Masthead
One of my photos

The Bookman

February 27th, 2010 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 2 Comments · Life

Last week I finished reading The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar.  It was another book from Amazon’s Vine programme.  Normally when I finish something from Vine I review it immediately (so I can get something else from them) but I decided to wait a little while with this one so I could get some perspective.The reason for the delay was that by the end of the book I was not entirely sure what I thought of it.  When I started reading it, and throughout the first third of it I was enjoying it so much I thought it might be one of the best books I had read – like a Robert Rankin book without the jokes.  On almost every page there was something intriguing.

Somewhere in the middle I started to get worried.  I had been hoping to find out the reasons behind some of the things that had been introduced but instead just got more new things coming along: I started to worry that I would never be able to work out what everything meant.

At the end I was left feeling a bit cheated that so many things were unexplained, and also that the end was a bit rushed.  That was not too much of a problem as I was rushing the reading a bit as well to find out what happened next.

While I was in that frame of mind I did not want to be too negative about a book that gave me so much pleasure throughout most of it, hence the pause to let it all settle in.

I ended up writing this:

This book fits into the ‘steampunk’ genre, which is a science ficion not of the future but of an alternate past where technology was developed differently or at a different pace. Having read one or two similar novels in the past I knew I had to willingly suspend disbelief more than normal.

This particular book has some great ideas in it, many of them similar to other stories of the genre: Babbage computers and airships being used in Victorian times, radios called Tesla sets being in use, and so on. It also contains a few more bizarre ideas like the royal family having been replaced by alien lizards, and whales living in the Thaems.

I think I would have preferred fewer high concepts, giving the story room to properly explain some of them because although I really enjoyed reading the book I did feel towards the end a bit like I do when watching Lost on TV – wishing for a few answers rather than yet more questions.

I think the author gets away with it, but only just. The entertaining writing style helps and so do the little touches like having the sinister government black airships, or a character noticing a Hugo Rune book in a bookcase.

As you might guess from the title, books do play a large part in the story. The backstory of the lizards is tied up with Shakespeare’s Tempest and also the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the society depicted is one where poetry has a more central importance.

As ever in this type of book, various famous figures play a part: Tom Thumb, Oscar Wilde, Byron (sort of), Mrs. Beeton, Karl Marx, Jules Verne and others all get a mention, but some fictional characters are also there – Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, along with Moriarty and even Irene Adler as a police inspector. I always find it unlikely that if history turned out totally different the same people would get born, let alone become famous for the same things, but that is where the suspension of disbelief comes in: it is much more fun to ignore logic and just enjoy all the cameos.

This book is certainly worth reading. I enjoyed it while reading it, only getting disappointed in the final section where everything moved a bit too quickly towards a resolution that I found unsatisfying – a bit more focus could have made it an instant cult classic.

I wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be some overarching allegorical message or theme about literature and I missed it.  There were certainly lots of literary allusions.

What little I have read of steampunk before has all limited itself to being an extended exploration of what would happen if certain technologies had been developed ahead of time.  It took a theoretical starting point like Babbage inventing a proper computer instead of his analytical engine and then followed plausible steps from there, trying to be as realistic as possible.

The difference in this book is the idea of lizards controlling the royal family.  I was a little uneasy about such a science fiction element intruding into a genre that normally prides itself on plausibility.  As the story progressed it became clear that the lizards were aliens who had crashed on Earth in the past,  and that they were the stimulus for the premature technological advances.  That helped me a lot – instead of the book being an awkward clash of two genres it was really science fiction causing the appearance of steampunk.

I’m still miffed to have never found out why the whales were in london though.

Tags: ··

2 Comments so far ↓

  • skud's sister

    I’ve just ordered this for work – trying to bulk up our Steampunk selection – on the recommendation of a colleague in another store. Turns out the author is a friend of theirs. Small world or what? They did also say this was the first of a planned trilogy so maybe the whales will be explained later?

  • Skuds

    There is a sample of the second book at the end of this one. It seems very different – not so London-y.

    It is worth checking out the publishers’ website – some good participation there, including the chance to sign up and get free stuff to review. (see Angry Robot in the books links to the right)

    They do downloads of e-books too, which might be compatible with your gadget.