Book Review | Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

The town of Rotherweird stands alone—there are no guidebooks, despite the fascinating and diverse architectural styles cramming the narrow streets, the avant garde science and offbeat customs. Cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I, Rotherweird's independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history.

For beneath the enchanting surface lurks a secret so dark that it must never be rediscovered, still less reused. But secrets have a way of leaking out...

Two inquisitive outsiders have arrived: Jonah Oblong, to teach modern history at Rotherweird School (nothing local and nothing before 1800), and the sinister billionaire Sir Veronal Slickstone, who has somehow been given permission to renovate the town's long-derelict Manor House.

Slickstone and Oblong, though driven by conflicting motives, both strive to connect past and present, until they and their allies are drawn into a race against time—and each other. The consequences will be lethal and apocalyptic.

***

[The Full English: Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott]

If J. K. Rowling had given Jasper Fforde permission to document a decade of derring-do in Diagon Alley, the result would read rather like Rotherweird, an appetising if stodgy smorgasbord of full English fiction set in a town unlike any other.

Like everyone else, Oblong had heard of the Rotherweird Valley and its town of the same name, which by some quirk of history were self-governing—no MP and no bishop, only a mayor. He knew too that Rotherweird had a legendary hostility to admitting the outside world: no guidebook recommended a visit; the County History was silent about the place. (p.15)

Yet Rotherweird is in need of a teacher, and Oblong—Jonah Oblong, whose career in education to date has been a disgrace—is in need of a job, so he doesn't ask any of the questions begged by the classified ad inviting interviewees to the aforementioned valley. Instead, he packs a bag, takes a train, a taxi, and then—because "Rotherweird don't do cars," (p.16) as his toothless chauffeur tells him—"an extraordinary vehicle, part bicycle, part charabanc, propelled by pedals, pistons and interconnecting drums," (p.17) and driven by a laughably affable madman.

Need I note that nothing in Rotherweird is as it seems? Not the people, not the public transport, and certainly not the place, as Oblong observes as his new home heaves into view:

The fog enhanced the feel of a fairground ride, briefly thinning to reveal the view before closing again. In those snapshots, Oblong glimpsed hedgerows and orchards, even a row of vines—and at one spectacular moment, a vision of a walled town, a forest of towers in all shapes and sizes, encircled by a river. (pp.19-20)

It's here, in lofty lodgings and under the care of his own "general person," (p.41) that Oblong is installed after he's hired as a history teacher. But the position comes with one stickler of a condition: he has "a contractual obligation to keep to 1800 and thereafter, if addressing the world beyond the valley, and to treat Rotherweird history as off-limits entirely. Here he must live in the moment. Private speculation could only lead him astray." (p.43) And if you venture too far off the beaten path in Rotherweird, you might just end up disappeared—the very fate which befell Oblong's incurably curious predecessor.

Book Review | Down Station by Simon Morden

Mary. One slip, one weakness away from prison, fighting to build a future for herself out of so little.

Dalip. The gentle son of a Warrior tradition. A young man who must fight to be apart from his family.

Stanislav. Carrying the wounds of a brutal war.

They left London in flames and found a place where everything was different. A place that found you out. A place haunted by a man called Crows... 

***

Let's hear it for freedom.

Seriously: for freedom in all its forms—for the freedom to dream and the freedom to scream; for the freedom to be who we want to be, do what we want to do, love who we like and live the way we might—let's hear it!

Freedom isn't just fine, it's fundamental. We become who we become because of it. But in as much as the freedom to choose may shape us, our choices can come to contain us.

Down Station by Simon Morden is a book about breaking out of the frames we make of these freedoms, and it kicks off with a couple of Londoners losing everything they love—not least said city, which appears to burn to the ground around them in the beginning.

[Read more.]

They are Mary, a contrary teenager with anger management issues, and Dalip, a twentysomething Sikh with dreams of being an engineer. Both are working in the tunnels of the subway when the aforementioned catastrophe happens; a catastrophe that would have claimed their lives, in all likelihood, if they hadn't discovered a door that almost certainly wasn't there before. "A door that [...] more or less disappeared as soon as they closed it," (p.40) promptly depositing them in a landscape that looks absolutely natural—except, I suppose, for the sea-serpent, the wyvern in the sky, and the massive moon Mary and Dalip see it silhouetted against.

"Whoever first named it, named it right. Down is where we are," a man called Crows—another escapee from the world as we know it—explains a little later. "It is both a destination and a direction, it is how we fall and where we land." (p.126) And in Down, our everyman protagonists must discover themselves all over again if they're to stand a chance of surviving in a world which in a real way responds to their behaviour.

For Mary, an urban girl entirely out of her element, that's scary: "There were no rules. No one telling her what to do. No one to make her do anything. [...] What she was feeling was fear." (p.74) For Dalip, it's a little different:

Almost his every waking moment had been planned, since he'd been old enough to remember. This school, that club, a friend's house, the gurdwara, plays and concerts and recitals and family, so much family: brothers and sisters and cousins and second cousins and uncles and aunts. The thought that he might be free of all that was... intoxicating. Even if it was just for a while, before someone was able to show him the way home. (p.64)

Alas, there are no someones coming. There's just Mary, Dalip, a few disappointingly underdeveloped supporting characters—here's looking at you, Mama and Stanislav—and the diabolical denizens of Down, one of whom generously tells our gang about the geomancer. Apparently, maps are the currency of this world most weird, and the geomancer makes them, so if anyone hereabouts can help them get home, it's her.

That's what a man made of wolves says, anyway. Me, I'd struggle to trust a man made of wolves, but this lot are desperate, I guess. And they only grow more so when—what do you know?—they're attacked on the path to the geomancer's castle. By, ah... a man made of wolves.

Down Station is a little predictable, at points, but the Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of the marvelous Metrozone novels and late of the greatly underrated Arcanum keeps the pace at such a brisk pitch that you only notice the lows when they're over. In the intervening period, you've had such fantastic fun—think The Wizard of Oz with lashings of Lost—that it's easy to overlook the telegraphed turns the tale takes on the way to its eventual destination: a cracking battle between a much-changed Mary and a certain skyborn beast.

To wit, in terms of plot and pace, Morden's ninth novel is tight and taut—and I'd argue that its relative brevity is a boon to boot. At approximately 300 pages, Down Station is a ways off wearing out its welcome when the literary kitchen closes its doors; though the portion sizes might be on the slight side, chef serves up a satisfying three-course meal here, leaving readers stuffed enough, but not so full that they won't have an appetite for more when it's over. And in case you weren't aware, there will be more, folks: The White City beckons, and after that... why, this whimsical world is Morden's oyster.

Fingers crossed that he cracks the surviving secondary characters in The Books of Down yet ahead. Mary and Dalip ably showcase the transformative nature of choice and change I touched on at the top, but Dalip's impromptu instructor is so secretive he's hard to get a handle on, Mary's guardian angel is wasted in spite of a strong start, and although he shines sometimes, I expected much more of Crows, not least because he's such a central element of Blacksheep's exceptional cover art.

Then again, the Londoners above aren't friends or enemies yet—they're "just a bunch of people thrown together by the fact that [they] didn't die," (p.100) so there's hope for these folks, especially here, where they're free of "their hopes and dreams, their fears and nightmares, the past they'd lived and the future they were destined to live." (p.254) To paraphrase what might as well be the mantra of this narrative, it's what they do now that counts. Similarly, what Simon Morden does with The White City, now that he's introduced it so succinctly, will be what matters when The Books of Down are done.

***

Down Station
by Simon Morden

US Publication: February 2016, Gollancz

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Book Review | The Way to Babylon by Paul Kearney

Michael Riven has fallen off a mountain. The author is broken in both body and mind, as the fall also claimed his wife and climbing partner Jenny. Readers are desperate to know what will happen next in the fantasy world Minginish, but neither writing, nor living, are of interest to the author as he lies in traction.

But there are others seeking the scribe out. Men—and someone who is not all human—have begun a quest to rescue their blighted homeland, and their road will take them between worlds. Michael Riven will return to his home in Scotland, and accompany a stranger into a place altogether more familiar and terrifying: Minginish itself, a real place stranger even than the world of his novels.

Michael must take up the companions of his stories—Bicker, Ratagan and Murtach—and find a way to mend the sundered world. He may even find that Jenny's existence did not end that day on the mountain.

***

The year of Paul Kearney continues with a reissue of the underrated author's second novel, and if The Way to Babylon can't quite hit the highs of his astounding debut, its expansive narrative nevertheless fondly recalls some of the finest in fantasy.

In the beginning, Michael Riven—the author of a successful fantasy saga himself—is miserable. Months after a tragic climbing accident, we find him broken in body and soul, and not a little bitter. Slowly but surely, he's coming into his own in a home, however he'll never be whole again, as the aforementioned catastrophe also claimed the love of his life: a ravishing lass from the Isle of Skye.

Fans are apparently clamouring for the conclusion of his unfinished trilogy, but our man's imagination is a mess at the moment. Indeed, he decides it's unlikely he'll ever return to writing. "There was something there, something black and futile, which stopped him every time his pen touched paper." Something... or someone.

See, "Jenny was in that world also, in every word he had ever written, as surely as if her picture smiled behind every sentence," and Riven isn't yet ready to be reminded. Instead, when he has most of his mobility back, he heads home, alone, to a broken-down bothy "where the mountains meet the sea." He's hardly settled in when a stranger appears in his porch; a rambler by the name of Bicker who invites Riven into the wilderness with him.

Riven can't resist, particularly given that Bicker's destination is Sgurr Dearg—the same sheer slope he and Jenny fell from. But his travelling companion has other plans. He leads an unwitting Riven through a portal into another plane that proves particularly familiar to our author. Incredibly, he seems to have stepped into the fantasy kingdom of his fiction—and that's when he realises who Bicker is.

"It was mad—crazy and insane. He was treading a non-existent world with a character from one of his own books." By all accounts his situation beggars belief, but Riven's incredulity can hardly withstand the real injuries he receives when a huge hound made of wood and wickedness attacks the party awaiting him and Bicker on the road to Ralath Rorim.

This is just the first of the recreated creatures he sees—beasts intent on ending him, no less—for Minginish is sickening. Since Jenny's death, chaos has overtaken the placid place written into existence by Riven:

You know the gogwolf—though that is the first one we have seen this far south. A bad omen. There are normal wolves also, but bolder than we have ever seen them before. And then there are things such as the grypesh, the rat-boars, and the Rime Giants and the ice worms. All these we have known to exist for a long time, but they stayed in their highland haunts and only hunters and wanderers encountered them, making for a good tale in the winter. But now they terrorise the very folk of the Dales and stalk the hills in between at will, cutting one village off from another; only the hardiest travel far these days, and then only at great need.

It becomes clear that Bicker believes Minginish is finished... unless Riven can come up with a way to save the day.

What follows is "a long story, spanning two worlds and riddled with the inexplicable," but of course "there's more to it than that." Too much more, to tell to truth. Though The Way to Babylon begins in the nursing home where Riven is recovering, this is but the first of a few false starts. A second is promised in the bothy; a third in Minginish; but the story only really gets going after a prolonged pause in Ralath Rorim.

The Way to Babylon's aimlessness is frustrating, as absorbing as these introductory acts are. It may be that they aid our understanding of the narrative's protagonist—a necessary evil given how churlish Riven is initially—but fully half of the whole is over before Kearney finally focuses. Suddenly, the text has direction. A quest takes shape. A goal is disclosed:

It was speeding up. Riven felt incredibly mortal, but at the same time there was a rising restlessness in him. He felt that time was slipping through his fingers. The Greshorns were calling him. And so was Sgurr Dearg. He only wished he knew why. Perhaps the Dwarves would tell him.

The Way to Babylon's second half is leaps and bounds better than its flailing first, in large part because we're almost helplessly propelled through this section as opposed to the previous puttering.

Pace, people. It's important.

Thankfully, the setting is never less than superlative; reason enough to keep reading even at the story's slowest. I'm probably a bit biased, having holidayed on them since I was a sprog, but the Western Isles off the coast of Scotland are one of my world's wonders, and Kearney does a cracking up job of nailing the way beauty and brutality go hand in hand on the Isle of Skye and its fantastical equivalent, Minginish.

On the one hand, "the world was wide and fair, hung over with a haze of sunlight and shimmering with warmth." But this "green and pleasant place, wrinkled with silver rivers" also takes in "great ragged masses of stone rearing up to the sky in twisting ridges and peaked, veined with snow, bare as gravestones." It's a genuine pleasure to see these special spots rendered so remarkably.

As are Kearney's characters. Riven's redemptive arc is inordinately rewarding; Bicker and his beery bodyguards—a blessedly bawdy bunch—keep things lively in the low moments; and Jinneth, a character Riven based on his late ladyfriend, presents a painful problem for our author to solve.

A Different Kingdom's untraditional structure was one of its strengths, in that its frame felt fitting. Here, however, it's a hindrance... but The Way to Babylon is well worth reading regardless of the fact that it puts its worst foot forward. Its setting is simply superb; its central characters are a class apart; and once Paul Kearney is done manhandling his narrative, the immersive quest we're left with is winning as well.

***

The Way to Babylon
by Paul Kearney

UK & US Publication: June 2014, Solaris

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Book Review | A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney

Michael Fay is a normal boy, living with his grandparents on their family farm in rural Ireland. In the woods—once thought safe and well-explored—there are wolves; and other, stranger things. He keeps them from his family, even his Aunt Rose, his closest friend, until the day he finds himself in the Other Place. There are wild people, and terrible monsters, and a girl called Cat. 

When the wolves follow him from the Other Place to his family’s doorstep, Michael must choose between locking the doors and looking away—or following Cat on an adventure that may take an entire lifetime in the Other Place. He will become a man, a warrior, and confront the Devil himself: the terrible Dark Horseman...

***

If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise... but I dare say it won't be bears. And that's assuming there are even woods within reach of you.

Where I live, I'm lucky. I have natural landscape to the left of me, supermarkets and the like to the right: the conveniences of 21st century living combined with the beauty of the world as it once was. But so many places today have no balance. Particularly in cities we have systematically stamped out the environment to make more room for humanity to do what humanity does: taint everything it touches.

Young Michael Fay, a boy about to become a man in rural Ireland sixty or so years ago, has been aware of this fact most foul ever since his parents passed:

He lives amid the acres his family has occupied for generations. They have multiplied through the years, growing from a single unit into a clan, a tribe. Sons have built houses and scraped together farms in their fathers' shadows. Daughters have married neighbours. Exiles have been and gone, have sailed away and returned to where they were born. His family has roots here as old as the hill fort nestled on the highest of the pastures. They have possess the land, raped it, nurtured it, cursed it and been enslaved by it.

His parents have been killed by it. He was orphaned by a bomb meant for someone else. (p.12)

In their place, Michael is raised by his grandparents, however he finds more in the mode of closeness with his Aunt Rose. Ten years his senior, she's like a big sister to our man in the making, but also a little like a lover, so when she's bundled away by scandalised nuns, only to die giving birth to her baby—gone beyond "like a letter lost in the post" (p.61)—the poor dear is devastated.

Years later, Michael's isolation grows greater when his teachers turn to despair over his behaviour. His abiding love of the land leads him to seek solace in the forest, where he haunts a special spot. Playing there one day, he sees something unbelievable. There are wolves in the woods!

Wolves and weirder: men with fox faces...