re:mote voices: literature

Title: lucifersDragon
Author: Jon Courtney Grimwood
Publisher: Earthlight

lucifersDragon is the second novel by John Courtenay Grimwood, and the only one that I haven't read. Along with his first book neoAddix, it had been out of print, while I had found an old copy of neoAddix second hand lucifersDragon had eluded me till now. Back in print for the first time in a number of years, with a cover style that is consistent with the later novels reMix and redRobe, unlike the early edition of neoAddix, which featured a hideous SF cover work. lucifersDragon fits in with these other three novels as part of his sort of alternate-history/near future cyber punk thing. Linking in with some contribution from the characters Alex Gibson and Razz from neoAddix, as well as a more global feel. lucifersDragon is perhaps the most convoluted of the four books, and despite the fact that is perhaps meanders, and at times in a confused manner, is probably the best of the sequence. The title comes from a semi-AI computer game, in which the player can experience the apocalypse either as the archangel or the dragon. The doge is a kind of child king/corporate figure head for neoVenice, and he is a big fan of the game, which he is playing when he and his exotic bodyguard Razz are attacked. All sorts of rumours spread around the shanty towns that surround neoVenice, while the corporate structures of the city itself try to clamp down. The book follows, from that start, the trail of Razz who having been killed is in a new body, the Doge's cousin Karo who is trying to get revenge, and the police officer who has been assigned as a token gesture to solve the crime at the start. In the process, the police officer is trying to understand how this all fits together with the island construct that is neoVenice, and so we back track in time with him, following a spoiled daughter of a mafia billionaire as the tries to pull of her cunning plan to build her own island. As with the rest of Grimwood's work this is a pretty straight forward read - filled with drugs, violence and tech. Winding the threads, he manages to bring them to a point where they have a certain momentum, and it is easy enough to get caught up in that. Though to some degree I was conscious of just how convenient those events seemed, and how unlikely it is that something wouldn't have been done sooner to prevent the momentum from building. Interestingly there are a couple of strong inferences that are worked into the text, which are never laid straight out, which was novel and refreshing.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: Mr. Landen Has No Brain
Author: Stephen Walker
Publisher: Voyager

Mr. Landen has no brain, but he does have a tub of margarine instead. Mr. Landen is just one of the cast of characters in the book that is named after him, and perhaps strangely not even the most prominent of characters. The action takes place in Wyndam-On-Sea, in a local caravan park. The timing is during a competition to see who can have the safest caravan park in the district. What with the unusual number of strange deaths in recent times the local council are concerned about dwindling tourist numbers, so they came up with the competition for the dullest park (with the theory that calling it the "safest" park might have negative inferences).

Unfortunately for Sally Cooper the caravan park she is managing for her uncle is filled with "interesting" characters. Apart from which she also has a track record of being associated with death thanks to her failed career as entertainer's assistant.

Teena Rama is a genius and far too beautiful, and getting more so every day. At least according to her. She is staying in the caravan camp along with her assistant Mr. Landen. Where she has unleashed a giant talking rabbit. As well as applying anti-gravity cream to an intelligent cow.

Clthula Gochlagochgoch is a welsh girl, though her mother is someone she is avoiding, what with the tentacles and all. Her boyfriend is Roddy, he has funny eyes and suckers on his fingers. Her boss is Sally's uncle, who is a machine.

The cast of characters all work along those lines. Every one of them with their own agenda to complicate things. On the whole Mr. Landen Has No Brain is an odd book, one which could probably become silly, though manages to tend towards the absurd to a greater degree. Retaining a certain internal logic, which it benefits from.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: Survivor
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Vintage

No doubt like so many others I came to Chuck's work after seeing the film Fight Club. While it would feel better to be able to say that I was there from the start man, it just isn't true - in this case I have to just admit I read the book after the film. But after Fight Club I kept reading. from there to Invisible Monsters, then timing led to Choke and in turn Lullaby as those two came out. For some reason never quite getting round to going back to Survivor till now.

The first thing the reader will notice on opening there copy of Survivor is that the book is backwards. Presenting a countdown starting with chapter 47, page 278. A gimmick sure, but one which catches the readers attention straight off and works as we follow the account of Tender Branson's life. Tender Branson is 35, one of a dwindling numbers of survivors of a mass suicide by the Creedish Church. Only the first born son of each family stayed within the church district, increasing their lands incrementally while breeding more children. All the other children were sent out brainwashed, destined to clean and do manual work with all the money generated from their actions being sent back to the church. Tender hasn't been home since he was 17, and for the last 10 years he has watched the others in the FBI Survivor Program take their lives to join with rest of the church members in death.

As Tender becomes the last member of his church he gets an agent and becomes a celebrity which is the point where Chuck really cuts loose. His biting detail bridling up until this point then tearing into so many levels of modern American culture in the process. The upward spiral seems to be with every step a downward spiral in reality. Culminating with Tender being on a hijacked plane, counting down as each engine crashes and burns to leave an inevitable conclusion.

I'm not sure whether it is because this is a backwards step for me, having more recently read Choke and Lullaby, but it seems to take me longer to get into Survivor than his other work. But without a doubt Chuck's voice is as clear in Survivor as in any of his novels. An author that always surprises with the amount of detail that he actually works into his text. The result being that sometimes his work is not the most epic but is undoubtedly dense. In each book he comes with a satirical commentary that burns vividly and subversively - little throwaway ideas that act as bombs, the after-shock being what really catches the reader.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: The Straw Men
Author: Michael Marshall
Publisher: Harper Collins

The Straw Men is the first book by Michael Marshall, a new and alternative name for Michael Marshall Smith who has published 3 novels and one collection of short stories to date. So why the change of name? Good question - and a valid one I feel, given that I think he could have gotten away with publishing this as MMS rather than MM. Though on the other hand there is an undoubted genre shift and to that end there are always people who are willing to be confused by these kind of things, so a name change provides a warning of change and a fresh slate in a new genre. Only Forward, Spares and One Of Us are all Science Fiction novels to some degree, though they are near future and the don't necessarily read as hard science fiction novels. With The Straw Men I wasn't sure what to expect genre wise, I was getting hints of crime and horror from the presentation (I've also seen it on display in the "crime" section) - but for me genre wasn't really important. Familiar with the work of Michael Marshall Smith I trusted that Michael Marshall would provide work of a similar calibre.

The Straw Men works as two narratives, which inevitably come together at points, as you would expect as soon as you work this fact out. Interestingly one narrative is told in first person and the other is in third person; most novels being one or the other. Wade Hopkins is the first person, in town for the funeral of his parents who have been killed in a car accident. Wade hasn't been particularly close to his parents, and they certainly didn't know about his past as a member of the CIA, an ex-member for various reasons. This fact becomes relevant as he finds an elaborate series of clues left for him by his parents, allowing him resources which wouldn't be open to the average person. The first being a note that claims that they are not dead - despite all evidence to the contrary. This leads to the conspiracy, which seems to revolve around an organisation calling itself The Straw Men.

Meanwhile the third person narrative follows a couple of characters, though all of this link together in a more obvious fashion. John Zandt is an ex-policeman, his work in homicide division led to experience of serial killers, which led him to involvement with the FBI on a couple of cases. The result was that his own daughter was kidnapped by a killer as a warning, the fourth and last girl to go missing, and the only one whose body was never found. Several years have passed and The Upright Man has returned, John becomes involved once more, hoping to be able to find the killer of his daughter and to save the life of his current victim.

As Michael Marshall Smith there tends to be a pattern to his novels, in that the lead character is always a male, someone who has maybe hit on hard times of a varyingly dubious nature but is still hard as fuck if he really has to be. With The Straw Men we have a shift, primarily with the whole first/third person thing, but also because essentially we have two leads of this nature rather than one, while also following the FBI agent, the kidnapped girl and the kidnapper at various points. The macho potential of the leads is toned down from previous works, the characters both having worked for government agencies and now both cut loose from those lives but for different reasons.

The only thing I could possibly describe as an obvious weakness with The Straw Men is that certain facts are given too early. So that certain conclusions are made from those facts. The result is that when we approach the climax of events there are things, which surprise the characters, but the reader will likely already have worked out. Given the balance of the narrative overall it is possible that Michael felt that it was more important to reveal these facts to provide flow and motivation for one of the narratives. In real terms it doesn't detract from the book, but its a lost potential for shock.

This is another enjoyable novel from Michael regardless of which name he has gone for. A different content, but with enough stylistic and thematic similarities to please a familiar reader like myself.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: reMix
Author: Jon Courtnenay Grimwood
Publisher: Earthlight

It starts with a kidnapping, rich and spoilt girl with mega bad attitude is taken as she arrives for school on the moon. The girl is LizAlec, daughter of the enforcer for the Napoleonic empire. As though her mother didn't have enough to worry about, an Azerbaijani Jihad nano virus is sweeping Europe and Paris is under siege from the Black Hundreds of the Fourth Reich. So against her better judgement she releases Fixx from her prisons - the has-been mixer, once was the superstar who LizAlec had been seeing - gives him the job of bringing LizAlec back.

Rapid paced sex and violence, caught up in a trail of wrong turns and bred killing machines, add a dash of bitter revenge and you are getting a feel for reMix. Flecked with cultural references, like mixes of Wagner/Petty/Goldie or some such, extracting from the now to a possible then. Contrast with a few historical mixes, the return of the Napoleonic age under a Napoleonic emperor or the rise of fascist horde as a bored fashion statement/sign of the times. Then of course there are drugs and cults, because every good speculation needs them, because people need these things in the ever present.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: redRobe
Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Publisher: Earthlight

redRobe is another book by Jon Courntenay Grimwood, once again fitting into his whole alternative time line future extraction thing as set up in neoAddix and concluded by reMix. Essentially the story of Axl Borja, an orphaned kid on the streets of a Mexico which has been run by Austria. Taken in by a priest who has risen to become the countries leading Cardinal, Axl became one of the core characters in a reality television show - warChild. As a celebrity killer he was involved in skirmishes around the world, but the toll of violence and drug abuse led to burn out and a fall from grace. Working in a burger bar Axl gets involved in one last hit, the fall out from which leads him back to the Cardinal and the choice of taking on a mission for him or facing a death sentence.

The pope is dead and all the money that the now corporate Vatican had has vanished with her, the trail leading with a stream of refugees to an artificial holy land run by the Dalai Lama and religious AI. Which is where a severely beaten and blinded Axl finds himself, painfully under cover and on a mission. Add in an artificial intelligence that used to be Axl's gun, a Japanese kinderwhore who is here against her will, the pope's sister and troupe of Worldbank/UN special forces soldiers who are also on a mission and everything could just go horribly wrong. In some ways redRobe dwells too much on it's central character, and for a lot of the book it doesn't feel like he is particularly well fleshed out - though as it goes on the back history becomes more apparent. Giving more time to Mai the kidnapped whore would probably have been useful, striking the reader as having more potential than is actually delivered - though it could be argued that maintaining a certain distance from her gave us more of a perspective in common with Axl. Again hi-tech, designer clad, and drug fuelled sci-fiction which is pretty readable despite any niggles I may have remaining about this earlier work by Grimwood.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: neoAddix
Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Publisher: New English Library

Having recently read reMix it is interesting to now read neoAddix, the first in the first series of novels by jon courtenay grimwood. which introduces the character lady claire who was also in reMix as well as Alex Gibson and Razz who are both referred to in that book but are more central to the plot of this one.

There is a mysterious killer stalking the streets of paris, one who seems to be able to elude all attempts to capture him, along with which he seems to be hundreds of years old. alex gibson is a trial chaser, finding the trials that are likely to be worth televising. he has an interview with a tramp that witnessed one of the killer's murders - which is evidence certain people would rather he didn't have. an assassin in on his trail and alex has soon disappeared, with the assassin acquiring a new plaything in the form of a young street girl who has witnessed what he has done. meanwhile it seems that one of the reasons that the serial killer has never been captured is because the head of the french secret service is covering it up - which is unfortunate for claire, and ambitious investigator who is trying to get to the bottom of the latest murders.

One of the things that put me off picking up Grimwood's work when I first saw remix was the comparisons to Gibson and Tarantino - both being far too over used in terms of comparisons, and to be honest normally the sign of laziness. With that it probably is fair to say of the three books by Grimwood I've read now this is the only one where I can see any real comparison to Gibson. Certain points giving that uncanny sensation, but for the most part he gets over that and certainly as his work has gone on he has improved, so that his current series is better than this first one.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002

Title: Stalking The Angel
Author: Robert Crais
Publisher: Orion

There is something about a private detective style story that works for me. It is a realisation that I have fairly recently found, coming through hybrid styled narratives (Glen Cook's books, Mick Farren's Exit Funtopia being the first to come to mind). There tends to be a certain easy going feel, an edge of humour that often appeals. Though there are certain rules to the genre, which seem to be fairly obvious, though in fact add a good amount of the charm to the system. Stalking The Angel falls into this category, Elvis Cole being an LA based PI with a case to solve and an untouchable woman to attract his interest - classic stuff.

It starts with a rich man and his beautiful personal assistant. A precious Japanese book has been stolen from his house, a book on loan and very significant to his partners. Following it up it is clear there is a lot of interest in the book, and soon there are special police divisions and yakuza for Cole to deal with. Then the client's daughter is kidnapped and things move up to another level all together.

Classic elements include the wise cracking PI and his tougher than anything else side kick, damsel in distress, insufferable client, gangsters, and the unobtainable dame. An easy going read, which is reasonably enjoyable for that.

RVWR: PTR
May 2002