Review: Tigerman, Nick Harkaway

Well, this wasn't Angelmaker, either.

Of course it wasn't, Alys. Stop wanting things to be Angelmaker.

But... but there are no steamtrains!

No. There are no steamtrains. Now write the review.

Humph. Alright.

Robust and generally ethical, Nick Harkaway is quickly becoming one of my favourite writers. Even though not all his books have war-elephants and steam trains in them. Tigerman returns us to the faintly post-colonial, magical realist kind of setting you find in The Gone-Away World. Weird stuff is happening because of unchecked cultural imperialism and Western exploitation of resources - and now we've established that backgroud, let's have a rolicking adventure.

Which is what is delivered, if I'm honest. This is a superhero story with questions that are not answered because what kind of idiot asks that sort of question (but why is there a tiger? What do the clouds actually do...?) Oh, stop whining and enjoy it.

I do sometimes wonder if a white, Western writer addressing issues like the ecological ruination of island populations, with a male British soldier playing Western-saviour* to the inhabitants of an ex-colony, shouldn't bother me more, and it is a uncomfortable issue. However, within the realms of wildly enjoyable narrative, I think Harkaway handles it with a certain carefulness. Ultimately, I think it better that he is prepared to address the ugly underbelly of our society and government - however clumsily - than blithely ignore it. I accept that some might disagree.

This is probably my least favourite Harkaway book thus far but the other two are such an enduring joy that this isn't too much of a criticism. It's a clever inventive novel with a heart. Perfect weekend reading. 

Now, all together: I. DO. NOT. TRAIN. NINJAS!

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*I may be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that nowhere does it state that Lester Ferris was white.

Review: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

Another gorgeous cover, though.

You know when you want to love a book? You know when you look at it and go, "Well, this is clearly Angelmaker level stuff and I'm going to fall blissfully in to it, and everything will be great?"

Never ends well, does it?

Look. I didn't hate this book. I had to read it twice to make sure of that.

Parts of it are bits from a really, really good book. Thaniel is adorbs and Matsumoto might be a type, but he's a very fine and engaging example of that type. The initial plot is tightly set up and interesting and there are people whose emotions and struggles I care about. It's just that, every time it looked like it was about to soar off in to wonderous places, every time I'd feel myself softening and leaning forward and about to fall in love, it would just... stop.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is not a bad novel, but it is a self-conscious one. It covers up its sentimentalism with quite unnecessary brutality, but cannot quite commit to that. It's a steampunk novel that absolutely detests the idea of being a steampunk novel. This is a book that involves a clockwork octopus, clairvoyance, and a rebellious Lady Scientist exploring quantum-mumble-something-I'm-not-a-scientist, but with a writer very keen to impress upon us that everyone hates steam trains, the Lady Scientist is not a Suffragist and that we are totally not getting our airships here.

Honestly, I can live without the air-ships. It's the writer I'm worried about.

To make the inevitable comparison to Harkaway, I would have to admit that Pulley is probably the better writer - but Harkaway writes the better novel. He is gloriously, gleefully trashy, and applies his considerable intelligence and talent to that without reservation. Weighed down by a need to be better, Pulley's prose is glistening, but her plot is stilted, doubting. There is something resigned and perfunctory about it, as though she second guessed herself at every turn. She gets bogged down in the bruising details and dismisses the rather more interesting problems with a throwaway ending.

It almost feels as though Pulley wanted to pass this off as magical realism because her critique group felt that a rattlingly good spy story about forbidden love, magical clockwork and precognition wasn't Literary enough, and the novel that we hold is the tragic result of their interference. Or perhaps I'm just projecting. We went to the same university - sometimes its hard to tell.

Also, I did not like Keita Mori. I know that like-ability is not key to good character structure, but Mori crossed a line for me. I got the feeling he was supposed to be more sympathetic that he ever seemed to me. What's more, to make him appear more pleasant, it felt as though Grace was defamed unjustly - something which made her seem a little two dimensional and really beyond the pale. All of this made the ending deeply uncomfortable. This felt to me less like another attempt Literariness than an unfortunate consequence of the novel's earlier flaws.

Will I come back to this book? Yes - very probably. It bothers me, and books that bother me tend to get me to reread them more those I enjoyed without reserve. And I'll probably look out Pulley's next novel, although not with any urgency. I want to see how her writing develops.

But would I reccomend that you read it?

Let me think on that one.

What I've been reading: Angelmaker, Three Supernatural Classics, The Scarlet Pimpernell

You know, I'm not sure if I've ever read any Algernon Blackwood before - which is a little odd, given that I spent most of my youth and early adolescence reading ghost stories. What I have certainly never done before is had to go grovelling to library to tell them I ruined one of the books.

 I am mortified. 

Suffice to say that a very windy day and a child stuck in deep mud at a beach have ruined the habit of a lifetime, and, more importantly, my local library's copy of Three Supernatural Tales.

But it isn't the outside of a book that matters, *bites fist and moans softly* it's the words in it that make the difference. So, before I die of shame, our supernatural tales ; The Willows, The Wendigo and The Watcher. Of these, The Watcher was easily my favourite. Not to disparage Blackwood's ingenuity in creating less usual supernatural threats, it was the only 'proper' ghost story of the three, with a mystery to be solved based upon the lives of the unquiet dead and a threat to be averted. The denouement was a little weak, but the suspense, the sense of growing madness, the shaking passion of the narrative was utterly compelling. Good work.

The Willows and The Wendigo were far more ambitious, and while beautifully realised (and more narratively satisfying, in terms of explanations) they left me a little cold. Both these stories felt very Lovecraftian in the way that the supernatural threat was inhuman and implacable, primal and horrific. Yet while I found Blackwood a far better writer than Lovecraft (don't shoot!), and his approach rather more literary, there was a sense of missed opportunity. While our dear H.P never lets a moment slip in terms screaming horror (sometimes at the expense of style or clarity) Blackwood has a tendency to undercut his most effectively chilling writing with explanation of that fear. And while his literariness gives him greater scope for exploring the more philosophical aspects of abject terror at the universe, the sense of internal drama in his characters was lacking; we heard that they were distressed, but got no sense of it. In a genre so empathetic as the supernatural story, this is something of a short-coming - and a sadness, as it was a technique at which he excelled in The Listener.

Still, definitely worth a look for fans of the genre.

For a more open-hearted commendation, if you're looking for a holiday read,the only problem with Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is that you may get so caught up that you forget to do ordinary holiday things like eat ice cream, swim in the sea, or play cricket.

Isn't that just a beautiful cover?

Seriously, my kids got so pissed off with me.

It's a clever book, with characters you genuinely care about, and a real light touch for poignant details. Never mawkish, or sentimental, it is perfectly balanced - like a skilfully made clock. And it's compulsive. A wild ride that flirts with steam-punk and political commentary while never losing the core value of just being a huge amount of fun. Yeah, fun. Look, it isn't the best book I've read this year, but it was beautiful, witty and entertaining. It was gut-wrenching, it was sexy, it was intelligent... and it had a bi-sexual, cross-dressing super-spy. And frankly, that should be enough for anyone.


And talking about bi-sexual, cross dressing superspies.... Except that, outside my headcanon, there is absolutely no evidence that Percy Blakeney batted for both teams. *Sigh*. Still, hot on the tail of The Count of Monte Cristo, I was in the mood for a rather more slushy and anglo-centric rip-roaring adventure narrative, which sent me back into the pages of my beloved The Scarlet Pimpernell.

Look, I could write an essay about everything that is wrong with this book, but I don't want to, so I shan't.

Instead, I'll say that what always interests me about film and stage adaptations of this novel is that Percy's mode of dress becomes part of his ploy- he acts like a brainless dandy, and to do so, he must dress like one. In the novel, he just likes dressing that way. Being daring enigmatic, intelligent and heroic does not preclude on looking fabulous. 

So there.