Books in February 2020

Still ahead this year...

Three books this February, and most of an Iain M Banks which I started to re-read on impulse. Considering I also prepared three roleplaying scenarios for Revelation 2020 and dealt with a major incident at work, I think that's pretty good going! You can find out which Banks next month or get spoilers on Goodreads.

Agency (William Gibson)
A new William Gibson novel is always a delight, and this one is no different. This is set in the same universe as 'The Peripheral', a place were it is possible to contact alternative time-lines where different decisions are taken. The main line is the first where this technology became available; by having it earliest, the alternative time-lines (or 'Stubs') are branches from it. This world is more than a hundred and fifty years in our future, in a universe where catastrophic climate change is held back by technology, and the world outside China is ruled by the 'Klept' (Kleptocrats, effectively those with power and wealth like Trump, Putin, Johnson and the Russian Mafia); democracy is long gone. AIs (the Aunties) run in the background, guiding and directing.

Some of the Klept have hobbies of meddling in Stubs, for better and for worse. The plot of this is around an intervention into a Stub where Brexit didn't happen and Hilary Clinton won the US election against Trump. A Stub that is threatened by nuclear war. The Stub was set on its path by a Klept who likes to build dark futures. A team is assembled which works through agents in the Stub, including a software specialist and a nascent AI, to prevent disaster.

I enjoyed this greatly; the writing is as good as ever and the plot interesting. I did find one of the plotlines a little frustrating as it spent a fair bit of time with a protagonist lacking agency over their decisions, being moved in a shell game to avoid detection. However, it comes together nicely at the end. I'm looking forward to his third book in this setting, as I'm interested where it will go. I can't help but wonder if the future China will be part of the story.

Recommended, enjoyable.

Bone Silence (Revenger, #3) (Alastair Reynolds)

This is the concluding part of the Revenger trilogy, the story of the Ness Sisters as they transition from innocents to feared space pirates and beyond... Set in the distant future where the eight planets of the solar system have been dismantled and turned into thousands of habitats orbiting the ageing 'Old Sun', a future where civilisation has expanded across the system, reached dizzying heights of technology and then collapsed thirteen times. A future where the technology of past occupations is used but not understood, and treasure hunters dig it out of 'baubles', abandoned habitats and tombs lost throughout the system. A future where travel is by solar sailed spacecraft between the worlds of the confederation. A future where pirates like the notorious Bosa Sennen prey upon bauble-hunters and shipping and aliens travel between humanities fragile worlds.

I absolutely loved the first book of the series ('Revenger'), but found the second harder work ('Shadow Captain'). This final instalment hits its stride pretty quickly and moves towards an ending I didn't quite expect. This is refreshingly different; while it's science fantasy at its heart, there's a great veneer of hard SF underneath it. While Reynolds said in his epilogue that he has finished with the Ness Sisters, I hope his fears that they haven't finished with him are correct.

It absolutely begs to be turned into a D&D (Black Hack) engined game; baubles as dungeons, aliens, robots and pirates.

Recommended.

City of Spies (Sorayya Khan)

An intriguing book set in the 1970s and spanning the time from the military coup in Pakistan to the burning of the American Embassy and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, all told from the perspective of a teenage Dutch-Pakistani girl living in Islamabad and Lahore. Refreshingly different and autobiographical.