Skip to main content

Kings of a Dead World (SF) - Jamie Mollart ****

Jamie Mollart's Kings of a Dead World is a challenging read, but is a great demonstration of why science fiction is much more than just space operas (fun though they can be) - the genre gives a unique opportunity to explore the worlds of 'What if?' I'm not quite sure why, but dystopias - which this very dark book is with a vengeance - seem to be back in fashion. To be honest, in difficult times likes these I prefer to read enjoyable escapism, but if someone insists on publishing a dystopian novel during a pandemic, Jamie Mollart has discovered a way to make the concept fresh and interesting. 

The book has three interlaced storylines. One is from before the collapse of society as we know it, pretty much around the present, which is 50 years in the past of the other two storylines. In that future world, most of the population is put to sleep for months at a time, emerging for a month of life before being put back to sleep again. We see this occurring from the viewpoint of an elderly citizen and his dementia-suffering wife, and from the worldview of a janitor, a member of an elite who stay awake all the time to look after their sector of the country and to somewhat magically generate money ('credits') for the sleepers to live on when they wake. The setup is hugely imaginative - a fascinating thought experiment in world building.

For me, by far the best segments were those featuring the janitor - to an extent, I wish the whole thing had been told from this viewpoint which would have both removed the mildly irritating interlacing of storylines and would have made the gradual reveal of what had happened more dramatic. As it was, I rushed through the other segments to get back to the janitor. There's real depth in his gradual realisation of the false nature of his picture of the world, and an excellent portrayal of his stranger-in-a-strange-land experiences in the zone that he nominally controls as his world falls apart.

I did have a couple of problems with the book. We discover that Ben, one of the two main characters,  was a bomb-making terrorist in the past-set segments, which makes it difficult to identify with him. He is also in his eighties in the late-set segments, yet despite this and a poor diet, he sometimes acts physically as if he were Bruce Willis in Diehard. The bigger issue was the credibility of the scenario. The changes to the UK don't bear any resemblance to current climate change predictions. For no obvious reason, countries seem to have abandoned all efforts to produce renewable energy or mitigate climate change. The country can't support the basics of life, but is able to maintain an extremely high tech computerised system controlling citizens' sleep. Similarly, it's not possible to maintain simple technology like wind generators, but somehow this extremely advanced technology is kept going. Perhaps worst of all, in the 50 years or so between the 'our world' and 'their world' segments, all existing culture and religion has been replaced by one dreamed up from scratch - it's far too short a timescale for such a fundamental culture change.

The result is a mixed bag. Mollart leaves a lot hanging at the end - I don't know if the intention is to have a sequel, but there is a lot that is never tied up. For a modern title, there are surprisingly few female central characters - the strongest drawn is an AI. Despite the flaws, though, the action sequences are engaging and there is considerable depth to the world that Mollart has created. It's not the sort of book that I can really say that I enjoyed - but I'm very glad that I read it.

Hardback: 
Bookshop.org

  

Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...