Tag: novella

The Twilight Pariah: Scooby Doo, with added dismemberment

Author: Jeffrey Ford
Publisher: Tor
Publish date: 12 September 2017
Pariah 2

All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation was to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion’s outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child.

Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child.

___________________________________________________________________________

The Twilight Pariah is a curious beast. It is the story of three childhood friends meeting up during a college/university summer break. Maggie plans to rope Russell and Henry, our narrator, into her amateur archaeological dig, and rope them she does. Things go well until they unearth something unpleasant, kick-starting a series of murders and general spookiness. The problem is that, for a book touted as being scary or creepy, it just… isn’t.

Let’s start with the positive. Ford weaves a nostalgic story around the three friends, adding a layer of wistfulness as they reflect upon how this may be the last summer they spend together. He succeeds in creating a set of believable relationships, evoking the slight melancholy that comes from realising some friendships end as lives take different turns, and that that’s just the way it is.

The relationship that resonates loudest is the one between Henry and his father. Ford delicately creates the sense of being alone, together, yet wanting to connect. It is even more powerful when Ford couples this with the sad realisation all children come to at some point: that their parents will eventually disappoint them. Ford builds realistic relationships, yet others between main and side characters lack depth. This undermines the emotional impact when Bad Things happen to those around the overly-curious trio. The Bad Things are thus predictable as the reader quickly recognises that these side characters are, essentially, disposable plot points.

It is worth pointing out that the book is an enjoyable enough read. There are some genuinely funny scenes as the trio banter, even some laugh out loud moments. The dialogue is sometimes clunky, but the three protagonists are likeable as they stumble through the plot. However, there is also the sense that this book has been badly mis-sold.

A reader could understand some of the comparisons made to Stephen King (nostalgia combined with horror or dark fantasy is a common theme). However, this is the part where the book fails. The discovery of what sets events in motion is truly unsettling, but it is the only such disturbing moment in the story. There are attempts to build suspense as things go missing and there are several bumps in the middle of the night. The problem is that the “monster” is seen too soon, and easily escaped.

There’s a common trope in cinema where the filmmakers hold off on showing the creature in their movie for as long as possible, with this “monster delay” increasing tension. However, this early confrontation cements it as real, removing the thrill of discovery. Compounding this, the exposition is awkwardly revealed, with pages full of info-dump towards the end of the book. It lands heavily and sits there in the middle of the narrative like a somewhat embarrassed elephant in the room.

Without wanting to go into spoilers, the Twilight Pariah itself is not very frightening. Yes, the beast cuts a swathe of violence through the story, as the book blurb gives away, but it often involves characters in whom the reader has no emotional investment. Scenes where the Pariah is confronted aren’t slowly built, they just happen, like a jump-scare. It feels like Ford was aiming for an IT-vibe, as old friends band together to fight some unnamed evil. Instead, reading about these crazy kids stumbling around decrepit mansions and unearthing revelations feels less like Stephen King and more like Scooby Doo, albeit with added dismemberment.

The Twilight Pariah suffers from trying to be two things at once and failing at establishing itself as either. On one hand, it’s a story about growing up and away from the people we love. On the other, it wants to be a dark tale where a “terrifying” evil threatens these fragile relationships. The problem is that, whilst you may care for the three main characters, there isn’t enough depth in their relationships with others (save Henry’s father) to have an impact when those around Henry, Maggie and Russell start getting attacked. There simply isn’t anything that gets under your skin and the terrible things happen to characters whose only purpose is to be cannon fodder. Nothing about the Pariah feels truly dangerous because of this and, if you’re writing a book sold as creepy or scary or even just “dark”, that’s the one thing you really need to get right.

Ironclads – a crash course introduction to a dystopian world

Publisher: Solaris

RRP: £19.99

Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published:  2017-11-02

Ironclads front cover, 2017, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Ironclads, 2017, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Scions have no limits. Scions do not die. And Scions do not disappear.

Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad — the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war — but something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Now Regan and his men, ill equipped and demoralized, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover how his suit failed. Is there a new Ironclad-killer out there? And how are common soldiers lacking the protection afforded the rich supposed to survive the battlefield tomorrow?

In Ironclads, Adrian Tchaikovsky follows up his 2016 Arthur C. Clarke award for Children of Time with a fast-paced but thoughtful novella. It examines a similar theme from his Guns of the Dawn work, namely the fights ordinary people find themselves dragged into due to wider, political machinations. On the surface, Ironclads appears to be an updated take on a familiar tale; a group of army grunt underdogs sent on a dangerous rescue mission to a perilous land to save some hapless, stranded soul. However, this is less Saving Private Ryan and more Dirty Dozen as the team fight against increasingly outlandish mechanical enemies (and each other) in order to survive. What elevates it is the focus upon the everyday people presented throughout the story’s commentary against class barriers and status.

Told in first person, the reader is guided by Ted Regan, a soldier in a time of conflict between the US and Sweden, with Finland and Russia wading in for good measure. However, ordinary men like him now serve as mere cannon fodder, whilst the rich play at war in near-indestructible suits of armour emblazoned with their company’s logo. The book quickly highlights that this is a world where the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically; the rich, favoured sons never step outside their compounds without either civilian or battle-ready Ironclad suits, whilst the poor take a reverential approach to these new, corporate-sponsored gods. Wars are fought by business men, not countries.

Tchaikovsky’s vivid use of language brings to life the world we have been dropped into. His colourful descriptions of an England post-Brexit take some satirical swipes at the UK’s uncertain situation, and certainly won’t ease the fears of Remainers. Overall, Ironclads’ relevance to the current political climate is clear, painting a future where Trump-style values have won out, where money and big business will always win. The hints at the lot of women in this brave new world, especially women of colour, are slight but chilling, pointing to a society regressing even as it advances technologically.

Yet, this is still an enjoyable, action-filled and just plain fun novella, with a set of likeable and diverse characters. The reader might glimpse the skeletons of the archetypes beneath now and again, but they are fleshed out through the occasionally sardonic narration, allowing the reader to start caring about what happens to this dysfunctional group of misfits. The team’s relationships are predictable but believable, be they growing, begrudging trust, to familial squabbling belying a deeper camaraderie. The characterisation of Regan sometimes dips too far into the beleaguered everyman persona to make a strong individual impression, but the conversational style of Regan’s narration also injects some droll and much-needed humour into the proceedings.

Whilst affable enough, the male characters are upstaged by their female counterparts time and again. It is interesting that, in a world seemingly run by men, it is the women who take control of the plot at decisive points. The characterisation of the female soldiers and fighters runs the risk of leaning towards what has now become the “strong woman” cliché, but they are driven by their own motivations. Tchaikovsky manages to steer just clear of formulaic portrayals – yes, these women are strong, but this doesn’t preclude vulnerability, either.

The story leaps from one action set-piece to another, with some neat sci-fi nods littered throughout. Ghost in The Shell’s Tachikomas come to mind as the team meet lethal, near-sentient AI droid units, some of which draw their design inspiration from the Martian fighting machines in War of the Worlds. The book’s venture into other sci-fi aspects are less convincing. Despite Tchaikovsky’s careful establishment of a worryingly possible future, the depiction of the terrifying Finnish fighters jeopardises the reader’s suspension of disbelief. However, it ultimately adds to the absurd and desperate situation Regan and his group find themselves in.

In Ironclads, Tchaikovsky gives the reader a crash course introduction to a progressively dystopian world where worship of the rich has reached even more alarming levels. At times, the sci-fi elements teeter towards less believable fantasy, threatening to undermine its own grounded, polemical tone, but Tchaikovsky helms this in by focusing upon the humans trying to survive in a world indifferent to their worth. This depiction of humans without agency over their own lives, subject to the whims of those with power, is what ultimately gives Ironclads its heart.