Imperial Purple

Garth Nix
Illustrated by Sholto Walker
One Beastly Beast
Allen and Unwin 2008

One Beastly Beast is a collection of four children’s stories by Australian author Garth Nix. Only one (The Princess and the Beastly Beast) is actually new, the others being first published in 1998 to 2000 but since I have never read any of them before this is not an issue for me. Nix fans who already have the stories in their libraries may feel differently.

The first story is about Captain Blackbread (sic) and his gang of scurvy pirates who have stolen young Peter’s DVDs. Fortunately Captain Erasmus Rattus of His Majesty’s Royal Ratship Tumblewheel arrives and takes Peter to Neverworld where, with the help of a giant cheese, they defeat Blackbread and get the DVDs back.

The second story (containing the eponymous Beastly Beast) is of Princess Chlorinda who is bored in a castle where nothing ever happens. She sets out to search for adventure but without success. As she is trudging home in the dark she suddenly encounters a very strange monster.

Bill the Inventor is a young orphan in the O’Squealin Home for Lost Children. Bill is an inventor and his inventions (and some friendly mice) help to save him from being adopted by (in order) pirates, a wizard and a witch and aliens. The fourth set of potential adopters are a much better proposition.

Serena and the Sea Serpent is about a little girl who is very, very clever due to an unfortunately accident with a super-computer and a bolt of lightning when she was a baby. A sea serpent has been menacing the coast and sinking local shipping. The only way to keep it away seems to be sacrificing a young girl to it. Serena volunteers and uses her bulging brains to sort things out.

I’m something of a fan of Nix although it has mostly been his work for older children and young adults that I have read. These stories for younger readers are lots of fun and well up to standard. Walker’s illustrations are excellent and he is particularly good at rats and mice. Murex junior is still too young but when he is eight or nine I shall bring the book out again and I’m sure he will enjoy it.

Iain M. Banks
Matter
Orbit. 2008

Quite a lot of years ago now I remember a friend raving to me about the virtues of Iain M. Banks. He seemed very keen so I went into the local bookshop and picked one of Banks’ books at random off the shelves - it happened to be Use of Weapons. Unfortunately I found his central premise about the use of weapons rather silly and this put me off the whole book. I have not read any of Banks’ work since.

I mention this because I am of necessity reviewing Matter as a standalone book - not as part of the “Culture” series. As far as I can tell it stands alone perfectly well although I may be missing some of the finer points.

Matter is set in a shell world - a massive artificial planet built in concentric layers. Each level is over 1,000 kilometres deep with several artificial stars illuminating them. Each level contains a different species - some water-breathers, some aerial and so forth. Levels 8 and 9 contain humanoid species at an early industrial revolution level of technology.

Much of the book is concerned with these species and their discovery, in level 9, of an ancient city. And we mean ancient - we are talking more than a billion years here. Eventually a mysterious object is uncovered which turns out to be not what anyone expects and gets out of hand spectacularly. Everything gets very exciting at this point.

The book is a large one - nearly 600 pages in my edition. The exciting bit unfortunately does not happen until after page 500. A great deal of the book is concerned with the petty, and ultimately irrelevant, military and political details of the humanoid culture. Somewhere around page 350 you start to get an inkling of the greater story but it is a long wait. Many people I have talked to had given up on the book well before reaching this point.

This is my major criticism of the book. It has a sweeping majestic scale with a plethora of interesting aliens, planets the size of solar systems and Artificial Intelligences with brains the size of a planet, all of which are classic SF tropes and which I enjoyed. But, the book is the wrong way round. Instead of spending 500 pages on the background story and 100 on the exciting bit I would have preferred the opposite ratio.

This emphasis on the background story meant that the last 100 pages were unsatisfactory. It all ends very suddenly when a single Special Circumstances agent manages to take out a billion-year old machine with planet-busting abilties. A machine which had resisted all the efforts of a contemporary culture with mind-boggling technological skills to take it down all those years ago.

I’m sorry. I just didn’t believe it. This should have been the massive scale stuff. We had the opportunity for a stupendous encounter between the highly advanced races of the Culture and the might of an ancient but powerful machine. Instead it all ends with a bit of a whimper.

You don’t even really find out what happened except for some general hints in a short epilogue tucked away behind the glossary. You can’t help but feel that Banks was forced to write this epilogue by the publishers. His heart didn’t seem to be in it.

I can’t completely pan this novel because it does have redeeming SF features and will no doubt be enjoyed by Culture fans. But I’m afraid I am still left where I was before - unless someone can convince me otherwise I don’t see any particular reason to read any more of Banks’ books.* I’m giving it two and a half stars.

*Several days later: I’ve thought more about this statement and it’s not completely true. Banks can certainly write - his prose and dialog are both good and the ‘Culture’ in general is interesting. Perhaps someone can recommend one to me - preferably one which doesn’t suffer from the problems I noted above.

Ken MacLeod
The Execution Channel
Orbit 2007

The Execution Channel is an odd mixture of thriller, spy story and science fiction. Mostly it is a thriller set in the very near future. An apparent tactical nuclear explosion destroys a military base in Scotland; simultaneously (for reasons that were never completely clear to me) sundry motorways and bridges across Britain blow up; an Englishman working as a spy for the French (sacré bleu!) goes on the run; his daughter is arrested by a sinister secret service; and shadowy conspiracies er shadow everything.

Jolly good fun with thrilling chases across country and dastardly deeds behind closed doors.

Then there are the odd bits.

There is an alternate history element. Apparently Gore won the 2000 election not Bush. The 9/11 attacks were a bit different. The bit of the middle east that got clobbered was slightly different. Otherwise everything seems pretty much the same or at least could reasonably develop that way. There didn’t seem to be a lot of point to it.

The final chapters appear to have been taken from a SF novel and have only a tenuous connection with the rest of the book. I can only assume the MacLeod was simultaneously working on a piece of full-on techno-futuristic science fiction and the final pages got unfortunately mixed up with this one. I understand that these accidents can happen but I really think the structural editors at Orbit should have picked it up.

Oh yes, and there is a saccharine postscript where all the characters live happily ever after and the evil step-mother gets her just desserts. Oh, hang on - I’ve got the wrong novel again. Maybe it was the big, bad wolf.

Despite this it deserves three stars. The thriller bit was excellent and kept me reading. It was just that I kept finding myself in the wrong book which detracted considerably from what might otherwise have been a four star experience.