The Long Mars

It has been fifteen years since Yellowstone erupted on the Datum, gouging the heart out of America and plunging the world into a volcanic winter. Emigration to the worlds of the Long Earth has increased, and the population has become attenuated, stretching out across the near-infinite space of the stepward worlds.

The ur-pioneers Joshua Valiente and Sally Lindsay find themselves once more roped into adventures not of their own making. Joshua is recruited by the AI Lobsang to investigate the apparent rise of an intellectually superior subspecies of human, while Sally's father - Willis Lindsay, father of stepping - calls on her to accompany him on a mission not just to Mars, but to The Long Mars (roll credits.) Meanwhile, US Navy captain and veteran explorer Maggie Kaufman is sent out to delve deep into the Long Earth. With two 'Twain' airships and a crew of navy personnel and scientists, her goal is to travel a quarter billion steps from Earth, into worlds as alien as any Mars.

As with previous books in the Long Earth cycle, The Long Mars is a multi-stranded narrative with a somewhat take-it-or-leave-it approach to the conventions of dramatic closure. The main narratives are Sally and Maggie's, with Joshua's primarily serving to set up the final conflict which bring the two other threads together, and the dominant theme of the book is that of the alien. This theme is expressed in the many Marses which exist in their own long chain, distinct from the chain of the Long Earth and only crossing at the Earthless Gap (which may mean that a) every Earth's Mars connects to a different Long Mars, b) every Mars's Earth connects to a different Long Earth, or c) that the Long Mars and Long Earth intersect entirely, but not in a fashion which line up with one another,) but also in the remote Earths which developed in a radically different fashion to the Datum, and the thought processes of the Next.

As in The Long War, the science in The Long Mars is better than the fiction. Although written as a conventional narrative, it has more of a documentary quality to it, leading to an open ending and a lack of really likable characters. Again in common with the previous book, the most sympathetic character is a semi-outsider, aging rocket jockey Frank Wood. In the nature of high-concept hard SF, the resulting novel is more interesting than involving (I think I said the same thing about much of Neal Stephenson's oeuvre,) but it is definitely interesting.

Maggie for Hire

Crude as it is, this is a much better cover than my
Kindle edition had. This is how Maggie is actually
described in the book, all sass and biker leathers.
On the one I have she has massively 90s pop video
hair and a vest that looks like it was crudely beaten
from aluminium. Still, it's better than the one where
she's wearing stripper leathers and you can't even
see a full face.

Maggie McKay is a Tracker; basically a skip-tracer for the Otherworld. A child of both worlds, she is able to move with relative ease across the boundary between the mundane and the magical, find rogue vampires and ghouls, and bring them back to the Otherworld, dead or more dead. But then something goes awry and the vampires seem to be hunting a bounty on Maggie. Before long, she's got a contract to save the world, a long-lost uncle who might want her dead, and an unwanted new partner in the form an an irritating elf named Killian.

So, I admit, I read this book for two reasons: 1) I loved The Woodcutter, Danley's first novel, and 2) the Kindle edition was free. Maggie for Hire is, even more than The Woodcutter, part of a vast herd. It doesn't really distinguish itself in either direction, neither managing to be a standout success, nor yet more than ordinarily appalling. It's workmanlike, which may be pretty damning in and of itself, although the several favourite phrases textmarked in the Kindle edition suggest that it has at least a cult following.

I can understand how it might: Sassy hunter, gorgeous if lippy sidekick and a side-order of family angst; it's got everything a book of its ilk should have. As of book 1, however, Maggie McKay Magical Tracker doesn't really have much more than that (actually, that's not 100% fair; Pipistrelle the Brownie was kinda awesome.) It's a shame, because The Woodcutter felt like Danley had a lot more to say. On the other hand, I can not fault her industry. Maggie for Hire has four sequels, and Danley now has an even dozen books out in the past four years. I guess that's the kind of thing you have to do to make the bacon as an indie novelist, so maybe a little unevenness is inevitable.

The Rithmatist

Rithmatics is a magic forged in chalk. A Rithmatist can create, defend and breach barriers just by drawing in chalk, but it is not a skill that can be learned: Rithmatists are chosen.

Joel was not chosen, but he has a fascination for Rithmatics that is matched by an agile, mathematical mind and a superb geometric eye. The son of a chalkmaker, he attends a prestigious school on a scholarship, fitting in with neither the Rithmatic students, all bound for ten years military service defending the United Isles from wild chalklings, or the sons and daughters of the wealthy who attend the general school with him. Melody has position and wealth to spare, and was chosen as a Rithmatist, but can't even draw a circle. Pushed together in a summer elective class with eccentric Rithmatic theorist Professor Fitch, this odd couple are drawn into the investigation of a series of gruesome crimes involving Rithmatic students; crimes which could threaten the entire nation.

The Rithmatist is my first encounter with terrifyingly prolific fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson. It's a slow-burner, paced more like a detective novel than a conventional fantasy or even school story, with the investigation and the magical theory surrounding it more important than dramatic duels or detentions. Joel and Melody are well balanced as protagonist and deuteragonist, one mathematical, the other artistic, and both qualities given weight within the setting and the magical system. Both are at times irritating - Joel in his absolute focus on Rithmatics and insistence that everything else is boring, Melody in her melodramatic self-pity - but the author is not blind to these faults and they are explored in the text rather than overlooked or excused (as in a scene where Joel is confronted with and confounded by politics and admits to failing his government class last year. "When am I going to need to know historical government theories?" he asks. "I don't know... Maybe right now," is the reply.)

Rithmatics is basically really badass
geometry.

The audiobook, read by Michael Kramer, is good, but suffers from the semi-illustrated nature of the book, and in particular the chapter-heading rithmatic diagrams which provide a great deal of visual context. Having the Kindle book as well proved a boon in this instance. The diagrams are part of a simple yet detailed magic system, although a couple of its facets felt brushed over, specifically that Rithmatists are only chosen to replace those who have died, and that one of the new rithmatic techniques which form a central plot point is so dramatically out of character for the rest of the system. I am sure that both of these facts have relevance, and even if not answered it would have been good to hear the characters ask some questions.

Rithmatics does not exist in a vacuum, however, and is clearly linked to the nature of a world in which the North American continent was shattered into a vast archipelago before any European explorer every reach its shores, and abandoned by its indigenous people in the face of wild chalkling attack. The pseudo-Anglican church with its monopoly on Rithmatists, the clockpunk aesthetic and the political landscape are broadly sketched, but clearly intrinsically linked to the history and nature of the world.

Who doesn't like a map?

If The Rithmatist has a flaw, it is that it is all setup and very little conclusion. It's not without closure, and manages a good turn of action in the closing fifth or so, but is unmistakably, and self-consciously, part of a series. It's a series I intend to follow - when the next part is published and probably recorded - but it's there.

If there is a single sentence to sum up the book's achievement, it is that it makes dual-wielding chalk seem hardcore.

The Oversight

A drunken reprobate brings a girl, bound and gagged, to the door of a London house, where he has been told a Jew will pay a pretty penny for screaming girls. Thus is a scheme put into motion with the intent of destroying the Free Company of the London Oversight, the thin red line between the natural and supranatural worlds. Once hundreds strong, the Oversight has been reduced to a mere handful of members, the very smallest number able to perform their function. The girl, Lucy Harker, might be the first in a line of new recruits, or she could be the destruction of all they have worked for.

In The Oversight, author Charlie Fletcher sets about the creation of a world in which a company of individuals with magical gifts protects an unsuspecting human world from the depredations of the uncanny. Not that it is an entirely new creation, as the presence of Glints - exclusively female psychometrists, who experience the past recorded in stone as tooth-jarring visions, and focus their power through a sea glass heartstone - and John Dee - characterised as a serial killing arsehole* who travels through mirrors and murders Glints to use their heartstones as torches - connects it to the world of the excellent Stone Heart trilogy (which I reviewed in my past life as a teacher.)

The Oversight is divided into three main parts: The deeds of the struggling members of the Oversight itself; the misadventures of Lucy Harker; and glimpses of the doings of the villains of the piece. The first of these is a sort of desperate mystical detective novel, the second a paranormal fugitive Huckleberry Finn and the last a chance to wallow in the smirking evil of the repellent Templebain brothers, a vicious Viscount, and probably-Napoleon and his retained vampire.

The story of the Oversight's history emerges quite organically, without too much delving into the pronoun game or willful retention of vital information - two of the perils of emergent backstory - and while one development in Lucy's story seems a little counter-intuitive at first, it makes sense on consideration that a group of people trying to protect a paranoid natural ninja might consider it necessary to bung her in a sack temporarily for her own good. While the focus is on Britain, and especially London, there is a definite sense of a wider world in which the Oversight operate, and a good balance between their powers and competence and forces which nonetheless threaten them.

Simon Prebble is a good reader, which is a good thing, since my next audiobook is 30 hours of Prebble reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which could otherwise get pretty tedious. Actually, I might set that one back while I get through the TV version, but it's on the phone anyway, and I am not remotely averse to picking up The Paradox if it has the same reader.

* I don't know why John Dee is so much the whipping villain of mystical alternate histories; possibly because he was English.