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This book has a plot, it does, it surely does, but the presentation obscures the action almost-but-not-quite to the point where it swallows it whole, for the tale is told in first, second and third person and also in the story's present and its past. Confusing? Yes.
Absorbing? Yes. Frustrating? Most certainly. Brilliant? Possibly. Flawed? I think so. Whether the flaws outweigh the brilliance is yet to be decided.
I bought this book for my Kindle because it's on the Nebula shortlist for best novel and I thought I should try to catch up with at least some of the listed books. The reviews I've read seem to think it's a masterpiece debut novel and - indeed - it is remarkable. But does it deserve to be Best Novel of 2011? I'll have to read all the others to find out.
The viewpoint switches are dizzying at first - maybe deliberately so in the way it spins you up into the air and then drops you suddenly as if you are actually a participant in the high-flying trapeze act that is this book. Little George is the first person narrator, but having settled into that idea, Valentine rips you out of your comfort zone and drops you immediately into third person. Unused to such confusing switches, it takes a while to realise that you are in someone else's head now. The head-hopping is something you just have to get used to because the whole book continues in like mode (with many snippets of backstory told in parenthesis).
It's disorienting and disturbing. Do not read unless you actually like to be disturbed by your fiction.
And the plot? A bunch of magically and mechanically enhanced circus performers travel from place to place across a dystopian landscape, a land destroyed by war. Not quite post-apocalypse because the apocalypse is not yet over. Cities have been reduced to rubble, the people reduced to soldiers or citizens surviving on the soldiers' goodwill, and there isn't much goodwill around.
The circus exists out of time. The performers have died, some many times, but are not yet dead. Boss, herself created by tragedy, magically transforms bones and bodies with copper wire and bits of junk. This could be classed as steampunk, but it's not really. The disparate performers have all come to the circus as a refuge and despite themselves they have become a family, though dysfunctional in the extreme. Little George is the only one amongst them who is still more-or-less human. When he walks out on brass mechanical legs to paste up the posters announcing the circus is in town they are a casing for his own human limbs. Not so Big George, whose metal arms have become a living trapeze for cruel Elena's troupe of aerialists.
When the Government Man sees the circus performers as a template for a new breed of soldier if only he can find out how they are made he takes Boss in for questioning and the dysfunctional family must decide whether to continue travelling as she has instructed or to stage a rescue, for no one ever returns from being questioned by the Givernment Man.
Beneath this main story arc are numerous stories of how the performers originally came to submit to Boss' alterations from the musical director who is nothing more than a severed head on a mechanical orchestra, to Bird who came only for the wings - the wings that Boss once made for her lover, Alec, who chose to die for real rather than continue to wear the brass and bone feathers with the terrible secret.
There are many things to admire about this book, but it's neither a comfortable nor an easy read. It's confusing and frustrating, but does eventually reach a climax, though there were times when I wondered whether it was going to. It is, however very effective in creating an impression of this broken world full of broken people.
Absorbing? Yes. Frustrating? Most certainly. Brilliant? Possibly. Flawed? I think so. Whether the flaws outweigh the brilliance is yet to be decided.
I bought this book for my Kindle because it's on the Nebula shortlist for best novel and I thought I should try to catch up with at least some of the listed books. The reviews I've read seem to think it's a masterpiece debut novel and - indeed - it is remarkable. But does it deserve to be Best Novel of 2011? I'll have to read all the others to find out.
The viewpoint switches are dizzying at first - maybe deliberately so in the way it spins you up into the air and then drops you suddenly as if you are actually a participant in the high-flying trapeze act that is this book. Little George is the first person narrator, but having settled into that idea, Valentine rips you out of your comfort zone and drops you immediately into third person. Unused to such confusing switches, it takes a while to realise that you are in someone else's head now. The head-hopping is something you just have to get used to because the whole book continues in like mode (with many snippets of backstory told in parenthesis).
It's disorienting and disturbing. Do not read unless you actually like to be disturbed by your fiction.
And the plot? A bunch of magically and mechanically enhanced circus performers travel from place to place across a dystopian landscape, a land destroyed by war. Not quite post-apocalypse because the apocalypse is not yet over. Cities have been reduced to rubble, the people reduced to soldiers or citizens surviving on the soldiers' goodwill, and there isn't much goodwill around.
The circus exists out of time. The performers have died, some many times, but are not yet dead. Boss, herself created by tragedy, magically transforms bones and bodies with copper wire and bits of junk. This could be classed as steampunk, but it's not really. The disparate performers have all come to the circus as a refuge and despite themselves they have become a family, though dysfunctional in the extreme. Little George is the only one amongst them who is still more-or-less human. When he walks out on brass mechanical legs to paste up the posters announcing the circus is in town they are a casing for his own human limbs. Not so Big George, whose metal arms have become a living trapeze for cruel Elena's troupe of aerialists.
When the Government Man sees the circus performers as a template for a new breed of soldier if only he can find out how they are made he takes Boss in for questioning and the dysfunctional family must decide whether to continue travelling as she has instructed or to stage a rescue, for no one ever returns from being questioned by the Givernment Man.
Beneath this main story arc are numerous stories of how the performers originally came to submit to Boss' alterations from the musical director who is nothing more than a severed head on a mechanical orchestra, to Bird who came only for the wings - the wings that Boss once made for her lover, Alec, who chose to die for real rather than continue to wear the brass and bone feathers with the terrible secret.
There are many things to admire about this book, but it's neither a comfortable nor an easy read. It's confusing and frustrating, but does eventually reach a climax, though there were times when I wondered whether it was going to. It is, however very effective in creating an impression of this broken world full of broken people.
