Wolfhound Century, Peter Higgins
Received to review via Netgalley

There’s something compelling about Wolfhound Century; when people talk about the beautiful style and language, they’re quite right. And the comparisons to Miéville are also, I think, fair. My issue was that it was all weirdly half-familiar — sort of Russian, sort of a mystery, sort of a thriller — and I couldn’t catch hold of any of it to really follow a thread through the story. Lom is okay as a character, but he feels empty, like a cipher. That doesn’t really get any better for me over the course of the book, and… generally everything else gave me that same impression.

For me, there were so many bits I wanted more of — the forest creature/s — and bits I just didn’t enjoy, like pretty much anything relating to the angels, because they seemed so devoid of explanation.

In the end, I have to confess I gave up and skimmed. Miéville has to catch me in the right mood, too, so I might be willing to try again some other time. But I really didn’t get into it, despite wanting to and finding the writing itself compelling.

Rating: 2/5

A Legend of the Future, Agustín de Rojas

I originally received this to review via Netgalley, but took so long about it, I ended up picking it up in a shop. I’m actually not really sure what to make of it: on the one hand I found it engaging, but on the other I found the way it was set out maddening. I don’t know if this issue was deliberate, present in the original, introduced in translation, or a result of some typesetting issue, but scene breaks were several times completely elided so that one scene slid into the next and you only realised because one character was saying something that didn’t make sense in the context of the previous conversation. This happened enough to be completely confusing, rather than just happening once or twice. The other thing is that thoughts are denoted in the exact same way as speech, so you never know if a character is saying something aloud or just thinking it.

Awkwardness of language I’m quite prepared to put down to the issue of translation, and also the fact that the original was written in a wholly different context to modern SF. But combined with the layout issues, I found it frustrating.

On the other hand, the story is interesting, featuring the slow psychological breakdown of a crew as they must adjust to the fact that they won’t make it home, that one of them has to be hooked up to a computer and another is turned into a human calculating machine. The beginning doesn’t work as well as I’d like, because you don’t already have the emotional connection to give it impact, but I can’t see how else the book could sensibly be structured. There is quite a bit of exposition delivered by dialogue, which can be annoying — but I do wonder if part of that is different literary conventions.

The final chapters, the resolution of the story, also tell us why the title is A Legend of the Future. It’s an excellent ending, to my mind; wrapping things up with just enough uncertainty left that you’re not sure exactly what happened, what is real and what is hallucinated and suggested…

When I read the first few sections, I wasn’t much impressed, but my interest grew as I kept on — I think it rewards the effort.

Rating: 3/5

Of Bone and Thunder, Chris Evans
Received to review via Netgalley

Once I read some reviews pointing out this is essentially a novel about a fantasy version of Vietnam, “slyts” and all, I couldn’t unsee it. I found it surprisingly absorbing at first, though I’m generally not that interested in war stories. There are some amazing bits of description — mostly gross, but it still makes you really feel the world in which the characters live, the heat and dirt, the discomfort of riding a dragon, the futility of the fight.

But… the dull grind of it started to get to me. When they talk about this being anything like Tolkien, they really mean just because it’s got dragons. It’s basically a very thinly veiled version of Vietnam. Everything’s dirty and futile and there’s no justice in it. I couldn’t keep track of the characters, given their fantasy-fied names (which made me wonder if Evans actually bothered thinking about the language these people speak and what their naming conventions are, because I couldn’t really detect patterns), and I just… lost interest.

If you’re into war novels, though, it might be more up your alley. It’s definitely more Abercrombie than Tolkien in terms of tone, though. If you’re reading this for the dragons… to me, they were just a prop, a way of making the Vietnam War into a fantasy war.

Rating: 2/5