics and the kind of acceptable sacrifices to be tolerated in the quest for knowledge: it all gains an intriguing meaning once we learn about the reality of the situation facing Coade and the crew of Demeter, adding depth and humanity to what, until that point, was just a puzzling mystery.

While quite different from my previous experience with Alastair Reynolds’ writing, Eversion proved to be a fascinating novel combining science fiction and mystery in a seamless blend: prepare for something unexpected but totally engrossing…

My Rating:

YMIR, by Rich Larson

I received this novel from Orbit Books, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.

Chillingly grim but totally fascinating. If I were asked to sum up my experience with Ymir in five words, these would be the perfect choice: this novel’s blurb likens it to a spacefaring version of Beowulf, and there are indeed some connections to that famous epic (including a request for a monster’s arm as a trophy), but Ymir is very much its own story, and a compelling – if sometimes harsh – one.

The alien planet of Ymir is a frozen, forbidding wasteland in which humanity (or rather a genetically modified branch of it) toils by mining its resources under the aegis of the Company, a ruthless cartel which grinds its employees with little or no regards for their rights or comforts, and quashes any attempt at rebellion with swift brutality.  But the Company’s profit is threatened by grendels, alien constructs which are part flesh and part cybernetic components: a recent attack from a grendel in the depths of a mine cost the Company a number of workers and, far worse from their point of view, a stop to the extraction activities, so Yorick, the best grendel hunter in their employ, is dispatched to Ymir to solve the problem.

Yorick was kept in torpor (a sort of cold-storage suspended animation the Company employs to make its assets last longer, among other uses) for a long time, and once awakened he’s not happy to be returned to his home planet, from which he’s been absent for a subjective time of ten years, while on the world twenty have effectively elapsed.  The hunter is considered a traitor on his home world, since he joined the ranks of the Company and committed some serious atrocities in their employ, but what’s worse he has some huge unfinished business to deal with: before he left he violently clashed with his brother Thello, who shot him with a needle gun taking away the lower half of Yorick’s face, which has since then been replaced by a prosthesis (warning: this is something of a gross detail in the narrative).

The timing for the hunt could not be worse, however, because a widespread rebellion against the Company is brewing under the icy surface of the planet, and Thello might be at the center of it, forcing Yorick to deal with the conflicting emotions generated by his past associations and his present duties: the road he finds himself traveling is fraught with dangers, and they don’t come only from the grendel’s threat…

‘Fascinating’ was the word I first used for this novel, and it is indeed despite its bleakness, which starts with the descriptions of Ymir, where darkness and ice extend as far as the eye can see, taking their toll on the miners and reflecting in their living spaces, where there is almost no respite from the harshness of the land. The workers are just as hard and unforgiving as the environment they live in, the physical changes wrought on them from generations turning them into creatures as alien as the place they live in: there are several flashbacks from Yorick as he recalls his and Thello’s childhood, marred by the lack of acceptance from their peers – who called them half-breeds – and by their mother’s abusive behavior, a consequence of her though living and working conditions. Young Yorick wanted nothing else but to escape from Ymir, taking Thello with him, while his younger brother felt stronger ties with the place and its people, and that difference was the spark that ultimately led to their final, bloody encounter.

Still, family ties can exert a strong pull on Yorick, and from the start we see him torn between love and hate for Thello and the planet were they were born: getting to know Yorick, and connecting with him as a character, is the most difficult part of the book, because he’s not an easy or relatable figure.  Past actions have branded him a monster, and the old disfigurement added to the image, but what makes Yorick such a anti-hero is his self-destructive attitude: we see him literally wallowing in recreative drugs or in performance-enhancing drugs, and it’s clear that what’s left under that mountain of self abuse is a broken individual with little hope and almost no dreams – only nightmares. The skilled, heartless hunter is nothing but a shell under which the damaged child still dwells:

He takes his space like a gas giant, making his body as big as he can. […] Inside, when nobody can see him, he always makes himself small.

What ultimately saves Yorick from being a despicable character (and I assure you that looking past that constantly drugged fog is NOT easy…) is his desire to re-establish a bond with Thello, to still try and save him as he was unable to in the past.  I’m sorry I can’t say more because I risk treading on spoiler territory, but Yorick’s attempt at a redemption arc is what manages to bring to the surface what little humanity is left in him. And this is enough.

Ymir might not be the easiest book to read, but it offers such a compelling narrative that it will prove quite difficult to set aside.

My Rating:

OGRES, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I’ve read only a handful of books by Adrian Tchaikovsky so far, but enough to expect a change in style and narrative perspective in each new work I pick up, and Ogres is no different, indeed. And while it would be difficult to pin this story down to a specific genre, there is the right amount or sheer weirdness in it that I feel it would be appropriate to classify it in one of its own.

Ogres starts like a fantasy tale, both in descriptions and mood: Torquell is the son of the village headman, and is what’s usually termed as a ‘lovable rogue’; he’s known for his scarce attitude toward learning or following in his father’s footsteps and even more for his reckless pranks, which are more often than not viewed with indulgent annoyance and the hope that he might one day grow into his expected role. Even his forays into the forest visiting the outlaws led by a certain Roben (here the tongue-in-cheek authorial divertissement is quite plain) is viewed as nothing more than the kind of youthful enthusiasm Torquell will one day outgrow. Hopefully.

But such an idyllic setting is marred as soon as we learn about the ogres: the real rulers of the world, the Masters everyone must obey and pay homage – and taxes – to. Ogres are bigger and meaner than actual humans (or monkeys, as they are scornfully called by their masters), their rule of the land a divinely bestowed right, their powers and appetites larger than life – sometimes extending to human flesh.  The arrival of Sir Peter, the village landlord, with his son Gerald, is the spark that will ignite once again Torquell’s fiery temper, leading him to an act that will forever change his life and propel him on a journey of discovery and change.

It’s with the appearance of the Ogres that the questions about this world start popping up: what, until that point, looked like a rural fantasy setting, moves toward a more modern territory with the appearance of cars, teeming cities and clearly advanced technology, so that I wondered about the Ogres’ nature and the true narrative placement of the story. Should it be considered a parallel, dystopian reality, or a SF story in which the Ogres are nothing more than aliens ruling the enslaved humans? Adrian Tchaikovsky dances around this issue for a long time, offering small details that manage to fill a little – but never completely – the picture: that is, until Torquell himself has gathered all the clues and finally arrives at the dreadful answer.

Torquell’s evolution, as a person, is the backbone of this novella, which feels quite tightly packed with information despite its brevity: he goes from happy-go-lucky, carefree youth to reluctant hero to charismatic leader, embracing the knowledge and thirst for learning that he had always spurned in the past, the process turning from a small pebble to an unstoppable avalanche and mirroring his rise as a leader with a growing following that threatens the status quo.  His journey allows the reader a closer look at this world, one where the huge social divide between the Ogres and their human subject is borne out of exploitation and fear, a world where failure to perform one’s assigned tasks results in savage mistreatment at best, or ends on an ogre’s table at worst. There are passages in which Torquell witnesses teeming slums, filled with hopeless people being worked to death, which might remind the readers of some Dickensian description of the industrial revolution, and others in which ogres fight senseless wars using humans as chess pieces on a board, their equally senseless deaths being nothing more than a game played by their masters.

All these revelations, everything that Torquell witnesses and learns, create an expanding picture that moves, slowly but surely, toward the final resolution, one that’s reached forging through a constant, oppressive sense of doom that is not lifted even when our “hero” amasses success after success, threatening the Ogres’ supremacy.  If there is any glimmer of hope visible at the end of this story, it’s a very remote one, and heavily dependent on our nature as people and on the troublesome realization that it might ultimately drive us to the extremes – and their consequences – depicted in this story.

My last, but by no means least, consideration about Ogres concerns the author’s use of the second person throughout the narrative – an unusual method, granted, but one which for me confers a feel of immediacy to the story that made it more real, more tangible: and in the end, where we learn who is addressing Torquell with that constant “you”, we are hit with the final, most unexpected twist in the whole story, one that would be a huge understatement to call ’surprising’. And one that proved to be the proverbial “cherry on top” of an irresistible narrative “cake”.  Superbly done indeed…

My Rating:

THE PEACEKEEPER (The Good Lands #1), by B.L. Blanchard

I received this novel from 47North through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.

The narrative core of The Peacekeeper comes from the blending of two elements: a classic whodunit investigation and an alternate version of our world in which the American continent was not colonized by European explorers, so that the Native populations were able to thrive and progress toward their own form of modern society.  No explanation is given about the historical “hiccup” which prompted the creation of this ramification from our reality (although I hope that the next books in the series will answer this question), but the result is a society which pays more attention to nature and its conservation, one that created a very interesting set of laws, a theme I will explore in more detail later on.

Such a well-balanced society is not, however, immune from acts of violence.  The novel’s main character is Chibenashi, the titular Peacekeeper (i.e. a police officer) in the small village of Baawitigong: his mother was brutally killed twenty years before, at the height of the Manoomin harvest festival, by her husband, who freely admitted his guilt for the murder and has been locked up in prison ever since.  Chibenashi, who at the time was a teenager and feels guilty for having indulged in drink that night, and therefore could not be there to save his mother, is carrying the heavy burden of caring for his younger sister Ashwiya, who never recovered from the trauma of the murder and is heavily dependent on her brother who is her only practical and emotional contact with the rest of the world.

On the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy, as the present Manoomin harvest is being celebrated, a new murder shakes the small community, and this time the victim is Meoquanee, Chibenashi’s neighbor and helper, and his mother’s closest friend. The modus operandi looks the same as the one from twenty years prior, and this casts heavy doubts on Chibenashi father’s guilt, prompting the Peacekeeper to travel to Shikaakwa (Chicago? I’ve been wondering ever since…) to examine the clues through the more advanced means offered by the big city.  Once there, Chibenashi will have to confront his past – and himself – in many ways, and the journey of discovery will take him on unexpected and quite harrowing paths…

The Peacekeeper can be enjoyed on more than one level: there is of course the alternate history section which shows a world that is at the same technological level of our own, with computers, smartphones and sophisticated investigative techniques, but that developed in such a way as to not overly stress the planet’s resources, in keeping with the Native Americans’ way of integrating with nature so that a balance can always be achieved.  This outlook is what also created a very intriguing justice system which does not rely on punishment but rather on rehabilitation through reparatory actions toward the victims, who need to be “made whole” again after their suffering.  It’s a utopian point of view – and the story itself shows how the system does not always work – but it’s a fascinating one and it’s showcased quite a bit throughout the story, turning it into one of its more captivating aspects.

Where the murder investigation is quite appealing, it’s not the focal point of the novel: I have to admit that early on I started suspecting a certain individual who in the end is revealed as the real killer, but the lack of surprise on this front did not detract from my eagerness in discovering the truth of it as Chibenashi follows the often contradictory clues from both murders – even though I had no doubt about the identity of the murderer, I wanted to know why, and how both killings were perpetrated. What really held my attention here is Chibenashi’s journey of discovery, not only of the mystery he’s investigating, but of himself and of what drives him.

Chibenashi is not an easy character to connect with, given that he’s somewhat depressed and isolated, but once I understood where his attitude came from, the almost impossible burden he toils under, I could not avoid feeling a great deal of sympathy for him and was able to forgive the sometimes abrasive way he deals with the people he comes in contact with, particularly once he finds himself as the proverbial fish out of water in Shikaakwa. Even though he never says it out loud – even to himself – Chibenashi is a trapped individual: trapped by his responsibility toward what’s left of his family, by the stigma of being the son of a murderer, by his inability to envision a life beyond the limited (and stifling?) confines of Baawitigong.  He is so used to the self-imposed limitations of his life, that he’s unable to conceive of anything else:

[…] you get so used to the pain that you don’t even notice it anymore […] You would only notice its absence.

That’s the reason I was able to root for him even when he took some questionable decisions, because I wanted to see him break free of the chains holding him down, and that’s why the difficult, painful journey that he takes as he investigates the case, turned into a very compelling read I feel confident in recommending if you want to read a mystery with a very unique slant.

Probably the resolution is the part where the story faltered a little for me, due to the real killer’s long, drawn-out explanation that for me took some of the wind out of the story’s proverbial sails, but it’s a very small “incident” in what proved to be an otherwise smooth and intriguing road. And I will certainly welcome more stories set in this fascinating version of our world.

My Rating: