A quick recap for those who can't remember my review of book three - "Bad Company" - back in September 2015. Oh and a spoiler warning for the next few sentences. When we last left the adventures of the enigmatic but resourceful Professor Rebecca Winterhill, we were faced with three separate 'cliff-hangers'. Maddy Taliferos has for some reason attempted to pull of the diamond theft of the century, been caught in the act and now awaits to hear if she will spend ten years in the notorious Bloodgate prison. Tareku has been revealed as an imposter sent to spy on Winterhill and keep her alive for an unknown master (although the reader knows it's the Tick-Tock Man). After the ensuing fight he was left drifting in the vacuum of space. As for Rebecca herself - she's lost the time/space machine called the Slider and is set for destinations unknown with the help of her friend The General.
What's quite clear from the start of book four is that we are not going to get a swift reset back to the familiar settings of the previous volumes - in fact the opening scene makes you wonder if you are in the right book series at all. The Slider is still missing and Winterhill is no closer to finding it, even with the loan of a sleek ship from The General and a purchase of a powerful AI wrapped in the skin of an orange that has constant - and vocal - lustful thoughts about her naked body.
Let's take a look at each of the episodes in turn:
The first story "The Song of the Shriek" reunites Rebecca with an old government friend and an even older enemy. There is a distinct 'Alien" vibe as they creep around the innards of an apparently abandoned artefact drifting in space, just waiting for something horrible and dead and rotting to leap out of the dark. If the Arachana are Winterhill's Daleks, then The Shriek are definitely her Cybermen, with one scene echoing the appearance of the silver monsters in "Tomb of the Cybermen" (although some of you might also be reminded of "Genesis of the Daleks" at another point in the story.).
What's also enjoyable is that with each new appearance of his two key monsters, Iain is drip feeding a little more about their origins and motivations. This time we find out that The Shriek may be much more that just grisly animated cadavers and that the reason for their attacks could be of humanity's own making - we poked them first. I'm sincerely hoping that at some point in future novels we get to visit the home world of The Shriek, as there is a lot more to explore with these creatures. I also appreciated the commentary on needless bureaucracy - the whole universe may be at risk but it still needs to trickle up via line managers. The more the future changes, the more it stays the same.
"The (Second) Clock of the Long Now" is described by Iain on his website as a good old-fashioned heist story - and he's not wrong. It has more twists and double-crosses than "Ocean's Eleven", so I can't reveal much without spoiling the surprises. It also has no Winterhill in it for long stretches, instead focussing on the exploits of slightly ineffectual criminal Jonni Blaid and his lovely but deadly wife Savannah. It's almost a "what if" story, where my favourite literary master criminal, 'Slippery' Jim Di Griz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is instead a hen-pecked bounty hunter completely in thrall to his domineering spouse. You do feel sorry for the little guy as he fumbles his way through the story, narrowly avoiding his own demise.
Talking of master criminals, it's great to see an extended cameo from the deliciously urbane Maxymylyan DeVere - I can't be the only one who wants to read about the Infinity Spoon caper. I'm not sure I'd want to visit Elphick's World though, when it's only positive traits seem to be that it's a good place to take a dump and has genuine ham-fisted bun vendor's.
The most amazing thing about this story (and this is totally down to my own ignorance) is that the "Clock of the Long Now" is a real thing. I just thought Iain had come up with a really cool SF idea. I'd heard of the concept of "Deep Time" and the building of incredibly accurate atomic clocks, but this project to build a mechanical clock that will last 10,000 years had passed me by.
There are apparently four prototype clocks in existence - three smaller ones in the Science Museum in London and the Long Now centre in San Francisco and a full scale clock in Texas - funded (as Iain says in his novel) by Jeff Bozos, founder of Amazon. Producer and ambient music innovator Brian Eno was the one who came up with the name. Fantastic stuff!
"There Is Nothing You Could Ever Say To Me Now That I Could Ever Believe" not only wins the prize for longest title in the series so far, but also for completely wrong-footing me. I thought going in that it would be a final conversation between Maddy and her turncoat lover Tareku (of course I assumed he would survive that cliff-hanger) - an emotional character piece that revealed just much the youngest daughter of Old Man Talifero had been affected by things.
While the story does give us another welcome visit to the Taliferos clan, it certainly didn't go in the direction I expected. It's the wedding of the year and the culmination of a lot of the family's simmering plotlines. It feels like a Talifero series finale in it's own right in some ways. In fact, I think Iain had memories of a September 2003 episode of the UK's most famous London based soap opera in his mind when a certain character turns up:
"He had thinning brown hair and eyes that shone with anger, power and controlled ferocity. The skin beneath them was loose, puffy, beginning to sag. He wore a crisp black leather jacket over a grey shirt and dark trousers. 'Hello Princess' he said."
Who does that sound like to you?
"Echelon Red and the River in Space" is the next episode. Despite sounding like a late 90s Marvel superhero (all glowing eyes, spiked shoulder pads and pockets everywhere) it's actually concerned with what appears to be the opening salvo from a secret alien terrorist organisation. It's a new strand to the ongoing saga and much like the very best TV series, Iain seems to be opening different and interesting doors even as he closes off old ones. Of course the story also features hideous slug creatures, a couple of new alien species and the inevitable meeting of the two current men in Winterhill's life - which doesn't go well. Oh, and a river. In Space.
By the way, "ECHELON" is allegedly a code name for a multi-country global surveillance system for the interception of private and commercial communications. Scary stuff.
As much as the action propels the story forward, it's the dialogue which really sparkles here. There's a playful sarkiness between the three main human characters that I really liked. and as always there are a few Doctor Who quotes thrown in for good measure, including ones from the 10th anniversary story and the first episode of the 2005 revival. If I have any criticism, it's that the way to defeat the bad guy is telegraphed a little to obviously which means there was no real sense of surprise when it is used. Finally, I have to ask - exactly what colour is electric fudge?...
In "The Last of The First" it's a welcome return for Winterhill's nemesis, the machiavellian Qalqavekkian and this time he really is utterly nuts. Leaving her two male companions to continue their bickering (that missing Empress plot line is going to come to the fore sometime soon isn't it Iain?) Rebecca makes a deal with another kind of devil in her continuing hunt for the Slider craft. Structurally this story really feels like it's the big epic scale season finale. There are new vista's, multiple locations, sudden twists and giant versions of returning monsters. Long-hinted-at backstory is finally revealed and there are losses on all sides. I can't but help continue the Doctor Who analogies and if Qalqavekkian is the Master, then The First are the Timelords - and we all know what happened when *they* came back.
It's also the longest (and best) story in the book, helped perhaps by the fact that it's broken into numbered parts. I could really imagine a rising crescendo of music and the screen fading to black at the end of each one with a "to be continued next week" flashing up on the screen. Events build towards an exciting climax from which there is no coming back. Things really have changed forever - and I for one am glad to see it, as it can only mean very interesting times are ahead for our heroine.
But there is still one more story to go. It's called "Ngeretha" (which is a Kikuyu word) and I'm going to tell you... absolutely nothing about it - apart from the fact that it's told mostly from a first-person perspective and that it sees Winterhill in a very strange situation and completely out of her depth. I may have figured out what the word means but I've only hesitant guesses as to why. There *are* ties to the other major themes of this fourth series but not in the way you might think. It's a bold experiment and it all ends with... No. I'm not going to say. This story is best experienced completely cold. I've no idea where things will go from here.
In conclusion, it's another rousing set of adventures for our favourite amnesiac. I think Iain has really progressed as a writer with this latest volume, but to be honest I feel that the longer stories work better than the shorter ones. I was just getting into the episode about The Shriek for example, when it stopped. P.T. Barnum may have said, "Always leave them wanting more" and I wanted more, goddammit ! I actually think that Iain should break out of the "episode" format and go for it and write a full length novel next time. There is every indication here that it would be a extremely successful. Let's hope it's not too long before we find out.
Iain Martin is on Twitter @theIainMartin and the Winterhill series website is here. Iain's fantastic podcast (now with added Tudor Beamage) , Five Minute Fiction is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment