Weaveworld

So a few weeks back I read Weaveworld. I've read a fair few other things since then; things which, quite honestly, would be easier for me to write about, but I think I'd be remiss if I didn't at least try to put something up on here about this book.It won't be a long piece though; I'll leave the in-depth analysis to someone more qualified than I.

The problem is that nothing I write is going to do justice to what can only be described as a masterpiece. It almost seems wrong to sully it with my witless ramblings. I don't like to gush, because I can come over all teenage girl at a Jonas concert if I let myself but this novel (shamefully, the only Clive Barker novel I've ever read although that is going to change) really is one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction, fantasy or otherwise, that I've ever had the great fortune to read.

It's one of those big books (clocking in at over 700 pages) that nevertheless manages to be over far to soon. Characters like Cal and Suzanna, Shadwell and Immacolata, even Gluck, who arrives late and has only a small, if pivotal part to play, all seem to exist fully formed on the page within sentences of their introductions and as I neared end of the book they had become so much a part of my life that the thought of saying goodbye to them left me genuinely saddened.

"Nothing ever begins", Barker tells us at the outset (in an opening line that ranks up there with 'Call me Ishmael' and 'It was the best of times...') and as the book draws to it's close we are told that neither shall this story have an ending. With characters as glorious as these, with a world so richly imagined and populated with such wonders, it would be a tragedy if it did.

Just read it. Youll see.

The Borribles

The Borribles books were unlike anything I'd ever encountered when I first read them at the age of 11. Dark, uncompromising, and very very bloody, they are nevertheless full of likable characters, loyalty, friendship and a way of life that every kid reading them would have loved to emulate.

The trilogy comprises The Borribles, The Borribles Go For Broke and Borribles : Across The Dark Metropolis. All three are available in a nice big chunky omnibus.

Basic not-too-spoilery plot is that the Borribles (street urchin types who steal to eat and squat in abandoned buildings) learn that the Rumbles (rat creatures that live on parks and commons, obvious Womble analogues) are planning to invade the urban territories. A pre-emptive strike is launched.

Said strike is the basis of the first book. Books 2 and 3, which need to be read back to back for the full effect, concern the repercussions on the Borrible way of life of one minor (but pivotal) event in the first book. These repercussions are large, and they are unpleasant.

You know how JK Rowling casually culled her characters in the last couple of Harry Potter books? Remember how everyone was all, "Oh, that's a bit nasty, that's a bit grim, that's a bit shocking for the little ones"? Well, The Borribles is like that, all of the time. The difference with this story though, (and I mean no disrespect to Rowling here, whose books I genuinely love) these characters are much better drawn, in a much shorter space of time, so each and every death ( and a couple of fates that are literally worse than death, in the context of the books) hit you like sledgehammer blows.

There are some very complex shifting moralities at play here too, with the closest thing the books have to a hero acting like anything but on a number of occasions whilst redemption (if not always rescue) is afforded the most unpleasant of people. It's a cliche, but the best villains don't see themselves as such and in these novels everyone has a motive for what they do, everyone believes themselves to be on the 'right' side. You'll often find yourself agreeing with them.

It seems the violence and ant-establishment themes (the Police don't come off particularly well) rubbed a few people up the wrong way (perhaps understandable in books aimed at children) and author Michael de Larrabeiti struggled to find a publisher for the third book. Whether this convinced him to wind up the series as a trilogy or whether that was the intention all along I don't know. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, because while the Borribles and their culture were ripe for exploration, and might perhaps have had a much larger cultural influence had they appeared more often, the fact is that the ending we get, while not exactly fairytale, is a fitting and memorable cap to a sometimes harrowing, always worthwhile tale.

I could write page after page about these books but if I do I'll not be able to resist mentioning my favourite moments, all of which constitute massive spoilers so I'll leave it at this : a happy ending for the few, paid for with the blood of the many. If that sounds like your cup of tea, read The Borribles now.

Retromancer

It is a fact well known to those that know it well, that pseudo-cosmic antimatter, (properly transperambulated of course) will solve most any quantum conundrum, or if not solve then cause. It works best when judiciously applied in the presence of an observer, preferably female and if at all possible wearing a straw hat.

And who can argue with that.

This is just one of many cosmic truths that I have learned from my many years reading the works of one Robert Rankin. Who may be very well be a genius. Or certifiable. Or possibly both, I'm not sure.

I've never tried to explain a Rankin book to anyone before. I've turned people on to his work, but that has usually just been a case of throwing one of his books at them and saying "read the first chapter and tell me what you think". Something which it is impossible to do, because either you share his sense of humour, in which case there is no way you're stopping at one chapter, or you don't, in which case I guarantee you will keep reading, if only to reassure yourself that you didn't dream the first bit.

Retromancer features the lad himself, Hugo Rune (Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune to be precise. And I can't tell you how nerdy I feel whenever it pops into my head that I know that, months or even years after I last read it. It's one of those things that just sticks, you know?), who enlists the aid of his Acolyte, Rizla, to travel back from Rizlas native 60's to the bombwracked streets of London at the height of the blitz. Their mission? To prevent Count Otto Black (The Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived) from using futuristic technology to help Hitler win the war.

Along the way we visit The Ministry of Serendipity (the real brains behind Britains military strategy), learn the shocking truth about Winston Churchill, find out what the emergency services were really up to while people were huddled in shelters and of course find out the secret origin of the Steel Pan, as played by Trinidadians in the Notting Hill Carnival. (Or more accurately the Mark Seven fully chromatic/acoustic metallic idiophone. Which is an improvement on the Mark Six in that it doesn't give you spots.)

Pirates get involved at one point, as do a couple of werewolves. The Statue of Liberty is destroyed, a bottomless pit is discovered in a newsagents and much of the now legendary old toot is talked. By, amongst others, Fangio the barman, who is not yet a fatboy although he has already taken to the chewing of the fat.

I love Robert Rankin. A review of one of his earlier books compared his writing to hard drugs, in that it will make you feel sick at first but is extremely addictive. It certainly was in my case. The reason for my love of his work though is that no matter how many plot holes there are, how many loose ends dangling, how many unexplained anachronisms, how little overall sense it all seems to make, he knows exactly what he is doing at all times and it all makes sense come the denouement.Except the bits that don't, which he'll point out to you with a cocky grin and a "I don't care and you don't either, because we're all having so much fun." You find yourself chuckling at the audacity as the author basically sits and says "I bet you thought I'd forgotten that bit" and "see, that does make sense, you just weren't paying attention". His finales are scarily tightly plotted, making the seemingly random, stream of consciousness nonsense all the more impressive. Genius? Certifiable? Definitely both.

I Shall Wear Midnight

Josh Kirby, late great cover artist extraordinaire, is to be thanked for awakening in me a need I never knew I had. A need to read as many stories by one Terry Pratchett as I possibly could. The book was The Light Fantastic and the cover was a chest of the kind you might expect a pirate to keep his booty in. The chest had legs, actual cute little pink legs, but it wasn't using them, for it was flying through the air, and holding on to the chest, in various states of excitement/terror were wizards, warriors and strange looking little men. They say never to judge a book by it's cover but had I not done so here I would have never known the delights and wonders of a little place called the Discworld.

That was 20some years ago now. Terry Pratchett is still writing Discworld books (the latest is no. 38, not counting short stories and narrative inserts in non-fiction books) and I am still reading them. Sadly Josh Kirby is not still illustrating the covers, having passed away several years ago. I say sadly, and I mean it, because while the man currently tasked with providing cover art (Paul Kidby) is a fine artist, and his work could even be said to suit the slightly more serious tone of the later books better than Kirby's cartoony (but insanely detailed and intricate) style might have, I still can't help but think that a new Pratchett just doesn't look right without a new Kirby on the jacket.

So yes, the Discworld series. The series as a whole comprises, as I've said, 38 books so far, but these can be split, roughly, into subsets. There are Rincewind (failed wizard) books, the Witches (pretty self explanatory), the City Watch (police procedurals in Discworlds largest city) and numerous others.

I Shall Wear Midnight stars one Tiffany Aching, a character who has been the lead now in 4 novels, beginning with Wee Free Men, and continuing through A Hat Full Of Sky, Wintersmith, and now ...Midnight. Tiffany is a witch, and seems to have cornered the market in Witch stories set on the Discworld, as the previous 'star' witch, one Granny Weatherwax, and her established supporting cast, have not had a book of their own since Tiffany came on the scene, although they have made cameos in her stories.

The Tiffany Aching stories were originally marketed as Young Adult novels set in Discworld, somehow seperate from the 'grown up' books, but in truth there was little to seperate them, other than the lead characters young age (and even in that the main series had form, with early book Equal Rites having a child protagonist) and the conceit has been dropped now, possibly due to Tiffany herself having grown up (9 in her first book, she is almost 16 in her latest).

Did I enjoy ...Midnight? Indeed I did. Pratchett is one of the best in the world at what he does so compared with the rest of the overcrowded marketplace this book is right up there with the best of them. On a sliding scale of Discworld though, I'm afraid it's only middle ground for me. The reason is that the whole Witches subset has never been my favourite aspect of the series, so any book in that setting is going to be a minor dissapointment, if for no other reason than it's not a City Watch book, or a Rincewind book. This is purely my own prejudice talking though. As a Tiffany Aching/Witches story it's a belter so those for whom those stories are favourites, this will be a welcome addition.

It is quite dark in places though, touching on teenage pregnancy, domestic abuse and suicide, being sympathetic to everyone involved and allowing no easy answers to be found. All of the other usual Pratchett ingredients can be found here as well; real world folklore given just a hint of a twist to fit Discworld, wry and insightful commentary on human nature (good and bad), and of course an ancient supernatural threat that has to be defeated with good old fashioned common sense.

It also has jokes though, and will make you laugh. It is not the riotous, laugh out loud at every second line, eyewateringly hilarious stuff of the early Discworld books but it is still funny. Oh, yes.

If I have one problem with this series it would be this : because Discworld is a fantasy setting, every book seems to have a supernatural antagonist and they can sometimes feel shoehorned in. Quite often, I will be engrossed in the story of the hero or heroine as they go about whatever their agenda is and then boom, suddenly there is a demon or a ghost or an ancient prophecy to deal with. Human antaganists can be scary too. Indeed, the evil entity Tiffany faces in this book is a reincarnated witchfinder from the past who corrupts people with his old 'witches are evil' spiel. In flashback we see him as a human, before his death. He was far from pleasant then. A modern (at least to Tiffany) version of that character would have sufficed for me, and might perhaps have been more chilling, if he was shown to be corrupting with his prejudices through sheer charisma and force of personality, like a cult leader, rather than being able to 'posess' people.

That is just a pet peeve of mine and is the only one I have regarding Pratchetts books, which are, to my mind at least, nigh on perfect in every other respect.