The Neutronium Alchemist - Peter F. Hamilton

Last October I read Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction on a trip to my girlfriend's family in Norway. These books are ideal for travel. Huge but not taking up too much space in the suitcase. Although I was not overly impressed with the first novel in the Night's Dawn trilogy, my compulsion not to leave series unfinished kicked in so I decided to give him another shot. The Neutronium Alchemist is most certainly not free of the things that annoyed me in the previous novel, but I must admit it is as compulsively readable as the first one. It is still bloated though. In fact, the page count of this volume is even higher than that of the previous book. This series could have been so much better if it had been a bit leaner.

The dead are returning from a horrible limbo called the beyond and take over the living's bodies. The souls of these possessed are locked away in the recesses of the mind, always aware, but unable to influence matters. This horrible fate is bad enough, but the returned dead are also able to manipulate matter in ways science can't explain. They are extraordinarily powerful and have no intention of leaving or dying again. Faced with the double threat of an invasion of angry deceased and religious turmoil caused by the revelation of a horrible afterlife, the various factions try to pull together and come up with a strategy to deal with the greatest existential crisis in human history.

The situation is quite dire at the beginning of this novel. Possessed are overtaking one planet after another, usually wrecking them in the process. They are far from unified though. To illustrate that, Hamilton gives us three major points of view of possessed characters. Two of them are historical figures. Al Capone, whose syphilis wracked mind resumes to working order after being inserted into a healthy body. He has no clue how society developed since his death, but what he does understand is power. Soon he becomes a force to be reckoned with. Christian Fletcher, the Bounty mutineer, is pretty much his opposite. Well mannered and thoughtful where Capone is crude and decisive, he has quite a different view on what the possessed ought to be doing in the universe. A third, more chaotic point of view is presented by Kiera Salter, who is locked in a struggle for power with the mind of a habitat in orbit around a gas giant.

There is another possessed with a big role in the story. Quinn is turning into the Gollum of the series. He is clearly evil, but not aligned with any of the parties. He is in fact so purely bad that he is by far the most boring character in the book. He will use and discard anyone and anything to get nearer to his goal, which appears to be turning Earth into a satanic planet. Where Capone is building something, corrupt as it may be, Quinn just leaves destruction in his wake and doesn't look back. I hope Hamilton will find a better use for this character in the next book.

On the other side of the conflict it would appear most of the characters are busy chasing what appears to be a side plot. Captain Calvert is busy chasing a rogue scientist who knows the location of a weapon so powerful it can snuff out whole suns. He has half the intelligence officers of several other human factions on his tale. While I don't doubt this weapon, The Alchemist as the characters call it, will be important somehow in the next book, it seems like Hamilton is spending an awful lot of words on it while there are clearly other pressing matters to attend to. One good thing about this quest is that Calvert is too busy to have sex though. The apparently inevitable sex scenes are moved to Capone's sections, which I have to admit is somewhat in character, if still very much a male fantasy.

What bothered me most about the plot is how Hamilton tiptoes around the big philosophical questions his premise raises. There is a proven afterlife and apparently it isn't pretty. The two main branches of humanity each face their own challenges. The Adamists take their name from the patriarch of the large monotheistic relations. Their holy books will require some rewriting. The Edenists view death differently. They digitalize their personality and live on in the Edenist habitats. If their souls end up in the beyond anyway, what does that mean for the programming they leave behind? There is some interesting material here to explore and yet pretty much every character consciously ignores these questions. You'd think that somewhere in the 1,200 pages of this novel, a bit of reflection on these things could have been inserted. It would certainly have added a bit of depth to the novel.

Hamilton raises the stakes in The Neutronium Alchemist, as a middle book is supposed to do. It does more or less suffer from the same problems as the previous novel though. Bloated, repetitive and not very demanding. Although Hamilton tries to make it a multi-faceted conflict, he avoids the really big issue in the story in favour of politics and battles. That might be fine with some readers. I would have liked a little more from this novel but after The Reality Dysfunction, that was hardly what one could expect. Another beach read then. I think I will save the final volume for the next trip abroad.

Book Details
Title: The Neutronium Alchemist
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Publisher: PAN Books
Pages: 1,273
Year: 2012
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4472-0858-7
First published: 1997

The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton is the massive first novel in his Night's Dawn trilogy. Hamilton is one of a group of British writers producing what can be considered a reinvented form of space opera. He is usually listed with people like Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter and Paul J, McAuley. I haven't read too extensively in that particular subgenre, the only author on that list whose work I am familiar with is Alastair Reynolds. While I can see the similarities in their approach to science fiction, this novel leads me to believe Reynolds is the better writer. In The Reality Dysfunction the emphasis seems to be very much on the soap opera part of the subgenre.

In the twenty-seventh century, humanity has colonized many planets and made contact with alien species. Genetic engineering has made widespread adaptations to living in space or alien environments possible. Space ships can be grown as well as built. With this increase in technological capabilities, the destructive power of weapons has increased as well. The Confederation navy is keeping the peace however, and a prosperous future for all of humanity is within reach. Then, an indentured criminal makes contact with a truly terrifying entity. It has made contact with sentient species before and caused the suicide of an entire species. This extinct species called the phenomenon the reality dysfunction. A nightmare of galactic proportions is about to descend on humanity.

The first thing that will strike the reader about this novel is that it is huge. I read it during my trip to Norway two weeks ago and its very size is why I picked it. One book that would take a while to finish but doesn't take up much space in the suitcase. My mass market paperback weighs in at 1,225 pages. I think it is probably in the 400,000 words range. In other words, there are trilogies shorter than this novel. It has to be said that Hamilton paints on a large canvas but that still does not excuse the excessive length of it. The novel is in fact severely bloated. So much so that more than a few readers will find it exhausting or even unreadable.

It takes the author about 200 pages to even give us the first hint about the nature of the threat humanity is facing. Most of the first  half of the novel is reserved for worldbuilding and introducing a very large cast of characters. Every location the novel visits is introduced with an  infodump of several pages on the history, settlement, development, society and environment of the planet. Reading a lot of fantasy, I can admire a good bit of worldbuilding but Hamilton manages to make it tiresome in this book. With a bit of editing and a better balance between pace and worldbuilding this book could have been, and should have been, a lot shorter.

The cast is huge but it does have two more or less central characters. The first is a trader and captain of the star ship Lady MacBeth Joshua Calvert. He could have been modelled on Poul Anderson's David Falkayn. Roguish, independent and resourceful, Calvert has a good eye for the best deal and an even better eye for opportunities to fool the authorities. He also has a way with women that is rather grating. Not until the very end of the novel does someone point out to him that he essentially treats them like shit. The sex scenes involving Calvert are another repetitive element that could have been axed to keep the page count down. I had mixed feelings about this character but he is the best developed one of the bunch. Most of the other characters are much more in service of the plot.

Where Calvert can be thought of as the protagonist, Quinn Dexter is clearly the antagonist. Originally from Earth, a place crippled by overpopulation and environmental degradation, he is convicted to indentured service on Lalonde. He is a rather stereo-typical villain. Egoistic (a trait he shares with Calvert), ruthless and determined to carve out a position of power for himself on his new home planet. He does so by any means necessary, until he runs into someone even more dangerous than he is anyway. I could say that there is not much development in his character but that would strictly speaking not be true. He more or less transforms into another person. Going into that would give away too much of the plot though.

Although the threat encountered by colonists on the planet Lalonde is the main conflict in the novel, there is quite a bit more going on in human occupied space. Humanity has split into two branches: the Adamists and the Edenists. The Edenists are extensively genetically engineered humans. They form a mostly atheist society without much in the way of social stratification. The Adamists are more diverse but tend to keep the genetic engineering down to very basic levels, like eliminating hereditary disease. There is a good deal of mistrust between the two, which I suspect Hamilton will exploit in the next two volumes. This dichotomy is one of the many present in the novel. Hamilton likes doing things in two, which does not always result in the most nuanced of visions.

While there were quite a few things I wasn't too impressed with in this novel, I have to admit it is compulsively readable after the first four hundred pages or so. You really want to find out how the story of this or that character continues even if you have to wait a hundred pages for them to show up again. In essence, The Reality Dysfunction is a great beach read. It'll keep you reading while not being overly demanding. There is much better written space opera out there in my opinion, but I can still see why Hamilton has acquired an audience. Maybe I'll even pick up the second volume the next time I'm travelling.

Book Details
Title: The Reality Dysfunction
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Publisher: PAN Books
Pages: 1,225
Year: 1997
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-330-34032-8
First published: 1996

The City & The City - China Miéville

Some years ago I read Miéville's Bas-Lag novels. They are challenging reads, especially to a second language reader. Miéville's vocabulary is impressive and he uses it all in those novels. The books centre on the fictional city of New Corbuzon, a place that is as much a character in the book as the people that live in it. Cities, especially strange ones, seem to attract Miéville. He displays a whole range of different genres in his novels but wether it is New Corbuson, Un-Lun-Dun or Besźel/Ul Qoma or Embassytown, strange urban environments seem to connect his work. The City and the City does strange very well. It was nominated for an unbelievable number of awards. After having read it, I'm not surprised it won as many of them as it did.

Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel police, is handed what will turn out to be the most complicated case of his career. The body of a young woman is found dumped in a shady part of town. Soon, the trail leads to the city of Ul Qoma, where Borlú has no jurisdiction. The cities have a long and complicated history together, both geographically and politically. To guard the status quo between them, an organisation called Breach can be invoked for crimes during which the border between the two has been illegally crossed. To Borlú's surprise, no such illegal crossing has taken place. Breach cannot be called upon. Instead, Borlú is sent to Ul Qoma to help the local authorities solve the case.

It took me a while to wrap my mind around the city Miéville is describing. They are two states, essentially sharing the same physical space, where by convention and law, the inhabitants of both cities choose not to see, or as Miéville puts it, to 'unsee' each other. Some streets are fully Besźel, some fully Ul Qoma, others shared or 'crosshatched' as Miéville puts it. It's a situation that constantly influences the inhabitants, and demands that they carefully choose what to see and what not. Miéville's point here is clearly that we all choose to see or unsee certain parts of our environment. That how we perceive our surroundings is partially a choice, to a point dictated by custom or what is specifically targeted at us. Miéville puts a lot of examples in the text of how this situation influences daily life and how it has shaped the cities. The first time you go out after finishing the book you'll probably look around and ask yourself what you  normally aren't seeing.

For some reason the situation in Miéville's fictional city - it is suggested that it is located somewhere in Eastern Europe, perhaps on the Black Sea coast - reminded me a bit of Jerusalem taken a different turn some time in the past. A city that is so layered in history, where several peoples and religions have a claim on the place, and where sharing the place is both unthinkable and the only way to a lasting peace, you can almost see something like what Miéville describes happening. Then again, and Miéville works this dark side of human nature into his novel as well, there are always those who want it all and do not mind shedding blood to get it.

The novel has a definite fantastical aspect to it, but for a large part it is a police procedural. The unique politics of the place gives Miéville plenty of opportunities to develop a good conspiracy. It may start out with a single murder but that proves to be only the tip of the iceberg. The plot itself is very convoluted. In the end it falls into place but I must admit that the final revelation was not quite as interesting to me as the way Miéville uses the plot to show the various ways of seeing the city. The author uses characters from both sides of the border as well as foreigners, and then has Borlú try to make sense of their perspective. It's very cleverly done but I'm not entirely sure it will convince fans of more conventional murder mysteries. You need to be able to enjoy the synthesis of the two genres to really appreciate  it.

I had a lot less difficulty with Miéville's English in this novel than with the language in Perdido Street Station for some reason. It's not that Miéville suddenly abandons his preference for long, complex sentences and matching vocabulary but it's not as extravagant as I remember from his earlier books. Or maybe my English has improved in the past few years. The first explanation is more likely, a darker, less extravagant style seems more fitting.

The City and the City is one of those novels that takes fantasy to a different level. It clearly fantastic yet impossible to categorize, it experiments with fusing genres, with language and with perspective. It nods to  some of the great writers in mystery, fantasy and science fiction, as well as a main stream literature. You could probably do a thesis on everything that went into this novel. In the end I guess it is the way in which Miéville balances the influences, themes and plot that makes this novel stand out. He is ambitious in what he attempts and he pulls it off. That is a rare feat indeed. If you are up for something different and something challenging, The City and the City is a good place to start.

Book Details
Title: The City & The City
Author: China Miéville
Publisher: PAN
Pages: 373
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-330-53419-2
First published: 2009

The Scar – China Miéville

Just over two years ago I read Miéville’s first Bas-Lag novel Perdido Street Station as part of an online discussion that died some 200 pages into the story. I finished the novel anyway and it left me with mixed feelings. Perdido Street Station is a very challenging book for someone who reads English as a second language. Miéville has a huge vocabulary and he is not afraid to use it. This in itself is not a bad thing but the lavish descriptions of New Crobuzon left me with the impression that perhaps the book was a bit overwritten. Although my to read stack includes The Scar, Iron Council and Miéville’s short story collection Looking for Jake and Other Stories, I hadn’t found the patience to attempt another of Miéville's novels until last week. In a way The Scar is every bit as rich and complex as Perdido Street Station but I found it a much easier book to get into. Perdido Street Station may have been Miéville's breakthrough, but as far as I am concerned The Scar is definitely the better book.

No longer feeling safe in her native New Crobuzon, Bellis Coldwine has accepted a post at the merchant vessel Terpsichoria as a translator. She is desperate for a way to leave the city so in order to get the job, which will eventually take her to the New Crobuzon colony of Nova Esperium, she has learnt a new language in a month. A few years hiding away in that far corner of the world ought to be enough to let things cool off in the city. Unfortunately the trip does not go as expected. During the conversations between the captain of the ship and a group of New Crobuzon allies, disturbing information surfaces. The appearance of a New Crobuzon agent forces the captain to drastically alter his plans.

To make matters worse the ship is boarded by pirates and while most of the crew and passengers are spared, the captain is killed. The pirates are part of the Armada, a vast floating city travelling the world’s oceans. This slow, cumbersome raft constructed of captured ships can only keep out of the hands of the major naval powers of the world but keeping its existence secret. Everybody is offered a place in their society but no one is allowed to leave. Bellis is stuck and she resents this fact, especially after she gets wind of a threat to New Crobuzon. Escaping to warn the city is not the only problem she faces however; the Armada’s leaders are chasing a dream of their own, one that risks the very existence of the Armada.

In Perdido Street Station we’ve gotten to know the city of New Crobuzon intimately. Miéville describes the city as warped reflection of Victorian London, infused with strange technologies and many even stranger sentient creatures. In The Scar he turns his powerful imagination outwards; the city is only mentioned, none of the action actually takes place there. For the most part we are at sea. The sea Miéville describes is no less wonderful than the city. Playing with our fear of the deep, and what might be hiding down there, he creates a spectacular array of strange animals and sentient life forms. The Armada is a society well adapted to live among such creatures. The scale, the organisation and the architecture of the city is utterly fantastic and makes for a great backdrop. I must admit I had the feeling that it would be ripped apart during the first bit of heavy weather they encountered but don’t let that bother you. The absurd or impossible are very much part of this novel.

The story itself is one that gradually reveals new layers of most of the major players in the book. Bellis has the idea she is constantly being manipulated and to an extend that is true. Especially early on in the book she is quite naive, rather surprising for someone for a metropole like New Crobuzon. She quite willingly lets herself be guided into all manner of activities that have major unintended (by Bellis at least) consequences. I thought her tendency to bemoan her own gullibility and inability to get away from the Armada were a bit too much at times. She does not seem to miss anybody in particular, just the city of New Crobuzon itself. It does not strike me to struggle quite so much against her captivity. When she does take action Bellis manages to get herself in the thick of thing though. She’s present at quite a few memorably events in the history of the Armada.

Bellis’ experiences leave her scarred, both physically and mentally. This scarring of the characters and the world is a very strong motif in the story. Very few of the characters escape it. Scars are seen as a sign of healing, a way of carrying history with you, a source of tremendous power and even an act of love. Scars are dealt with in a surprisingly positive way in the book. It’s the price of living but receiving them is not necessarily a bad thing. Why, sometimes they even create opportunities.

I felt that Miéville lost himself a bit in the vivid descriptions of various aspects of New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station. The book felt overwritten, too long for the story the author was trying to tell. The Scar is, although not much sorter, a faster paced and better balanced book. It features a good bit of spying and a great conspiracy as well as a very well realized naval battle. As the end of the novel approached Miéville had me absolutely hooked. The author unveils quite a bit about the Bas-Lag world beyond New Corbuzon and although he gets quite descriptive at times, I never had the feeling this went at the expense of the story. This book is a much better mix of action, strange world building and character development.

After reading Perdido Street Station I had my doubts about whether Miéville is a writer I would actually enjoy reading. After reading The Scar I feel like Bas-Lag is beginning to grow on me. Some of the more absurd elements in the story still made me blink at times (mosquito people?) but not nearly as much in the previous book. Perhaps my tastes are shifting a bit towards the more unusual expressions of speculative fiction. I'm looking forward to reading Iron Council, judging from the description it should be an interesting read. I might even get to it before the end of the year.

Book Details
Title: The Scar
Author: China Miéville
Publisher: PAN
Pages: 795
Year: 2003
Language: English
Format: Mass market paperback
ISBN: 978-0-330-39290-7
First published: 2002

Perdido Street Station - China Miéville

I am currently in the process of reading Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams. It is of average length for one of the Malazan books, which by most standards means it is enormous. I expect it will take me another five or six days to finish it so in the mean time I am going to keep you entertained with this review of Miéville's Perdido Street Station. I wrote it in July 2008 but didn't post it on bscreview because of the one review per book policy that site had back then. It is one of the few reviews on my private blog I consider halfway decent so next time I am reading an encyclopaedia sized novel I will have to come up with another trick :P

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I've finished this book almost two weeks ago and I still haven't gotten around to writing the review. Partly because I didn't have the time but mostly because I didn't have a clue how to approach this book. It does a marvellous job of not fitting in any category of speculative fiction I can think of for one thing. Miéville himself calls it weird fiction, which is perhaps the most fitting label one could think of. It took me a long time to make any sort of sense of the story, which, in hindsight, was not that complicated. The book is highly praised for it innovative approach to speculative fiction and awesome world building. While I don't dispute these judgements, upon reflection, I do think the book is slightly overrated.

The story is set in the sprawling metropolis of New Crobuzon. A Victorian London-like city state that is at the same time corrupted and falling apart but also at the edge of modern science. A centre of power that shows both it's long history and new initiative. A city full of strange creatures, held together by it's five magnificent railway lines that join at the cities heart. Perdido Street Station. One of these strange creatures is a the new arrival Yagharek. He is a member of a species capable of flight and has come to New Crobuzon with a lot of gold to buy the impossible.

The man who is to supply this miracle is Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin. Isaac is an independent scientist with an obsession for finding a practical application of his favoured theory. He is looking for means to harness crisis energy. To sustain himself and his research he works for various clients on both sides of the law and isn't above "liberating" pieces of equipment from New Crobuzon's university, his one time employer. His private life is equally colourfully. He is currently in a passionate affair with Lin.

Lin is a member of the Khepri species (the name is a reference to an Egyptian god). The females of this species look human except for the fact that she has the body of an insect, complete with legs and rudimentary wings, where her head ought to be. Lin is an artists, sculpting great pieces of art with her spit and so-called colourberries. Her work is unusual for a Khepri and attracts the notice of one of New Crobuzon's most notorious criminals, Mr. Motley. He commissions her to create a sculpture of himself. A worthy challenge indeed as he is "Remade". A process of adapting the human body to all manner of biological impossibilities. Being remade is usually the result of a punishment handed out by New Crobuzon's notorious system of justice, but can also be used to create highly specialized workers.

Lin keeps her commission carefully secret but soon Isaac is to caught up in his own commission to notice her behaviour. Yagharek's wish proves to be the ultimate challenge, one that Isaac thinks can only be solved by the application of crisis energy. Before Isaac reaches that conclusion however, his investigations inadvertently release a creature that is both of great value and extremely dangerous. Soon the city is in the grip of this creature that leaves a string of victims robbed of their wits in it's wake, if it doesn't kill them outright. Various parties in the city set out to end the crisis but Isaac seems to be the one that can actually succeed.

It took me quite a while to get into this story. Miéville has two habits that distracted me in the early stages of the book. His vocabulary is impressive. It way exceeds even my passive English vocabulary which is seizable for a second language speaker. I have long ago learnt to ignore the urge to reach for the dictionary every other page but almost Miéville had me there a couple of times. Another thing that makes the first part of the book rather inaccessible too was the way Miéville looses himself in descriptions of various parts of the city. I have to admit, they are marvellous. He makes his city come alive, paints a vivid image of the fantastic environment in which the story is set in his readers' minds. But the fact remains that he does so rather a lot and that especially early on it breaks the flow of the story. Miéville seems to frequently get lost in his own city (no pun intended).

On the other hand Miéville introduces a lot of very interesting technological concepts. If I understood one of the passages set in Isaac workplace correct Miéville suggests New Crobuzon possesses computer-like technology based on steam power. The Construct Council's rise to intelligence from what is basically a scrap heap is also a very interesting, if somewhat disturbing, concept. Especially in the second half of the book, where the story gains speed, Miéville blends a lot of the technological concepts, Isaac's outlandish scientific ideas and even the local pantheon into a finale that will keep you up too late just so can finish the book. I will have to admit Isaac disappointed me in the end, when he finally faces the ethical side of accepting his commission. It felt like he chickened out on Yagharek in the end. Can't say it was entirely out of character though.

Miéville's approach to speculative fiction is certainly refreshing but Perdido Street Station remains an overwritten book. The story Miéville tells does not justify the 867 pages in my copy. That being said it was well worth the read. Should you decide to pick it up though, remember that it takes a while for the story to get going. Miéville is demanding on the reader but I am tempted to find copies of the other Bas-Lag novels The Scar and Iron Council as well. Maybe when I have managed to reduce the to read pile to more manageable proportions.

Book Details
Title: Perdido Street Station
Author: China Miéville
Publisher: PAN
Pages: 867
Year: 2000
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-330-39289-1
First published: 2000