Jon Courtenay-Grimwood is a British SF author, former journalist, and winner (repeatedly) of the BSFA award. Stamping Butterflies was his 8th book, published directly after the magnificent Arabesk trilogy, and at least one strand shows a topical relationship to the setting of those books (no story or universe interrelations, though).
The book tells two main stories – firstly we get, as indicated, a North-African setting, which kicks off with a botched assassination attempt on the US President when he visits Marrakesh. That this is attempted with a 50 year old bullet in a 100 year old rifle from ways too far away, by a man with no name, no nationality, and no political persuation or affiliation (never mind membership of a conspiracy), claiming that 'the darkness' demanded that he do it, which leaves some room to fill with (politically loaded) explanations and investigations.
The other main story follows the 53rd Chuang Tzu, raised to the Dragon Throne, living a live of luxury and extravagance so his Billions of subjects don't have to (he's living in some kind of real-time 'Big Brother' show, including empathy ratings), and carrying the memories of his 52 predecessors on memory diamonds, made from said predecessors. He is waiting for an assassin who will end his unappy reign over the 2023 worlds, which form a kind of shattered Dyson sphere around a sun. Yes, it's China in space, in the far future. But he is being talked to by what he calls 'the library', and what the first Chuang Tzu termed 'the darkness'.
All I can add is that, to my knowledge, this is the first non-US/UK Nebula winner, my congratualations, and a strong recommendation to amble over to Clarkesworld and read the story!
Once in a while it happens… you pick up an old book from someone’s discard pile, just because it looks unusual, for its title, or because is appears to be especially pulpy pulp. And, after poking about a bit, you find that you’re holding a trouvaille, a honest-to-God rarity from the early days of one of the Greats. In this case here, it’s Nick Allard, Printer’s Devil, the third ‘Dossier’ in the Nick Allard series by Bill Barclay - which is the name Michael Moorcock wrote under (his real name?) before he started writing as Michael Moorcock.
And so it happened that I decided to give the book a quick look (and you a review) before selling it on the Internet (any offers? ;-)
Nick Allard is the top agent in Cell Six of British Security. Or, at least, that’s how his boss, and the ‘enemy’ secret services see him. In reality he is SMASH, the Sick Man’s Antidote to Spy Heroics; i.e. he’s a coward, lazy, prone to skive off and submit made up vague reports, and simply wait for the miscreants to give themselves away. Successful, so far.
But now he has to take over from Thorpe, one of his co-spies, who’s got ritually murdered. He was on the trail of a mole, a leak, someone who gives secrets to the Russians. When he dies, Thorpe held a copy of ‘Whoomf!’, a comic magazine, with the ‘Devil Rider’ as its main character, and Moody, Allard’s boss, suspects that the comic is part of the mystery.
Queue reluctant spy heroics (of some accidental kind), adultery (that’s where Allard is really good), and mystery, as the Devil Rider comes alive! And never mind the Lady in black…
For once an Iain M Banks (note the middle initial – this is the SF writer persona at work here) book which is not part of his Culture universe; Against a Dark Background is a stand-alone novel. Instead we have humanity, with all its foibles as well as a few millenia of history, but limited to one system (Golter).
This is a story about a family, and its relationship with Golter and its political and power system. And it's a story about a gun, the final Lazy Gun. The connection between the two, and the relationship Sharrow has with the gun is never really explained. Or, of course, it was done so subtly that I cleanly missed it. Always a possibility!
You see, Lady Sharrow (she's an Aristo from a powerful and influential family) is on the run. The decamillenium is approaching, and the Huhsz, a religious order (with substantial war-faring capabilities) believes that the Messiah can only be reborn if Sharrow, as the final female in the line, is dead. And they have just received their 'hunting passports' from the World Court. Don't you love such a system!
The stories follow Xavier of the House of the Sorrowful Snows, a Baroque putto who has apparently come down from his perch (wherever it was) and is milling about modern day Prague giving more wholesome angels a bad name.
It's frequently funny, it's sometimes through-provoking, and it's always entertaining. And it has got its own soundtrack, including pieces by Roger O'Donnell of The Cure.
When hearing of a book talking about how there’s more to London than what meets the eye (which is something which is obvious to us Londoners) then most people, I'd guess, will think of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.
So, London Falling, the latest book by acclaimed author Paul Cornell, plays on there being more to London than what meets the eye. But hold that thought right there – this is no Neverwhere, but, at least for me, much closer related to Iain Sinclair’s story Hardball from Slow Chocolate Autopsy, both in terms of darkness, feeling of being lost, as well as in terms of rituals and ritual violence in relation to football.
Paul Cornell is best known for his Doctor Who tie-ins and his comic work on Saucer Country (and I’m sorely tempted to delve into those), and he’s been nominated for the BSFA and the Hugo Award for his short story The Copenhagen Interpretation, which is the latest instalment in his highly enjoyable Jonathan Hamilton series.
London Falling is, at its heart as well as in in its form, a police procedural. Now, I know that there have been several of those before playing in a London mirrored in an alternative/underground London, but, what this maybe lacks in novelty it makes up for in inventiveness and sheer drive.
The story starts out as a fairly standard Police procedural – we join a police unit at the end of a lengthy undercover operation, led by DI Quill. What is special about is that the target, Rob Toshack, is both the uncontested boss of all London criminal gangs which he has unified under his banner, and apparently impervious to any prosecution. Nothing of any real extent is ever found or made to stick - he's a proper teflon man. And the current operation also does not seem to yield any real evidence or smoking guns, despite two undercover agents, Costain and Sefton, having established themselves in his inner circle of trusted soldiers.
So, when the operation arrests all the criminals they have been following (not because they have sufficient evidence, but because the the plug is about to be pulled on the operation due to the lack of results) they are in for a shock when Toshack dies, violently and bloody, during his first interview. Just as he, to everybody’s surprise, started to confess. It obviously is murder, but how? And who? And, in the end, why exactly?
