The Obligatory 2014 Retrospective

In the two years I’ve been writing this blog, I have made a tiny habit of doing a little retrospective post about the year that has just been. Reading through some of my old posts searching for some inspiration on the subject, I apparently succumb to my obligation to retrospection after New Year’s Eve. However, since I already cheated and didn’t write a blog post last week (my logic for this being it was Christmas Eve, surely that’s worthy of a break and that there wasn’t anything I could think to write about), I didn’t feel I could really wait until next week to talk about 2014. Especially as by the time this is posted, there’s barely anything left of 2014 for anything of significant note to happen.

So, on with the blabbering.

It occurs to me that a retrospective on 2014 is more than likely to be a summation of everything you dear readers have already read about. Of course, there has been a significant chunk of time not rambled about, that period of silence between May and October, itself preceded by a lengthy silence going back to January. Regardless, I’m going to soldier on. If I can even remember half of the stuff that happened this year...

The first part of the year was spent recuperating from an unprecedented surge in writing. Upon the completion of the first draft of my novel, I decided to kick back and leave it in the hands of my proofreaders. I did just that. It’s probably about here that my addiction to XCOM: Enemy Within came around. And watching all of the TV shows I had neglected in the latter quarter of 2013 in order to finish the novel.

One thing I neglected to mention in any of my blog posts was one of the highlights of my year – 8th April 2014. On that day, I saw my favourite band, Halestorm, performing live in Bristol. It was only the second time I had been to a live gig – the first time being 20th October 2013 in Cardiff. An Alter Bridge gig, with Shinedown and Halestorm supporting. However, because of the need to eat first (I was rather hungry), accidentally missed Halestorm. But did later see Lzzy Hale on stage. Which kind of made my night. But then April. When I got to see them in their full glory in Bristol. It was awesome. And I obtained my very first band t-shirt. Currently the only band t-shirt I have. But it’s Halestorm, it’s my favourite, so right now I don’t feel like I need any others...yet...

The rest of the year is pretty much a matter of me ambling through from one point to another. Well, I say that. There were some highlights in-between, chance meetings with people who just came in for a coffee and ended up writing their number on my arm (I say meetings with people, this last bit only happened once) and let’s not forget some pretty cool movies. The immense highlights of these being Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And in the latter half of 2014, we were given the first trailers for Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron.

Perhaps the biggest, most momentous highlight of 2014 came in November. 25th November 2014 to be precise. I’ve talked about it once already, so I won’t go into massive details, but yes, it was the day I met one of my literary heroes, William Gibson.

Now from skimming my previous retrospectives, there appears to be a tradition of looking ahead at the year to come. Probably something to do with that old Roman curmudgeon, Janus. You know, two-faced fella (literally, had a whole other face on the back of his head), god of beginnings and transitions, no equivalent in Greek mythology? Well, thanks to him this pivotal point of years, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, is not only a time of getting wasted and partying hard, but also a time of reflection on time past and aspirations towards time to come. In my own form of “tradition”, I tend towards looking ahead at all the awesome movies that will be coming out.

2015 is shaping up to be a good movie year. Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron. Minions. A new Neill Blomkamp movie, CHAPPIE. They all look awesome. This is just to name but a few.

I’m sure I should be saying more on this subject, more about things I hope for in 2015, but, well...how about we just let things unfold. Gives me more to talk about as I attempt to continue my trend of writing a blog post once a week. But if you really want some teasers...I hope to see the Heroes of Canton more and learn more about tea. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity to meet my other literary hero, China Miéville. More than anything though, here’s hoping it will be a year of productive writing. Some good news with my novel maybe, or perhaps just that I will also be regularly contributing to Boston Tea Party’s emerging blog.

Whatever happens, here’s hoping for a great 2015. After all, 2014’s been pretty good to me thus far. I’ve had some pretty damn good times with old friends, made some pretty damn cool new ones and generally, it’s been a year of continued growth and development into more of a well-rounded, if slightly dysfunctional in an amusing fashion, human being. Cheers, 2014. It’s been nice knowing you.

Curled Up Next to the Fire: Iron Council

In the lengthy silence that I have been hiding in whilst writing my novel, I have done a spot of reading. Not much, given that I've been furtively writing most of the time, as well as taking a hiatus from reading because I was less than one hundred pages from the end of the book mentioned in the title. You see, it has been mentioned in two previous entries, one Sitting Under the Shade of the Tree and a fellow Curled Up Next to the Fire, incidentally also blogged about at the start of a year. For today's blog speaks of the wonders of China Miéville's work. And I couldn't bring myself to finish reading Iron Council before finishing my novel, because I knew I would absolutely have to blog about it. So I forced myself to be patient and wait until the writing was finished before the reading was.

Now, before I dive in and babble about the book itself, a small warning of potential spoilers. While I aim to avoid them as best I can, Iron Council is the third book in the Bas-Lag Trilogy. There is that ever-present risk that some of the events of the previous two books might get mentioned.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, on with the babbling.

Iron Council is set some twenty or so years after the events of Perdido Street Station and The Scar, which are set near back-to-back. From what I've been able to gather from the novels and some Google referencing, Iron Council takes place in the year 1804 (or around then) in the Bas-Lag chronology, the previous having taken place in 1779 and 1780 respectively.

1804 then. Big changes have happened in New Crobuzon, the toxic city at the heart of the Bas-Lag trilogy. Well. The city administration, the Parliament and its tyrannical Mayor, are still as corrupt and tyrannical as ever. But the feared New Crobuzon Militia is no longer a secret police hiding in the shadows, they have uniforms and are patrolling the streets, though they still wear masks to hide their identities. And all the while, New Crobuzon is waging a costly war against the mysterious city-state of Tesh. Against this backdrop, the rag-tag liberal dissidents of New Crobuzon gather, independently of each other, to bring about great change in the city of rotten dreams.

Iron Council follows three dissidents - Cutter, Ori and Judah Low. Cutter and a band of fellow dissidents from the Caucus, a loose affilitation of the dissident groups in New Crobuzon, are on the trail of Judah Low, who has disappeared halfway across Bas-Lag's continent of Rohagi in order to find the fabled Iron Council of the title. He and his band of fellow seditionists are only a few steps behind the New Crobuzon Militia, who seek to destroy the Iron Council, a symbol of hope and rebellion that could unravel the tyrannical fabric of Parliament's rule.

Meanwhile, back in New Crobuzon, Ori grows tired of the Caucus's ineffectual rebellion, growing to deeply admire and fall into the company of Toro, a militant seditionist who seeks to take direct action against Parliament and the Mayor.

Finally, Judah Low. While some of what we see through Judah's eyes is a telling of events transpiring in the now, the majority of his perspective chapters deal with the past, with the birth of the Iron Council, its roots in New Crobuzon's indiscriminate attempt to expand its dominions through the creation of a great railroad. Interesting side note, Judah Low is a golemist, a particular tradecraft for fashioning golems from various mediums. In the historical context of our Universe, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, famous for creating the Golem of Prague, a creature made from clay.

Anyway, back to the point...

I've waxed lyrical on the subject of the Bas-Lag Trilogy twice now and as the above paragraphs might show, I'm a bit naff at plot summaries. When I gush about China Miéville's works, I'm gushing about setting, about the atmosphere of things. The trick with Iron Council is that the setting is pretty familiar - we're back to New Crobuzon, the city that Perdido Street Station did a very good job of introducing us too. The lure of Iron Council is the state of New Crobuzon some twenty years on from when we last saw her. No less decayed and broken, the city is fast approaching a tipping point - the war with Tesh is going less-than-brilliantly, seditious elements in the city become even more organised in spite of the public presence of the Militia and despite having caught and executed famous Remade revolutionary Jack Half-a-Prayer years before, the violent spirit lives on in the previously mentioned Toro. Underneath the surface of it all, the city can feel that the whole stinking mess is about to violently explode.

Iron Council definitely feels different to the rest of the trilogy. And it's the finality that I think does it. You can feel that everything is coming to a head, that the final showdown is imminent. All roads lead to revolution and all that jazz. The usual sense of setting, the incredible character that arises from the places the characters inhabit isn't really here, which is a shame, but there are some pretty cool locations explored. One in particular, which I'm going to stick a giant SPOILER WARNING before just in case...

Much later, around the middle of Iron Council, we learn that the titular entity has retreated into the fringes of the Cacotopic Stain, a region first mentioned in Perdido Street Station. The Stain is a massive blight, a barren area where the laws of reality unravel, ravel themselves up again in new arrangements and play general havoc on anything they come into contact with by virtue of a highly unstable magical energy source called Torque. One of the dangers approaching the Stain is something I find particularly fascinating - a substance called smokestone. From what I can gather, it rises as smoke and then, when it comes into contact with living or inanimate matter, it hardens and creates solid stone. It's frakkin' dangerous stuff and litters the area around the Stain.

For all that I'm bigging it up though, we don't stay in the Stain long. Iron Council isn't so much about its settings as Perdido Street Station and The Scar were. This one is all about the oncoming storm that is about to zap New Crobuzon's Parliament in the butt.

As part of a trilogy, Iron Council comes to be judged next to the merits of its peers. Standing next to Perdido Street Station and The Scar, Iron Council is the weakest instalment in the trilogy, but no less a satisfying conclusion and a worthy entry in the Bas-Lag mythology. As with all of China Miéville's work, including the shudder inducing Kraken, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend reading it. Let's be honest, if you've read the first two in the Bas-Lag Trilogy, you should read the end, if nothing else to complete it. For all that I seem to be underwhelmed by it, it doesn't detract from my opinion that China Miéville is a genius, a brilliant writer whose work I continue to devour with near-religious devotion. Around the middle of the year, when I've demolished my reading pile a little more (hopefully), it'll be on to the next offering of his I have in my reading pile - Railsea. Oh, it turns out he has a bit of an obsession with trains...it definitely comes across here in Iron Council, but doesn't take anything away from the narrative, so all in all...just an interesting side note I guess.

Moving on...

As my babbling is reaching the level where I feel all sanity and confounded Vulcan logic has left the building, it's time to wrap things up. In summation, Iron Council is a good book, a worthy read, but alas not up there with the predecessors in the series.


Gods I feel all evil and dirty saying that...I suspect I need help.

Anyway, until next time dearest readers, where I plan to recap the exciting adventures of 2013 in a Year in Review-style blog, read, enjoy, curl up next to a nice roaring fire with a good book.

Sitting Under the Shade of the Tree: Great North Road

When I was last sitting under the shade of the tree enjoying a good book, I expressed my fear that I was becoming a China Miéville fanboy. My stated reason was that excepting one book, every time I finished reading one of his I would "review" (I use sarcastic quotation marks on myself because I would hardly regard these as professional reviews) the book. This trend is apparently continuing with Peter F. Hamilton, as with the exception of Mindstar Rising, the first Greg Mandel novel, I've reviewed every book of his I've read. Continuing today with my "review" of his latest offering, the 1086 page tome Great North Road.

Great North Road is the first standalone Peter F. Hamilton book I've read, as he has a habit of writing trilogies it seems. This particular book is set in 2143, kicking off in the not-so-exotic location of Newcastle-upon-Tyne with discovery of the body of a prominent person. Well, sort of. The body belongs to a member of the North family, a family of all-male clones. The body has been stripped of all features that would permit identification, presenting investigating officer Detective Sidney Hurst with the first of many, many mysterious stumbling blocks.

The one identifying trait is the murder weapon/method, which is the same as a murder on the exotic planet of St Libra (linked to Newcastle by a trans-spatial gateway permitting instantaneous travel from one planet to the next) that occurred in 2121. Where the victims were Bartram North, patriarch of one of the three branches of the North family. The second hitch...Angela Tramelo, one of Bartram North's "girlfriends" who survived the massacre on St Libra, was convicted of the crime and has been languishing in Holloway prison all the while.

Things rapidly spiral out of control from there - all through her trial, Tramelo had insisted that she didn't murder Bartram or his household...an alien did. With the implication that this "alien" was involved in a fresh murder in 2143, the Human Defence Alliance descends on the investigation. From there, both Sidney Hurst and Angela Tramelo are dragged into the HDA's hunt for the truth - is there another alien race out to get humanity, or did Tramelo have an accomplice on St Libra?

Now to run away from the plot so I don't post any spoilers and talk about...well, pretty much any damn thing. We'll start with the brief verdict - I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are some damn compelling characters, from the pretty uncomplicated, down-to-earth but incredibly shrewd Detective Sidney Hurst to the incredibly complicated Angela Tramelo. Sprinkled in with the main characters I've mentioned before are some pretty neat supporting characters - HDA officer Colonel Vance Elston, who is convinced Tramelo is hiding the truth behind the events on St Libra, Sidney Hurst's through-and-through Geordie partner Detective Ian Lanagin and the occasional perspective character of surf-shop owner Saul Howard. I could go on, but I might say too much.

So moving over to one of my other favourite topics - setting. I mentioned the gateway concept briefly. In this particular future, Earth is connected to a whole ton of planets by these gateways. We get to "see" a couple of them, but by and large our primary settings are Earth and St Libra. And St Libra is fascinating planet - it has absolutely no indigenous animal life and has what is called "zebra" botany, which are plants that produce both carbon dioxide AND oxygen, making the uninhabited planet a perfectly habitable tropical jungle paradise. St Libra is, if memory serves, slightly bigger than Earth and the star it orbits is younger than our own. All these elements combine to make a strange, unpredictable tropical world...that even has its own rings, akin to those of Saturn's. Though the rocks from these rings have a nasty habit of falling through the atmosphere in an area called "The Fall Zone". But apart from that, the presence of the rings sounds awesome. Especially as St Libra doesn't have any moons. Which is kind of sad. No planet should be without a moon.

I feel should take a moment to talk about the actual writing. You know, style, flow, stuff like that. Now Hamilton is defined, I believe, as Hard Science-Fiction. That means lots of amazing technology (epitomised in Great North Road by the trans-spatial gateways and a funky load of tech called smartcells) and good chunks of description about...well, planets, spaceships, space stations, things like that. And it doesn't detract from a quite gripping narrative. I wouldn't say it's nail-biting, but...it gnaws at you. All those little hints and clues, chewing away at the back of your brain, calling you back to the book so you can find out just what the frak is actually going on. In my eyes, just as good as a book you can't put down. But like I say, fair amounts of description of tech, people and locations. Which is also good, because you get a pretty damn good picture of this twenty-second century world Hamilton has created.

I've reached the point of babbling entropy, so I'm going to wrap things up. Great North Road was pretty damn good, a thoroughly enjoyable yarn. Well worth picking up and devoting a good chunk of time to sitting under that tree and reading it.

Sitting Under the Shade of the Tree: Kraken

I don't know how the weather is for the rest of the country, nay the world depending on where you're reading this from, but down here it's taken a miserable turn. A shame after the beautiful weekend we've just had (which I may indulge upon in a subsequent blog post, but not today), but in spite of the gloomy weather, I feel it's the time of the year to justify switching the "literature segment" title to the spring/summer vibe one. And thus, today (or more precisely, for about the last month or so), I have been sitting under the shade of the tree enjoying Kraken by China Miéville.

Honestly, I fear that I'm turning into a bit of a fanboy. In fact, with the notable exception of The City & The City, the first China Miéville book I read, I have posted a review entry for every one of his books I have read since. Oh gods. I really am a fanboy...

(Also, amusing side-note, after bitching about gloomy weather - it's been rain today - the Sun poked its head out for a brief second. Frakkin' indecisive British weather).

Back to the matter at hand.

Kraken.

This is the first China Miéville book I have read which is set in a real place. The Bas-Lag trilogy (reviewed so far: Perdido Street Station and The Scar) is set in the titular world, with the focal point being the city of New Crobuzon. Embassytown is set on the planet Arieka, in the eponymous city. Finally, the un-reviewed (oh so very tempted to do a retrospective one now...) The City & The City is set in the parallel cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma. But our latest adventure, Kraken, is set in merry old London.

Well, perhaps not so merry really.

The book centres on Billy Harrow, a curator at the Natural History Museum, who one day finds that his prized specimen, a preserved giant squid, has been stolen. With no signs of forced entry or any evidence of how the large glass tank the squid was encased in was moved out of the building undetected. It is this incredibly bizarre set of circumstances that hurl Billy, unwittingly and unwillingly, into the dark and seedy underbelly of London's occult, where he will be caught between multiple warring gangs, kraken-worshipping cults and general all-out crazy random magic happenings.

Now my usual fanboy babble is about Miéville's construction of an environment that functions, or at least feels, like a character unto itself. But this time, I would go too far with that gushing praise. The trick here is that London is already a character - like many cities across the worlds, its citizens and citizens of the country that it's in, give it character. London has its own vibe. What Miéville masterfully does this time is take London's existing vibe, plunge into a dark box, and twist it mercilessly and brilliantly, stripping off the layers of what we know as London and creating a new side to the city. And this new face, the face of London's true underbelly (move over London Underground), is wacky and bizarre and utterly incredible.

Initially, while reading Kraken, I was taking it deadly seriously. But in retrospect, I realise just how cheeky that little book is. And it's fantastic. The characters are brilliant, realised amidst Miéville's near-scholarly mastery of the English language. I won't go into too many details, but there are secondary group of characters - the Metropolitan Police's Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit, the FSRC, led by the constantly nonplussed Detective Chief Inspector Baron, aided by the highly unorthodox, completely tactless Police Constable Kath Collingswood. The FSRC are just one of the players in Kraken's events, which as the novel (and Billy Harrow's spiral into the chaotic world of magical London) progresses promise to be of apocalyptic proportions.

Finally, I'm going to delve into a little backstory - but for once, this babble is an afterthought, not the opening salvo. For you see, I had an interesting ulterior motive in reading this book.

I hate tentacles.

Honest to gods, the frakkin' things make me shudder. And I realise the dangers of openly admitting to this kind of thing on the Internet, but oh well. The thing of it is, I read Kraken mostly because I wanted to level the hell up. The mention of the tentacles and their suckers still make me shudder quite a bit, but I managed to get through it. They didn't make me want to put the book down. Which is both a testament to how damn frakkin' good the book, and by extension China Miéville's writing, and I sincerely hope an indication of how much I'm growing as a person. We'll see if I ever happen to cross paths with a squid.

I'll most likely scream like a little girl and run away.

Interesting side-notes - in the course of doing some quick Wikipedia double-checking for this blog entry, I discovered that the US Navy had a submarine in World War II called USS Kraken and that there's a body of liquid on Titan, Saturn's moon, called Kraken Mare. The random things you learn from those cheeky disambiguation pages.

Until next time, this has been my latest fanboy ramble about the awesomeness of China Miéville. If you haven't gone out and read any of his books, seriously...what the frak? Get out of your chair, right now. Or don't. Go to Amazon. Order it online. Buy it for your Kindle. Whatever. Dude. Seriously. Buy it. Right frakkin' now. I'm not kidding. Any of them. All of them.

I think everyone gets the message now...