I used to be a big fan of Jeff Noon back in 1994 with Vurt, one of the very rare books I've read more than once in my life. I thought A Man of ShadowsI used to be a big fan of Jeff Noon back in 1994 with Vurt, one of the very rare books I've read more than once in my life. I thought A Man of Shadows might be a return to form for Noon, a trippy, surreal experience with tight plotting and prose. Instead, what I got was a mere shadow of Noon's former brilliance.
The setting should be intriguing: a place with unending daylight, where people go by their own personal time zones. Sounds like it should be right up there with Miéville's The City & the City, but it doesn't hold a candle to it. Any semblance of world-building happens mostly on the sidelines, often through disconnected guidebook entries, making it much more tell than show. In essence, they feel like reading Noon's world-building notes instead of a carefully-crafted novel.
This could still work if the story or characters were engaging, but wow. John Nyquist is very much your archetypical hard-boiled detective, and that's the most interesting thing I can say about him. The story itself is so by-the-numbers it's almost pastiche.
I guess it felt like a grand idea to write a typical Noir story in an ever-white setting, but nothing ever leaps off the page. This is a far cry from Altered Carbon, for instance, or Brin's lesser-known Kiln People, which both revealed the specificity of their amazing premises through the inevitable deviations from the hard-boiled formula.
In other words, A Man of Shadows neither illuminates its setting, nor does it cast the hard-boiled genre into a new light....more
The Half-Made World is a good representation of the strengths and limitations of the "New Weird" brand of SF inspired by China Mieville. But although The Half-Made World is a good representation of the strengths and limitations of the "New Weird" brand of SF inspired by China Mieville. But although the novel's powerful setting starts out full of promises, it runs out of steam completely before the novel is through.
The setting of The Half-Made World starts out exciting and fresh, with its mix of cursed gunslingers carrying demon-haunted guns, and the grim, Nazi-like servant armies of steampunk sentient Engines. There's also the promise of an unmade part of the world, where the laws of physics and biology have not yet settled down into stable patterns. These alone go a long way to explain the appeal of this novel. The writing is crisp, although some parts could have done with a bit of tighter editing. (Worst offender, paraphrased: "he said actorly." This gets my nomination for worst adverb ever.)
Unfortunately, the storytelling doesn't live up to its setting. The weirdness and the madness seem to exist for their own sake, instead of providing a refreshing canvas for characters to develop and grow. The main point of the story is the conflict between the Engines, representing industry and order, and the Gun, terrorist superheroes who seem to crave chaos for chaos' sake.
The problem is that neither of these factions attracts much sympathy. They're both unappealing, and their soldiers fight for the sake of fighting, without much attachment to the cause. Ultimately, the conflict is so large that it swallows up everything else, and leaves us with characters devoid of poignant internal conflicts or personal motivations.
Creedmoor, the servant of the Gun, is appealing as an antihero, but unfortunately, we never get a good grasp on his motivations. Moreover, the Guns make him so incredibly powerful that we never fear for his safety, except when the story contrives to rob him of said powers for a moment. There is Liv, a psychiatrist from a more civilized part of the world, who is mildly interesting, except that she doesn't drive much of the plot forward. The third POV character is Lowry, a soldier of the Line, but frankly, his chapters could have been cut out entirely; all he does is follow Creedmoor, until he gets lost in the final confrontation and we never learn his true fate.
The story meanders and rambles. Character actions don't always make sense. Sometimes they do things without struggling much, and the world just seems to bend to the will of the author to see his characters succeed. One of the supporting characters gets dropped from the story altogether, and only gets remembered by another character two chapters later. At one point, Creedmoor conveniently takes himself out of the story to go on a nonsensical hunt, which accomplishes nothing whatsoever.
Ultimately, the biggest disappointment of the novel is the setting itself. The "unmade" portion of the world beckons for half the novel, but when the protagonists finally reach it, there is none of the madness and wonder we expect. Instead, we find a wilderness of pines, with slightly twisted versions of normal wild animals (often just described as 'deer-looking but not quite'), and a boring village of idealists who are meant to inspire our sympathy; the chapters dedicated to them make the book's pace grind to a halt.
Even worse, the last chapters take away any sense of closure that the book built towards, and instead offer a convenient MacGuffin for the (groan) next installment in the trilogy.
No thanks. One meandering, unfulfilling novel is enough for me....more
China Miéville's first foray into science fiction territory is further proof that he possesses monstrous talent. Miéville could have pigeonholed himseChina Miéville's first foray into science fiction territory is further proof that he possesses monstrous talent. Miéville could have pigeonholed himself in fantasy, and written Bas-Lag novels for the rest of his life. Instead, he took his 'New Weird' credo seriously, and ported it across genres. And "Embassytown" proves that science fiction is a great fit for New Weird.
"Embassytown" has all the hallmarks of stellar science fiction. It builds a plausible yet outlandish reality, and then meticulously tears it apart with a literary crowbar. The Ariekei, the main aliens in "Embassytown", are truly alien and incomprehensible, in true Miéville fashion; and yet when the chips fall, they tell the reader about themselves.
In this case, the central story of "Embassytown" is about language. It's about the necessity of lies for language to work. It's about new ideas, and how they can revolutionize the world. It's a metaphor about metaphors. It's a truly original work of speculative fiction.
If that sounds like a head trip, it's because it is. And for a book that talks about language, it sure as hell wields it well. Read this novel with a dictionary if you want to appreciate all the archaisms and wordplays that Miéville brings to bear. It's not an easy read, but it's very a very rewarding one.
At this point I'm ready to call Miéville a SFF genius for the ages. Kraken, I hope, was a hiccup along the way; because whereas many other authors start their career strong and then dwindle, Miéville impresses me more with each passing year. I didn't think he could outdo The City & The City; yet here we are....more
"The City & The City" is a work of staggering imagination, which in its depth and metaphor rises above even the excellence of his previous novels. Thr"The City & The City" is a work of staggering imagination, which in its depth and metaphor rises above even the excellence of his previous novels. Through the entangled cities of his story, Miéville writes about how politics and social privilege separates us even when we live next to one another.
The characters and the plot are interesting, but it is Miéville's meticulous world-building that steals the show. His story is filled both with details that make the city and the city feel 'authentic' Eastern European - not the least of which the language. But also, the entire foundation for the cities' weird dychotomy makes sense in a twisted way, and the description of life there is mesmerizing.
The story does unravel in the third act, which is a pity; and there are times when I wish Miéville stuck to the spirit of police procedurals, instead of adopting its clichés. But overall, this is a staggering work of imagination from a master of the genre, and one which I look forward to rereading....more
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