(July 2016)
A hugely enjoyable steampunk western, which
inevitably leads me to draw comparisons with Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, not least because that too
was driven by a queer woman in her teens with a gloriously engaging narrative
voice.
And that, I think, is both the book’s
greatest strength and its biggest weakness. For all the vigour of the narration
and laudable sociopolitical commentary, the actual plotting itself is all very,
well… safe. A very minor supporting character
dies relatively late on, but about a third of the way through it becomes
apparent that this is not a work in which one of the principles will get offed just
in order to drive the narrative; you know they’re all going to make it through
to the end emotionally, if not necessarily physically, unscathed. As I say,
this cuts both ways. As an antidote to the tiresome need for sub-GOT grimdark shock value deaths, I
actually found it quite refreshing to read something and not have a constant,
nagging concern that something awful was about to happen just for cheap
emotional effect. This was exactly the book I needed at the time I needed it.
But by the same token, the knowledge that all will indubitably be well does
detract from the urgency somewhat, and if I’d been less in need of a reading
tonic I might have found that more of an issue.
But I wasn’t and I didn’t, and so I instead
I rollicked along on what I’m practically obliged to describe as a ‘romp’,
while enjoying a diverting side quest of ‘spot the homage’. American dime
novels obviously have a fairly major influence (not least in the clear-cut
morality and that certainty our heroes will triumph), and, as a close
examination of that gorgeous cover should suggest, Jules Verne gets pretty
heavily referenced (and at several stages implicitly invoked). The steampunk trappings
are administered with a fairly light touch though, to the point where the story
could have worked almost unchanged as a straight-up historical novel. The SFnal
elements expedite events but aren’t, upon further examination, really necessary
to the plot at all.
[Newish book, so spoiler warning for the
next couple of paragraphs, if you care]
This of course raises the question as to
why this is a spec-fic novel. What purpose does the fantastical technology
serve? Is it just adding to the fun? That’s certainly possible, and an argument
with a good deal of validity; the ‘Why the hell not?’ defence. What we’re
looking at here though is, I think, another installment of the discussion about
the role of technology in both reinforcing and subverting social power
structures. The antagonist runs for mayor, and uses a form of mind control tech
to persuade people to support him which, it transpires, might have been far
less effective than the more traditional methods of vote rigging and ballot
stuffing.
Karen, meanwhile, spends most of the dénouement
kitted out in what the youngsters among you might recognize as a mecha suit,
but for me is inescapably a riff on Ripley’s power loader from Aliens (with shades of Ned Kelly). As a
token nod to their putative profession as ‘seamstresses’, Karen and her colleagues
keep a steam-driven sewing armature, which one of their more
technologically-minded number soups up over the course of the novel. Karen then
dons this suit to perform various power assisted acts of derring-do, much as
Ripley repurposes a mechanism of dull workaday utility to more dramatic effect.
The added nuance here being that while the power loader was determinedly
unisex, the ‘sewing machine’ is an unambiguously feminine object (at least in
common conception). There are some fairly obvious subtexts for its use here as
an enabler of ass-kicking and name-taking.
[And you’re back in the room]
All that aside, however, this book is above
all fun. Karen herself is a joyous
companion who, and this is a truly rare feat, propels the plot without ever
really making irrational decisions simply for the sake of moving things along.
There is a wealth of detail, if not exactly complexity, and nothing feels all
that contrived; things progress as they should and how they should. To say that
this was an undemanding read feels slightly pejorative, but it was, and in
doing so it stands as evidence that a book doesn’t have to put its readers
through an intellectual or emotional wringer in order to be thoughtful or
progressive. This book will not change the world. It will, however, go a small
but tangible way towards making yours a little brighter.
I was a big fan of the book as a souped up pulp novel. In fact, my comparison to a NW specialty, gourmet Asian-fusion hot dogs, drew a retweet from the author herself. Yay for occasional validation.
ReplyDeleteI think there's just something fulfilling about lesbian prostitutes stomping around in mech suits, beating the poop out of misogynists and abusers. I suppose not everyone feels the same way I do though.