Various

Simon Ings Wolves (2014). This is one of the best books I've read this year; which, since you can’t read it until 2014 is a tease on my part, I know. I know! *shakes head sadly* Conrad works for a company producing ‘Augmented Reality’, layering over our mundane world with googleglassesque advertising or VR-gaming overlay, and which in turn means that Ings sprinkles his text with those most excellent and edifying initials 'AR'. But Connie has a troubled life, traumas half-buried in his past and a tangled sexually messy relationship with his now grown-up schoolfriend Micky and Micky's beguiling wife Hanna. Did his mother commit suicide, or was she murdered? What manner of flood is coming? The publishers are pushing the novel’s resemblance to Ballard, which I can certainly see, although it struck me, tonally, more like Cement Garden-era McEwan mashed-up with Roger Levy’s superb, though criminally neglected Restless Sleep. The creeping sense of society ending whimperingly rather than a banging itself out is particularly powerfully evoked. The main thing to note about Wolves is that is is extremely well (if pitilessly) written. And good though the cybernarrative aspect is, it’s the sense of a pinchingly recognisable real world that sticks the book, unshiftably, in the memory. It is very far from being a bag of laughs, of course—proper British Glumpunk—but a slyly forceful imaginative work for all that. Ings is a writer’s writer; the sort of stylist who makes other writers touch the peaks of their caps in respect at his technical skill. It’d be nice if he became a readers’ writer too, and on a large scale. On the other hand, I know Ings a little (full disclosure etc). Our relations have always been cordial, but I'm not sure he's going to forgive me for 'Glumpunk'.

Stephanie Saulter, Gemsigns (2013). Grown-up, ethical SF this, but somehow its gunpowder sputters rather than sparking to life. ‘Gems’ is a canny contraction for ‘genetically engineered/'genetically modified’, and may catch on as a coinage; but Saulter’s Gems are too much the special snowflakes, each one carrying his or her unicorn-marvelousness in some physical point of difference—glowing hair and so on. Though they have UN-sanctioned protected status, they are still widely persecuted. The novel tells the story of various characters and their interactions as the humanity or otherwise of the Gems is debated. The 5-page opening (to boil it down by selective quotation: ‘when describing a circle one begins anywhere. Each point precedes and succeeds with no greater or less meaning … you must pick the right moment to join the dance … Beginnings are important … Our story begins perhaps with Dr Eli Walker, tasked with the mapping of divisions … But Dr Walker is a reactor to reality, the effect of a cause. We might better begin with Gaela Provis Bel’Natur struggling with corollaries as she makes her way across the city ... So Gaela, maybe Gaela is the starting point. Or maybe not. All beginning are endings, after all … So maybe ...’) epitomised the (GET ON WITH IT!) problems for me. It speaks to me not of textual sophistication but a kind of evasion—of Saulter straining to add nuance to what is, actually, a straight-up straight-down moral universe: oppression is bad, fans are slans, we should celebrate difference not persecute it. I wholly take the moral force of this latter, of course; I just don't see its dramatic effectiveness; or at least don’t see that it has been very effectively dramatised here.

Naomi Foyle, Seoul Survivers (2013). This is a novel with considerably more verve to it than Gems: a snappy near-future thriller about impending world's-end and sinister fertility-plan shenanigans. Positively Scarface-levels of f-word usage and lots of explicitly rendered sexual intercourse, up to and including lovingly described necrophilia (lovingly may not be le mot juste in this context, actually); but Foyle never loses control of her melodramatic plot, and manages to keep the Gibsoniana in check throughout. The characters, whilst not always rising to an actual third dimension, are clearly and effectively drawn. The horrible Johnny Sandman, flash but psychotic ex-pimp and bully, keeps the narrative galloping-on as main antagonist; at least until Korean-American scientist Dr Kim Da Mi’s scheme (‘I’m not an evil scientist!’ she says at one point, which is never a good sign) reveals itself in all its glory. We also get to know nice-but-dim Canadian ex-hooker Sydney; plus North Korean famine refugee Lee Mee Hee and English feckless drug-smuggling Hugh-Grantalike Damien Meadows (the least convincingly-drawn character, I thought) all going through the thriller motions. The South Korean milieu seemed well evoked to me—but I’ve never been to South Korea—and I read the whole thing rapidly and with enjoyment. Mind you, the pun in the title is a pretty crunching one. Anybody who knows me will tell you how much I hate puns.

Robin Hobb, Blood of Dragons (2013). I read the Farseer trilogy at some period in the backward and abysm of time (the 1990s, I think); although I’ve not managed to find time for any of the ninety or so intervening novels before this one. But I picked it up anyway, curious to see what has happened in the realm of the liveshippers. Blood of Dragons tells a 200-page story in 550 pages, as is for some reason de rigueur in the mode of the heroic fantastic (though why this should be de rigueur escapes me)—in this case a story is about a Philoctetes-like wounded dragon, who is feeding on the blood of a human poet to stay alive, whilst anti-dragon sentiment afflicts Hobb’s Fantasy realm. Dragons have made some humans into pets—‘of old,’ says one dragon, ‘we changed some of your deliberately, to better fit you to be companions and servants to our kind. You lived such a short time it was nearly impossible for us to achieve full communion with a human before it died’ [215]. They’re one part Smaug, two parts Twilight-ish vampire, and seven parts Big House Cat. There are some enjoyable moments, but Hobb loves her dragons too much, and knows her readers will too. The more she tries to reinforce the sense of draconic otherness the less eldritch and estranged the dragons become. By the end, the book had leached all the majesty and eeriness from the kind. The dragons say things like ‘hark!’, do not or cannot use contractions like ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’, and make Northern Brass Band noises (‘in another part of the city, a wild trumpeting of dragons suddenly arose’, 297). They have names like IceFyre—ouch, that ‘y’!—and Tintaglia and Kalo. The humans say things like ‘she is like the fire inside a blue opel! Like glittering blue steel she is!’ [510]; but they also drink coffee and have curtains on their windows and say things like ‘good plan!’ and ‘don’t—just don’t—’ and chat-on after this manner: ‘this probably won’t make sense to you. It doesn’t make sense to me and so I can’t explain it to you. I love Rapskal, just as I love you. But it wasn’t about what I felt for Rapskal that night. I didn’t stop and think “would I rather be doing this with Tats?” It was all about how I felt about me etc etc’ [49] which lacks the authentic Chaucerian twang, I felt. Overall: better than Anne McCaffrey. That’s faint praise, though, isn’t it?

Iain Banks, The Quarry (2013). This of course is, in a grievously literal sense, ultimate Banks. It is readable, as Banks always is; but it isn’t a very good novel overall. Since the interdiction on speaking ill of the dead extends also to their books, I’ll leave this review at that.