E J Swift, Cataveiro (2014)

Very much a sequel to Swift's wonderful debut, Osiris, I nevertheless found myself wondering if this novel might face the world better marketed as a standalone. The 'Book Two of the Osiris Project' tag on the cover, there, might put readers off, and it shouldn't. New readers can start here, and get a clear sense of Swift's distinctiveness and excellence as a writer. It's a slow-burn read that earns the time it takes to develop its story. Swift has the ability to write deeply believable worlds; as far from the stomping foot of nerdism as ... well. The crown of nerdism's head, I guess. Or, eh. That might. Might not have been the best analogy, to ...

Start again.

Cataveiro opens in Patagonia. Osiris is believed lost, and has even become something of a myth to the post-disaster communities scraping a living here. Our protagonist, Romana Callejas, has a plane, a piece of Boreal (Northern Hemisphere, = the enemy) tech that she is permitted to keep so that she can map the habitable territories of South America's extremity for the authorities. Her motivation is provided by a need to get medical help to her mother, dying of 'the jinn': there are lots of well realised and suitably horrid plagues and diseases floating around, since the disaster this novel is post- was a rogue viral as well as a climate change one. The deuteragonist is a fellow called Taeo Ybanez, a citizen of the Republic of Antarctica, and his motivation is to get home to his wife and kids. In order to do this he needs to placate the government he pissed-off, and his passport to that placation is the figure of Vikram (from Osiris), washed up in Terra del Fuego. Both character motivations feel real, and Swift is too canny a writer to be tempted by artificial tension ramping-upping. Generally she does a bang-up job of avoiding overly-melodramatising her nuanced storytelling. To be picky, there are elements in the central section of this three-part novel where, via mafia-bosses and sinister cripples from the north, the Melodrama starts to creep back in. But it's not the heart of the tale; and it's not like that in the marvellous first or third sections.

Romana and Taeo make a deal, although each is lying to the other. They head off in different directions. Romana soars off in her microlight plane, Taeo picks up Vikram and proceeds on foot. Both pass through Cataveiro, a city on the East Coast, possibly on the location of old Santa Cruz (I'm not sure). Romana eventually travels much further north. The narrative is deeply absorbing and effective, cleanly and evocatively written and with an immaculate sense of what telling details will bring a scene to life without overloading the reader. The mood of the opening section reminded me a little Christopher Priest's first novel, Indoctrinaire, also set in a future South America (Priest is thanked in the acknowledgements). That I thought this may be an index of nothing more than how big an impact that novel had on younger-me; and indeed, where Priest went Kafkaesque and deliciously baffling, Swift goes for a mellower, more carefully rendered quest narrative. The landscapes are beautifully rendered, the deserts in particular, the proper Lawrence of Arabia glamour of emptiness, not to mention a tastily written English Patient airplane crash. Not that I want to give the impression this fine novel is in any way derivative. It's not. Like Swift's first novel, it is stylish, memorable, beautifully written and utterly distinctive. Proper grown-up SF.