Book Review | City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing. 

So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do—and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve. 

Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And—perhaps most daunting of all—finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.

***

The Divine Cities series comes full circle in City of Miracles, a positively action-packed fantasy about getting your own back. But revenge is not just what the hardy anti-hero at its heart is after: revenge is also what its both figuratively and literally tortured villain is interested in.

This child of the night, who shall not be named because to identify him is to invite his wickedness in, is not a divinity like the other antagonists of Robert Jackson Bennett's incomparable narrative—at least, not quite. He's really just an angsty adolescent; a "selfish kid who thinks his misfortunes are bigger than everyone else's" and has decided to take his frustrations out on everyone around him.

Unfortunately for everyone around him, this angsty adolescent just so happens to be the spawn of a few fallen gods. To wit, he has a domain—the dark—and some of his mother and father's magic. City of Miracles begins with him flexing his miraculous muscles: by outfitting an assassin to slaughter the former Prime Minister—and the first of this spectacular saga's protagonists—Ashara Komayd.

When news of Shara's shocking death reaches a remote logging range beyond Bulikov, every man around the campfire is taken aback, but only one among them takes it personally. He is City of Miracles' new central perspective, and whilst he hasn't played this role before, he's a figure folks who've followed this fiction will be intimately familiar with; a fan-favourite character, in fact, who has flitted around its fringes but never before been at its fore. That's right, readers: the focus of Bennett's barnstorming finale is finally on Shara's right-hand man, the Dreyling she saved who has saved her so often since. Good to see you again, Sigrud!

Following the death of his daughter in City of Blades, not to mention the mindless massacre that followed, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson has been in exile, none too patiently awaiting the day when Shara can at last bring him back into action. But with his dearest friend so dramatically departed, what does he have left to live for? Nothing, initially, but a need to make her murderer pay.

He does so summarily, racking up a rather improbable body count in the process. As a member of the supporting cast who crosses his fiery path puts it: "You've lost none of your subtlety, Sigrud."

But whilst raining hell on everyone who had a hand or even a hair in Shara's assassination, our daring Dreyling learns about a scheme that gives him a reason to keep on keeping on. In short, "someone is targeting Shara's adopted daughter" Tatyana, and having failed to save his last loved one, the least he can do, he reasons, is ensure that this small part of her legacy lives on.

To do what needs doing, he has to go to Ghaladesh. "Ghaladesh, the capital of Saypur, the richest, most well-protected city in the world. The place with perhaps the most security in the civilised nations—and thus the place that he, a fugitive from Saypur's justice, is most likely to be caught, imprisoned, tortured, and possibly—or probably—executed."

Book Review | City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

A generation ago, the city of Voortyashtan was the stronghold of the god of war and death, the birthplace of fearsome supernatural sentinels who killed and subjugated millions. Now the city's god is dead and the city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is just a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.

So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh—foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumoured war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister—has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten. At least, it makes the perfect cover story.

The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery with the potential to change the world—or destroy it.

***

I was of two minds when I learned that Robert Jackson Bennett would be making a return journey to the world and the wares he so successfully peddled in City of Stairs. On the one hand, he hardly scratched the surface of Saypur and the Continent it opted to occupy in that multiple award-nominated novel; on the other, I feared a sequel would bring to an end to the endless reinvention that has kept the aforementioned author's efforts so incredibly fresh. And it does... until it doesn't.

For all that City of Blades shares with City of Stairs, Bennett's decision to bench book one's embattled protagonist Shara Komayd in favour of General Turyin Mulaghesh sets the two texts apart from the start.

In the several years since the ungodly conflict which capped that last narrative, the hero of the Battle of Bulikov has entirely retired—from the adoration of the army, from the appraisal of the public eye, and, last but not least, from the expectation that she should be a reasonable human being. It follows that we find Mulaghesh on an isolated island; drunk, damn near destitute, and struggling to adjust to life with one less limb than she might like.

But just when she thought she was out, the Prime Minister pulls her back in! When a messenger arrives to request that Mulaghesh do one last secret service for Saypur, she sees an opportunity to resolve some of the hellish memories and awful losses that haunt her:

She couldn't erase the past, but maybe she could keep it from happening again. Some young men and women, Continental and Saypuri, never made it home because of her. The least she could do was make sure others didn't fall to the same fate. It'd be a way to make the dead matter. A way to put back some of what she'd broken. (p.313)

What the messenger doesn't tell Mulaghesh—wisely, I'd add—is where she's to be sent: Voortyashtan is, after all, the "ass-end of the universe [and] armpit of the world." There, there's "a one in three chance of her being murdered or drowning or dying of the plague" (p.23)—fittingly for a country famed first and foremost for its apparently-departed Divinity: Voortya, the god of war and death.

The Scotsman Abroad | Ascending the City of Stairs

As we speak, I find myself on a bit of a science fiction kick. On the back of Way Down Dark by James Smythe and Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, I'm deep in Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, with Slow Bullets by Alasdair Reynolds, Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey and Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson coming up.

Far be it from me to moan! The first few of those books have been brilliant, and I have every reason to expect great things from the remainder. If I had my druthers, I'd be reading a bit of fantasy, a spot of horror and maybe a mite of crime between all that sf, but deadlines are deadlines, and that's fine.

Happily, the last fantasy novel I read for review was tremendous, too—apart from a somewhat sluggish start:

Building worlds is hard work: a self-evident statement which goes some way toward explaining why most authors make do with the mundane plane that has us all in its thrall. But putting the umpteen pieces of truly wonderful worlds together—worlds whose histories and mysteries resonate with readers and ring of authenticity despite the fact that they’ve been conjured whole-cloth—has to be harder by far. There’s no right way to do the deed, either, and the field is replete with wrong ‘uns. Some creators descend into tedious detail; others leave so much to the imagination that the foundation of the fiction that follows is fitful. Robert Jackson Bennett falls fleetingly afoul of the former problem in his first full-on fantasy; but I’ve got good news, too, in that the world, when it is built, is brilliant: the story of City of Stairs springs from Bennett’s setting, leading to a feeling of coherency, of completeness, that precious few fantasies can match. The narrative’s characters, too, are inextricably of the divided domain it describes. 

Imagine, if you will, a realm in which gods once walked among men: a Continent complete with a half-dozen different living divinities. No one can say with any certainty where they came from, or what they could possibly have wanted—only that each of the six built its own city, its own base of operations, and called upon its most fervent followers to further the divergent doctrines of their chosen one of choice.

Read the rest of my review of City of Stairs on Strange Horizons. You can and you should, too. It's a bloody good book—certainly the most satisfying fantasy I've laid eyes on since Smiler's Fair.

Short Story Corner | To Be Read Upon Your Waking by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Summer 2012 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine (hallowed be its name) has a new novella by that rising star of speculative fiction Robert Jackson Bennett, author of The Troupe, The Company Man and firm TSS favourite Mr. Shivers. I devoured it in a single sitting the other day, and the story, though faintly familiar - very much the way with modern fairy tales, I'm finding - the story has had me thinking ever since.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is an epistolary affair centered around the correspondence between one lover to another in the late 1940s — which is to say after the fact of World War II, but still very much in the shadow of that terrible time. James, our narrator, has abandoned his ailing life partner Laurence in London, the better to invest what remains of his savings in "a tangible, genuine part of God's green earth. [...] A piece of countryside, of wilderness, a secluded cabin to call our own," namely Anperde Abbey, in France.

Or else what's left of it, because as beautiful as perhaps it once was, the abbey has fallen to rot and ruin. James, then, has his work cut out for him restoring the property, thus his letters to his sickly lover are part apology, and part account of this torturous process. Evidently Laurence does write the occasional reply, but we never see these in "To Be Read Upon Your Waking." Initially, this seems an odd decision - giving us only one half of a continuing conversation to go on - but come the conclusion it's long since a solid call, because as the narrative progresses, and Bennett reveals exactly what otherworldly wonders he has up his sleeve, his rationale becomes abundantly apparent.

As to the plot's particulars, well... I wouldn't want to give the game away, especially when it's so much fun to figure out. Instead, read into this quote what you will:

"The tradespeople I bought my equipment from did seem quite interested to hear where I lived. When I told them I'd bought the old marquis's house, they asked very keenly if I'd had any callers. I wasn't sure what they meant — sales people, I asked, or visitors from the town? We bumbled over it a bit (wish my French was better) but I believe they said there were children whose families live in the forest (like gypsies or travelers, I suppose) who play tricks on nearby residents. Except no one really lives nearby anymore, so that would just leave me. I told them I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them, and asked 'em why the police didn’t just go in and send all the bastards packing. That just confused them.

"I think they said children. Either way, I have seen no one in the forest.

"That's not the most interesting thing, though, darling — I was examining what I think might have been the inset for the dais when I found a hollow or gap in the floor behind it. It is not an unintentional hole, I am sure of it. It is a door. It goes somewhere. Perhaps a crypt? Not sure. It is filled up with hard, frozen mud, and I have a bad time of it, but sometimes I put my ear to the stone floors, tap on them, and hear something hollow. Maybe I am imagining things."

By which point, I was too!

At 20,000 words, there's room for Bennett to let his narrative and characters breathe — amongst them the marquis, a particularly memorable madman who may be able to answer some of the strange questions James raises. The setting, too, is terrific: in rural France, as magical as it is mysterious, one senses anything can happen, and at Anperde Abbey - beautiful, foreboding and all but lost to the forest - it does.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is a sublime slow-burn of a story, about impossible shadows cast in the darkest part of the woods, as well as more standard suspects such as love, loss and life after death. Bennett only rarely writes short fiction - and at just shy of 20,000 words, this novella hardly fits the description - but I dearly wish he would take the time more often. Mileage may vary, but truth be told, I enjoyed "To Be Read Upon Your Waking" more than I did The Troupe, and you might, too.

Remember: you can, and you assuredly should, read it here for free.

The Scotsman Abroad | Telling The Troupe

As above, so below... my review of The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett - which we chatted about on The Speculative Scotsman here - is live as we speak on the almighty Tor.com. Here's a snippet from it:

"Riding the crest of a weird wave of speculative and indeed superlative circus stories – with The Night Circus, Cyber-Circus and Genevieve Valentine’s marvellous Mechanique bringing up the esteemed rear – The Troupe is a tall and ineffably tender tale about nothing less than 'the warp and weft of the web' of the world."

"It concerns an elusive company of vaudeville players with a mythical mission, ultimately as hellish as it is holy, and a newcomer in their midst: George by name, and George by nature, because next to the motley lot he falls in with, George seems intolerably ordinary. A teenage vaudeville virgin from a broken home, George has spent the past several months playing pitch-perfect piano for a pittance at Otterman’s, in the unlikely event that the mysterious Silenus Troupe he has become obsessed by break with tradition, and stop off at his tawdry theater a second time. If and when that happens, George hopes for an introduction, but in truth his dreams are of an invitation: to tour the world with them, and finally befriend his father... because he is none other than Heironomo Silenus’ son."

(read more)

Keep reading and you'll realise that I had a few problems with The Troupe - foremostly a main character with no agency for approximately half of the whole - but I still came away from the thing feeling optimistic, and the end is quite simply incredible; a destination well worth the journey's bumpier bits.

And in fairness I seem to be the only reviewer with any reservations about it. Robert has been counting down the reviews as and when they've come in on his blog, and together they make for a very impressive presentation.

In short: if Mr. Shivers did it for you, The Troupe should too. It's different, but similar in its interest in the mythic, and three books in (because I finally read The Company Man in readiness for this review) I've found that Robert Jackson Bennett is never better than when he's myth-making. 

And when he's on... oh lord!

Quoth the Scotsman | Robert Jackson Bennett on Ending, Or Else

A couple of caveats to bear in mind before we start. Unless otherwise indicated, none of the quotes quoted in the following post are representative of the beliefs of the person in question quoted nor those of the person quoting the person in question. Additionally, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In short, Quoth the Scotsman is just a space here on TSS for me to post neat quotes as and when I come across them. Simple. As. That.

***

I've been reading The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett, whose incredible debut Mr Shivers only narrowly missed out on taking the top spot in The Best Books category of Top of the Scots 2010, way back when.

I mean, sure. Some other people liked it too. Little bitty blogs like Locus and Publisher's Weekly, you know... on occasion they went on about Mr Shivers as well, and its successor - last year's The Company Man - which has had pride of place on my tower of books To Be Read for a whole year now. Shame on me for allowing it to flounder for so long.

In any case, I aim to finish The Troupe over the weekend, and write up my review of it just as soon as I find the time to, so I don't want to say too much about the thing in advance of that. But before I nodded off last night I came across the following passage, and given how much I've talked about The End here on TSS - see here and there and everywhere - I couldn't very well not share it.

Now the conversation excerpted below occurs roughly halfway through Bennett's book, but the spoiler-shy amongst us needn't fear: it's an anecdote the leader of the titular troupe relates to our protagonist, George, and as such it has little bearing, if any, on the novel's actual narrative.

So, without any further ado:

"Let me tell you a story, kid," he said. "This took place a long, long time ago, in England of all places, before I ever joined up with this troupe or even knew it existed. I was in a bad spot, did a few stupid things, and I found myself tossed in the clink with the likely punishment of deportation awaiting me. Now, I thought I had it rough, but my cellmate had it even worse. He was a skinny little Irishman, name of Michael Feenan, and he was meant for the gallows, to dance from the hemp until he'd shed his mortal coil and what have you. Unlike a lot of folk in the clink, he didn't claim innocence. He said he'd done what he'd done - that being knifing a fella in a gin house - and he knew it was worth nothing to protest it, since we was all English bastards and we'd hang him no matter, you see. Which, you know, might've been true.

"Now, Feenan was set to dance a week from when I was thrown in his cell, but he was already in a bad state - when they'd arrested him he'd gotten a serious beating, and his right leg was broke in a couple of places. His shin and ankle were as swolled up and purple as a fucking plum, let me tell you. He could hardly sit up, it pained him so much. So when his time came, the guards were going to have to drag him up the scaffold steps like a cripple. But Feenan, he had different plans.

"He had his wife smuggle in some rope and some pieces of timber, and for that entire week he kept trying to make a brace for his leg. It was some of the most painful stuff I ever saw. Can you imagine what that's like, some yuck who knows nothing about anatomy strapping a brace around his own swollen, broken leg?  And then he'd try and walk on it on all things, testing it out. And nearly each time he'd fall. But Feenan never cried, or wept, or cursed. He'd just pull himself up, rearrange some of the brace, and try again.

"Finally on the day before his drop I asked him what he was doing. I mean, he was dead anyway, so why go to all this trouble? Why does the way a man walks to the scaffold matter? And he said, 'The walk to the scaffold is the last walk I'll ever get, Willie. [...] And after that, it's naught but the drop. And when the walk is all that's left, it matters.'

"So when his day came they took him out and let him walk by himself. I got to watch from the window of my cell. He stumbled only three times. And each time he picked himself up, rearranged himself until he was as dignified-looking as could be, and kept walking. Even though his leg pained him and his very body was a burden, he kept walking, right up until he was hanged. He was hanged on this very beam, in fact," said Silenus, and he tapped the warped piece of black wood. "Probably the best death it'd ever seen."

He lit a cigar. "The way things end matter, George," he said. "They matter more than the ending, or even where we're going to." (pp.218-9)

Which is certainly an interesting way to think about things.

I mean, I don't know that I agree with the sentiment Silenus expresses above entirely... but there's certainly something to it. Food for thought, methinks.

The Troupe came out yesterday in the UK, and it isn't giving the game away to say that you should very probably buy a copy if you can. Meanwhile I've been reliably informed that The Troupe will be published in the US on the 21st of this month, so save the date! :)

Failing that, do hang about for the full review in the not-too-distant. I make no promises, but there may even be cake!

Coming Attractions: The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

***

Earlier in the week, The Speculative Scotsman reviewed "the most impressive horror fiction debut since Joe Hill." I also wrote that Mr Shivers, the breathtaking debut of Robert Jackson Bennett, represents "a staggeringly persuasive argument for the infinite possibilities of the horror novel."

So it's safe to say I liked it.

Just a day later - but not a dollar short, no sir - Orbit Books, by way of a cover reveal on their blog, stealth announced Bennett's second novel, The Company Man. First of all, here's the synopsis:

"A trolley car pulls into the station with eleven dead bodies inside. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union.

"The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden.

"Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him."

And the cover, as above, is, another gorgeous piece of work by Lauren Panepinto that riffs brilliantly off her work on the art adorning Mr Shivers and very much embodies the noir and retro-futuristic elements she cites of The Company Man's narrative.

Not to be needlessly reductive, but between the cover, the synopsis and Lauren's description, I'm put in mind of Jeff Vandermeer's fantastically dark Finch. A high bar to reach, perhaps, though if Bennett's debut is any indication, I don't doubt he'll rise to the challenge.

In any event, shortly after a session of burbling on Twitter about how much I'd enjoyed Mr Shivers, the one - the only - Robert Jackson Bennett got in touch. It's always a pleasure to hear from an author you admire, and the timing in this case was so perfect I couldn't resist asking the gentleman a few questions about The Company Man. I hope to have a longer conversation with Robert closer to the publication of his second novel, but for the moment, a few tantalising morsels of information about it have certainly whetted my appetite.

Here's a little of what he had to say. As ever, the questions I put to him are in bold, and his answers, well, aren't. Enjoy!

***

Much to my surprise, a rather atmospheric synopsis of THE COMPANY MAN appeared on Orbit's book blog a few days ago. I can hardly express how pleased I am that we'll be seeing another novel from you before 2010's out, but before I lose myself to the madness of months of anticipation, might there be anything more can you tell us about THE COMPANY MAN?

Well, the story's set in 1919 in an alternate America, one much more technologically advanced than ours was at that same time. These advancements have come courtesy of the McNaughton Corporation, and have ushered America onto the world stage and into hegemony much sooner than in our timeline. The industrial town of Evesden on the West Coast is their place of operations, and the main character, Hayes, works there as an internal securities agent, nosing out leaks and shady dealing in the upper echelons. When the working classes begin to openly act against McNaughton's virtual monopoly, Hayes is assigned to try and ferret out union sympathizers within the company ranks. But when an underground trolley coasts into a station with nearly everyone on it butchered, Hayes identifies nearly all of the victims as McNaughton workers suspected of sabotage, and soon begins to wonder about exactly where his company came from, and what future they're making for the world.

When THE COMPANY MAN comes out in October, it'll have been a mere ten months since MR SHIVERS hit bookstore shelves. Given that, is it safe to assume you wrote what will be your second published novel before selling your debut?

Yep, I wrote it immediately after MR SHIVERS, and finished it while we were still submitting my debut to publishers. I actually had the rough draft ready well before we even started talking about a second book. I edited it for over a year, and very soon its voice and structure began to change and it wound up something completely different from MR SHIVERS.

That's something that was mentioned when the book was announced, and now you've stressed it yourself, I can't help but wonder: did THE COMPANY MAN represent a conscious effort on your part to write something very different from MR SHIVERS?

Well, there're a lot of reasons for it. One is that I get bored pretty easy. When you write a book, you basically live inside this isolated little world for about a year or more. Sixty percent of your waking thought processes are always stuck in it, to some degree or another. It's like sitting in a small room with a bunch of shelves of stuff on the walls around you, and playing around and trying to see what works with what. And I decided that if I was going to live in a whole new little room for a year I wanted some new toys at the very least. A change of scenery. Maybe I'd get a fan. Maybe it wouldn't be a room at all this time, but a basement. And I figured that if I was enjoying myself, playing around with these new things in a new place, then it'd show through in the writing, and the reader would respond accordingly.

But there was another dimension to it, which was just to try and see if I could do it. A test of will, I guess. MR SHIVERS, really, is a very small, spare book. It's a needle of a story: it's got very little excess, and most of it is functional at the pure, base level. And I wanted to try and broaden out and use a new voice and a new style and try and tackle something that would sprawl. Something much bigger and messier and, potentially, richer and more colorful. There was a technical interest in it.

A lot of the fun in writing is sort of an engineering fun: how the hell are we going to move this thing? How are we going to get water out of this? How tall can this go? When you get it to work, it brings a real satisfaction that I think, say, building the same pretty house over and over again wouldn't. Plenty of people may still be clamoring to live in those houses you make, but you'd get sick of it real quick.

Now THE COMPANY MAN isn't a sequel to MR SHIVERS by any stretch of the imagination, but given that both of your novels are set against similar, alt-historical periods of America, can I ask if there's any chance they share a world?

No, they don't. I don't consider MR SHIVERS to be alternate history so much as a myth. It works in archetypes and images and language we're all familiar with. I wanted it to live in our collective subconscious. It was supposed to be like a fable from long ago, like Odin creating the world from the corpse of Ymir: it's impossible, and it takes place in an older country, but it still feels true. You know it didn't happen, but it's describing true things.

THE COMPANY MAN is alternate history for sure. It plays around with who's in the White House, how World War I happened (or didn't happen, or hasn't happened yet), and how telecommunications and transportation can show up to the party early and change things. It's much more grounded in its relation to reality and the present than MR SHIVERS was. Those who didn't like the quiet and unspoken mythology of MR SHIVERS may cotton on to THE COMPANY MAN more, since it's pretty loud and brassy in its genre and its tone. It focuses on the birth and potential decline of a city, one I intended to make as real as possible, with its many boroughs and stratifications and customs and odd manner of speech. It's meant to be a somewhat foreign place, but still one you recognize. I mean, if you see a busy street in the morning, you’ll probably figure out a lot of what's going on no matter what city it's in or what language they're speaking.

***

It was a real pleasure chatting with Robert about his work, even briefly. My heartfelt thanks to him for fielding my questions so graciously.

Mr Shivers has to be the best book I've read this year, so I've got my pre-order in for The Company Man already. Readers: if you know what's good for you, you'd do the same.

Book Review: Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

The Book Depository

"It is the time of the Great Depression. The dustbowl has turned the western skies red and thousands leave their homes seeking a better life. Marcus Connelly seeks not a new life, but a death - a death for the mysterious scarred man who murdered his daughter.

"And soon he learns that he is not alone. Countless others have lost someone to the scarred man. They band together to track him, but as they get closer, Connelly begins to suspect that the man they are hunting is more than human. As the pursuit becomes increasingly desperate, Connelly must decide just how much he is willing to sacrifice to get his revenge."

***

Mr Shivers represents the most impressive horror fiction debut since Joe Hill made his big break with the wonderfully wicked Heart-Shaped Box. In point of fact, though bleaker by half, Robert Jackson Bennett's first novel is a more memorable experience than even that.

There. I've said it.

With the blurb behind me, I turned the first few pages of Mr Shivers not knowing quite what to expect. My first thought was a simple, bloody revenge thriller, but soon enough it came clear that Bennett's debut was as much an unsettling tale of the macabre as that, or perhaps a careful character study of a man reeling from an awful loss. Or indeed, a mythic road-trip set against the crimson-tinged dustbowl of the Great Depression. But Mr Shivers is none of those things in isolation, though its narrative takes in every one and more besides. It defies description. It defies even its too-often degenerate genre. It is, and by a large margin, the best novel I've read in 2010 thus far.

That it's Bennett's first only startles me all the more. His is a voice that bleeds confidence: precise and assured, he spins his tale directly, with little of the digression and obfuscation many new novelists lean upon to disguise their uncertainty. We meet Connelly, a man devastated by the untimely death of his daughter, and learn of his vengeful intent; he comes upon a hodgepodge of other lost souls, each wronged in their own way by the scarred man in gray Connelly hunts; and together, the hobo gang trudge through the endless trail of death and destruction the enigmatic Mr Shivers leaves in his wake.

Mr Shivers is in many respects a rather straightforward novel. From the first chapter to the last, there is a clear, perfectly paced throughline that keeps the narrative tense. The object of Connelly's hatred never seems far away, and so the reader is drawn from encounter to encounter feeling always that the explosive showdown between these two men - not so dissimilar in character and purpose as they might think - is sure to come soon. When inevitably Connelly and his disparate companions do approach the end of their deadly pilgrimage, readers will have long felt its desperate pull - inexorable, awful and awesome all at once.

Connelly is a brilliantly laconic character, terse and deadly, demented by the death of his daughter, a "future and a life violently aborted without even a cry to mark its passing from the world." On his journey he comes upon a motley assortment of kindred spirits which sing with the same raw passion: a pitiable fortune teller, a fallen man of the Lord, a woman faced with a quandary much like his own. The most haunting of all the characters in Mr Shivers, however, has to be its evocative setting against a decaying America which writhes against the sky with all the horror of a ball of breeding snakes. Bennett's debut is, in its way, a song for a dying earth; a lament to a moment in our history "which they all now felt was penultimate. They lived in a dead and dying age. Already they were but memories for the future."

Bennet's prose is exquisite, sparse and poetic, dripping with the sort of sacred profanity Crooked Little Vein writer Warren Ellis has made his stock and trade. In the last act, the gray man explains that he has "stood on the edge of the world and pissed into nothingness. I've seen the things that hide and dance behind the stars in the sky and I pinned them to the ground and laughed and made them tell me their names one by one." Mr Shivers is shot through, too, of nuggets of hobo wisdom, such as the "only thing that's worse than a thing that don't work is a thing that almost works" and, on law and America, "If it's going to tell me what to do and what not to do, it better be on hand... This is just dirt we're standing on, son. Dirt and stone. Ain't no lines in the earth."

Mr Shivers is bleak, mythic and bloody: the most thrilling novel of its ouvre since The Road. In fact, the two narratives have a great deal in common, although the veins of genre certainly run deeper in Mr Shivers than in Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prizewinner. But then, as the preacher says, "sometimes the road goes through places that are... not normal. The road is more than just dirt."

Robert Jackson Bennett is a staggeringly persuasive argument for the infinite possibilities of the horror novel and his debut is a landmark for the genre. Mr Shivers will take your breath away.

***

Mr Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

January 2010, Orbit

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