Thursday, March 21, 2002
Title: Shamanspace
Author: Steve Aylett
Publisher: Codex
"Teaching you to fieldstrip and reassemble yourself like a gun? You think being permitted is the same as being free?"
Shamanspace marks the fourth book by Steve Aylett that I have read - following on from Slaughtematic, The Inflatable Volunteer and Toxicology - and being more of a solid story and narrative than the latter two of those three. Though at 120 pages or so I suspect it could be more considered as almost a novella, I certainly had read it in no time at all, an hour or so in one sitting and it was done.
For centuries the Internecine have been a secret organisation of assassins, stemming from the 'hashishins'. Mixing mystical skills in their mission to destroy god. A mission which has been taken for granted through that time without any concrete proof that there is a god. There have been schisms within the organisation, so that the Internecine and the newer group the Prevail are both set with the task of deicide, though with different reasoning's - the Internecine believe that with the death of god the universe will cease to exist, while the Prevail think it will keep on going.
Shamanspace is the story of Alix, Internecine hit man - god has been proved to exist, there have been previous failed attempts - but Alix knows where the heart of god is, and is preparing for the kill. Unfortunately things aren't that straight forward, the information came from a dead Prevail agent, and there seems to be treachery from friends and colleagues.
Pretty much we know that Alix fails from the start, the story is told to the latest edgeman, the latest bright young thing following in his footsteps. It's Sig's turn to take his pop at god, but not before he is forced to talk to someone who failed; in the same way that Alix explains he also did before going for the kill.
As with the rest of Aylett's books this is stripped down narrative, raw and abstract. Evocative flow, which says so much about what is happening without being blatant or entirely transparent, flirting with poetic license.
RVWR: PTR
March 2002
