Empire State - Adam Christopher (Angry Robot)

There are so many novels set in New York. Of those, an exceptionally large proportion love Manhattan. Of those, a significant proportion are noir, or steampunk, or steampunk noir. Pyr put out one quite recently (George Mann's Ghosts of Manhattan, which I talk about here) so it makes sense, that, since Angry Robot like steampunk (look at the Jeter, and the novels by Tidhar), and noir (lots of noir! Every fifth book of theirs is noir) and are based in England… OK, so that last bit doesn’t quite work. Basically, there is a market desire for steampunk and noir and Manhattan is cool, so publishers are buying and selling books with those themes.

The question is, what is Angry Robot's noir Manhattan steampunk novel like? Maybe I should start with what it's called (Empire State) or who wrote it (Adam Christopher), but tonight I'm not being rational. I emerged from the Middle Ages (ghosts and Jewish customs and crafts) into this novel and feel somewhat turned upside down.

It's a pacy novel, starting with a foot on the accelerator, which nicely symbolises what's to follow. Illegal liquor during prohibition, the industry that supplies it, lots of bad guys, superheroes with the golden age turned to dross, a private eye, a newspaper reporter - and that's just the first thirty pages. A lot of it has a familiar feel, largely because it plays with the stuff of noir and the stuff of superheroes and the stuff of other popular trends. It's not historically precise, but it's not the sort of novel that has to be. Perfect summer reading, which is great for those of us who are about to get summer. Maybe firelight reading for those sad souls stuck in the cold north.

Like other books of its kind, the pace is occasionally punctuated by explanation. There's too much background for it to be woven seamlessly into the narrative. Or maybe information scene-setting blocks is part of the joy of the sub-genre. Either way, they're there, and undeniably so. Why someone would rehearse the history of superherodom in Manhattan while suffering rather dramatic personal problems that have only just occurred is a mystery to me but it's not specific to Christopher. Steampunk noir often seems to include drama then a halt for a bit of backstory, then more drama. I like my stories told a little differently, but I can't criticise Christopher for a technique so many other writers use. Or I can, but I shan't.

Once the explanations are past, the novel picks up again. And why am I writing this in the present tense? This is because when the novel picks up it really does. It's a bit busy - switches from big thing to big thing without a sense of them connecting in a grand way, or fitting together like the tiles on a pavement. The planning is there, but it felt a bit disconnected to me. Maybe it was the language. Maybe it was the characters. It's more likely to be the exposition, though, that it was a bit uneven. That's the bad news. The good news is that when this approach works, it gives the same sense as Jeter or Harland in their steampunk novels - the feel of a society that's fundamentally strange and careening into disaster.

And then the novel shifts. It starts to work. And then it becomes special, in its steampunk noir Empire State way.

(no subject)

Every now and again the reviewer aspect of me gets letters from writers. The first letter is lovely because it shows how much the writer cares about their work. Being asked more than once if I'm going to review their book soon is less lovely. Each time I get a gentle reminder, I have to put the book in question to the bottom of my review pile.

This is not because I'm sulking (although I admit it looks very much like sulking, from the outside) but quite simply because I'm supposed to review the book, not the writer. I have not yet perfected the art of putting those reminders out of my head when I read the book, so I postpone reading the book.

Even when these notes are phrased gently and kindly, I read them as nagging me. This is because I'm a middle child, I've decided. This would be because a review book I just read has one of the best middle children short stories I have yet met. Books have their own voice and my mind needs space for that voice to be heard. Some book-voices create their own space (like that book of short stories) but others need a quiet room or a bit more time. Some voices are subtler, some are more complex, some say one thing and mean another - time is what helps me to find the voices in these books and to appreciate them.

I have no idea how to explain this to the small number of writers who feel it is their duty to chase reviewers. All I can do is suggest here is please don't do the chasing. Just one reminder, and then leave it, perhaps. For me, one reminder. Maybe other people like the personal touch.

I would rather not even have one reminder, to be honest. I keep my review books in stacks by my computer and they remind me of themselves every time I sit down to work. I have a stack of ones I have plans for and a stack of ones still to be thought about and a stack of ones that are problematic*. Although right now the stacks are scrambled. I need to sort them by Monday, by which time a lot of them will be written about.

There are so many reasons why I don't review books the moment I receive them. Sometimes it's simple delay. Sometimes it's because I can't find any good things to say and either need to look further or give it up as a bad job (the latter I do seldom and reluctantly). Sometimes (more rarely) it's because a publisher has sent me something that's so outside my interests I don't know where to begin and when I begin I'm filled with horror. Sometimes it's because the publishing schedule is filled up (this is BiblioBuffet, always - I only write a fortnightly column, after all) and, whenever the time arises to reschedule, the writer sends me a reminder and so the book gets put off for a bit longer...

I've just done my schedules for BiblioBuffet from now until the end of February and a book that has waited quite a while (because it has problems and I need to consider them fairly) is now going to have to wait a while longer, simply because the nice email made me instantly think of the reasons why the book had problems. Instead of focussing on solutions, I had one moment when I wanted to give up on it entirely.

When I had no novels published, I didn't understand the world of novels. Why things took so long and the shape of their appearance and what the processes were. One of the reasons I started reviewing was to get a sense for time and shape and processes in reviewing in that part of the industry. The big thing I've learned is that if you want a review to appear for certain, you need to target your reviewer very carefully. Every publication and blog and website is different in its needs and its writers. You need to know the publication and you need to understand the limits the specific reviewer works under.

Reviewers don't work to the same schedules as writers, nor to the same goals. For instance, at BiblioBuffet, I have a fortnightly column (if I keep saying that, I will know it as a fact). That means that I can't talk about more than a certain number of books in a year. I have to balance the subjects I write about so that my readers don't get bored to tears. I get sent several books a week (not that many in the scheme of things - this is why I'm still able to read them all and talk about most of them) and I do my best to cover most things. When a book is a bit too difficult, however (for whatever reason) I always have other book I can write about. This aids and abets my personal tendency (mine, Gillian's, not all reviewers) to put off the difficulty and think about it. I still write about these more difficult books, but I need to think about them longer. And so some writers get impatient. Yet how happy would they be if I wrote a half-digested rant?

For the record, I will have a column in January or February that covers a range of books and the one about which I just received a note will probably appear. It was going to get a whole column, later, because there are real issues to discuss, but if I can't deal with the issues because I have polite emails from the author, well, then I don't have to. I have other books I can use that whole column for. I could write about middle children in fairy tales, for instance. If what the writer needs is to be seen, then I can get it out of the way and please us both.

Except it doesn't please me. Not at all. The books I have to postpone because they fret me are the ones that lead to the most interesting thoughts. Often they're the most interesting books. Sometimes it's about the cultural assumptions of physicists, sometimes it's about the border between fiction and history, sometimes it's how we use fantasy to explore ideas we're very comfortable with or can't bear to think about.







*Apparently I do this with many things - put the tough stuff off so that my brain can think about it. Then it becomes not tough at all, but fascinating. This is why the books that sit for a while, do so.