The Power! The Power!
So, nominations for the World Fantasy Awards close on Friday, and since I’m going to be at the con in Brighton in November (Can I get a mmmm yeah for hot seaside donuts?) I get to vote. Here’s what I’m nominating for a miniature cast of Lovecraft’s mug, and why:
Boneland by Alan Garner – As far as I can tell, this an utterly unique project. I reviewed it for Pornokitsch, but to rehash: it’s an adult novel to conclude what hitherto had been a children’s trilogy, published some 50 years after volume two. Bonkers right? And brilliant. Like all Garner, it’s beautifully and deceptively simply written, but judging it on the usual criteria simply won’t do.
To get the best out of this novel you have to encounter it (as I think most of its readers will, and I’m convinced this is deliberate,) as someone who has grown up since reading the first two volumes; someone for whom the events of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath are memories half buried under the detritus of adulthood. Boneland triggers the resurgence of those memories and uses them to place you in a quite terrifying state of empathy with its protagonist. It is – and I don’t say this lightly – truly haunting.
A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge - No one nails the balance of whimsy and menace that characterizes a good fairy tale the way that Hardinge does.
Add ferociously creative world building (hallucinogenic cheeses; predatory, non-euclidean caves and the mad spelunking cartographers who worship them; an entire society taught to dissemble at birth) to a deft hand with social themes, depict in knowing, luminous prose, and you get one of the best-composed fantasy novels for any and all age-groups I’ve ever read. The plot’s clever too. I had at least one a ha moment.
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan – Ok, let’s have the argument then. Is it Fantasy or is it Literary fiction? Yes. Move on.
A little less flippantly, The Panopticon is a first person narrative in which the narrator, Anais, sees, and appears to believe in, flying cats and a sinister-all controlling conspiracy conducted by men with no noses. Whether, in the world of the novel, those things really exist or she’s hallucinating them is an unanswerable question. All there is to the world of the novel is what’s on the page, and that’s filtered through Anais’s perspective. What we can say is that the effect of these elements – providing moments of surreal wonder, estranging us from our mundane environment - are precisely the same as the effect of good urban fantasy. What’s more, Fagan’s balance of tone in this book really is something: pitch black, laugh out loud humour set against some of the most heart-wrenching pathos I’ve read this year. It’s a masterclass. Whether The Panopticon is fantasy, or meta-fantasy, it belongs on the list.
Railsea by China Miéville - Its arguably science-fiction, rather than fantasy, but really, who the hell cares? Another one I reviewed earlier, another YA novel, and I think, considerably better than Mieville’s earlier YA effort in Un Lun Dun. Why? Well it’s Moby Dick done on land with trains rather than ships and a giant yellow mole instead of a great white whale. For kids. You have to love the chutzpah of it. It’s splendidly achieved too: fun, relatable characters, cool salvage tech and (as ever) splendid monsters. Also: a slightly meta, Brechtian voice which even though it jarred me a little, is all evidence of the relentless ambition of the narrative and its refusal to talk down to its readers. Hands down winner of the extended-metaphor-of-the-year-award. and the best ending I read in a fantasy novel last year, too.
The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin – Why nominate it? Probably the closest thing to a traditional secondary world fantasy on this list, The Killing Moon is a very, very good one. The world, a kind of Ancient Egypt-inspired morphocracy, is brilliantly realized; displaying a rare kind of cultural, religious and political coherence. Jemisin also has a knack for characters who are morally compromised without being morally alien, and who carry our understanding, if not always our sympathies, into dreadful deeds. She does a good line in writing about more than one kind of love, too. Also: dream-harvesting ninja priests. Cool, yes? Thought so.
Which of these would I like to win? Probably Boneland. It utterly wrecked me. As with everyone, my options are restricted by those books I’ve actually read. Books I’ve not read, but based on other people’s reviews would also like to see on the shortlist, include: The Brides of Rollrock Island, Seraphina, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairy Land and led the Revels There and The King’s Blood.
What are you guys putting forward?
