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End of the Century
At the eve of the new millennium, teenager Alice Fell is alone on the streets of a strange city, friendless and without a pound to her name. She is not sure whether she's losing her mind, or whether she is called by inescapable visions to some special destiny. Along with a strange man named Stillman Waters, a retired occultist and spy – or so he claims – she finds herself pursued by strange creatures, and driven to steal the priceless "vanishing gem" that may contain the answers to the mysteries that plague her.
A century earlier, consulting detective Sandford Blank, accompanied by his companion Roxanne Bonaventure, is called upon to solve a string of brutal murders on the eve of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The police believe that Jack the Ripper is back on the streets, but Blank believes that this is a new killer, one whose motive is not violence or mayhem, but the discovery of the Holy Grail itself. And what of the corpse-white Huntsman and his unearthly hounds, who stalks the gaslit streets of London?
And in the sixth century, Galaad, a young man driven by strange dreams of a lady in white and a tower of glass, travels to the court of the high king Artor in Londinium, abandoned stronghold of the Roman Empire in Britain. With Galaad’s bizarre dreams as their only guide, Artor and his loyal captains journey west to the Summerlands, there to face a threat that could spell the end of the new-forged kingdom of Britain.
These three adventures—Dark Ages fantasy, gaslit mystery, and modern-day jewel heist—alternate until the barriers between the different times begin to break down, and our heroes confront the secrets that connect the Grail, the Glass Tower, and the vanishing gem. And lurking behind it all, the entity known only as Omega.
A century earlier, consulting detective Sandford Blank, accompanied by his companion Roxanne Bonaventure, is called upon to solve a string of brutal murders on the eve of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The police believe that Jack the Ripper is back on the streets, but Blank believes that this is a new killer, one whose motive is not violence or mayhem, but the discovery of the Holy Grail itself. And what of the corpse-white Huntsman and his unearthly hounds, who stalks the gaslit streets of London?
And in the sixth century, Galaad, a young man driven by strange dreams of a lady in white and a tower of glass, travels to the court of the high king Artor in Londinium, abandoned stronghold of the Roman Empire in Britain. With Galaad’s bizarre dreams as their only guide, Artor and his loyal captains journey west to the Summerlands, there to face a threat that could spell the end of the new-forged kingdom of Britain.
These three adventures—Dark Ages fantasy, gaslit mystery, and modern-day jewel heist—alternate until the barriers between the different times begin to break down, and our heroes confront the secrets that connect the Grail, the Glass Tower, and the vanishing gem. And lurking behind it all, the entity known only as Omega.
487 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
1 person is currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
Chris Roberson
552 books264 followersChris Roberson is the co-creator with artist Michael Allred of iZombie, the basis of the hit CW television series, and the writer of several New York Times best-selling Cinderella miniseries set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables. He is also the co-creator of Edison Rex with artist Dennis Culver, and the co-writer of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D, Witchfinder, Rise of the Black Flame, and other titles set in the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. In addition to his numerous comics projects, Roberson has written more than a dozen novels and three dozen short stories. He lives with a teenager, two cats, and far too many books in Portland, Oregon.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 20, 2009
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
When it comes to the subject of genre projects, I like to think of there being two main types of artists out there: at the top you find a small number of so-called "A-writers," people like Neal Stephenson and JJ Abrams who are able to elevate their material beyond the usual genre tropes and thus appeal to a large general audience; and then there are the much more numerous "B-writers," the ones cranking out the majority of projects in that genre, who are not necessarily that bad (not necessarily) but for sure are the ones helping to more and more cement the rules of that genre, not break them. And let's face it, most of the time this isn't such a horrible thing, which is why the ten-point scale I use here at CCLaP is designed the way it is (for those who have never gotten to read the ridiculously long guide to CCLaP's scoring system I wrote a couple of years ago); it's why books that score only in the sevens and eights here might actually be fantastic, simply that they will appeal only to existing fans of that genre, while for a title to get a nine or above it simply must in one way or another transcend its natural stereotypes, and not just be well-written.
Take for example End of the Century, the latest title by science-fiction veteran and multiple genre-award nominee Chris Roberson; because it's not a bad book at all, not by a long shot, and will be thoroughly entertaining to anyone who's already a fan of, say, Buffy or Xena or any of those other Saturday-afternoon genre television shows. But much like these shows, the novel is simply a little hacky, with a plot that is too easily guessed and dialogue that is often subpar. In many ways, after all, this is precisely how we define fans of a particular genre in the first place (otherwise slightly insultingly known as "fanboys" and "fangirls"), is by how willing they are to overlook things like weak dialogue and easily anticipated plot developments, in order to wallow in the fetishistic touches of that genre they love so much; and this book is no exception, more than making up for its general-lit problems with a whole cornucopia of string-theory-this and steampunk-that, and all the other little details that SF fanboys are always on the lookout for. And this is simply bound to please some and frustrate others, which is also the whole point of having genres in the first place.
In fact, this is not only the steampunk story just mentioned, but actually four stories rolled into one: a medieval tale, a Victorian tale, a contemporary "cyberpunk" tale, and a thread concerning a shadowy time-traveling secret society that ties all these interwoven sections together. And yes, if this sounds exactly word for word like the concept for Ian McDonald's much superior Brasyl, put out last year by the same publisher (all the way down to similar indestructible glowing "quantum swords" only a few molecules thick, which I don't mind divulging because there's one right on the freaking cover), that's because it is; in fact, such a story structure is rapidly becoming so popular within the world of SF that you could almost count it as a new subgenre unto itself, which I suppose we could call the "tri-history tale" today for convenience's sake.
And like all tri-history tales, the whole point of End of the Century is to get caught up in all the witty details on display, the various clever shoutouts to the existing pillars of these particular story types; for example, the steampunk section revolves around a Sherlock Holmes pastiche named Sandford Blank, who in this case lives on York Street instead of Baker, who plays the flute instead of the violin, who's known for his bowler and silver-tipped cane instead of a deerstalker and briar pipe, whose companion is an attractive young woman named Bonaventure instead of the dowdy Doctor Watson. And yes, if the name 'Bonaventure' sounds familiar to Roberson's existing fans, there's a good reason; as he explains in the book's postscript, nearly every character seen here has some connection or another to nearly ever other book he's already written, in effect creating a self-contained Robersonian alternate universe, yet another hallmark of prolific B-writers no matter what the genre. (And by the way, it ain't just genre writers who enjoy creating pervasive alternate universes where all their books are set; see John Updike's "Rabbit" series, Philip Roth's "Zuckerman" titles and other such "general literature" books for ample proof of that.) And so do all these references work in two different directions; not only is the subversive antihero of the contemporary section a tough leather-jacket-wearing teenage girl, just like every single other cyberpunk story ever freaking written, but the Richard-Branson-type billionaire she eventually robs turns out to be one of the major characters as well from Roberson's earlier Paragaea: A Planetary Romance.
Yeah, I know; I can literally hear the eyes of several thousand CCLaP readers rolling as we speak, even as I hear several hundred others (you know who you are) quietly muttering, "Ooh, cool, I gotta check that book out." And that's the nature of genre work, and why we invented the term 'genre' to begin with, simply because it's work that naturally appeals to some and naturally repels others. Or to use an example that I already mentioned, let's take Buffy's creator Joss Whedon again, because the fact is that I myself am not much of a fan of his although most of my friends are; and that's what lets those otherwise very intelligent people get a sincere pleasure out of such shows as Angel and Dollhouse, that to me seem more appropriate for easily-impressed fourteen-year-olds than for sophisticated grown-ups. As I'm constantly reminded now that I'm a critic, not every artistic project we consume has to be designed solely for sophisticated grown-ups wishing to challenge themselves; in fact, most of us would probably burn out within mere weeks if we were to try maintaining a steady diet of only Pulitzer winners (or only Hugo winners, or only Stoker winners).
In fact, apart from this more philosophical debate over A-writers versus B ones, there's really only one thing about End of the Century that I feel worth legitimately calling out for criticism; and that's the rushed, exposition-heavy, literally deus-ex-machina ending Roberson tacks on, which I won't spoil but will say is the literary equivalent of the Simpsons' "Poochie" episode, where at the end they quickly explain away Poochie's death with a ridiculously nonsensical story thought of on the fly at the last moment. ("I must go now. My planet needs me." And then Poochie's spaceship blew up. The End.) There's a reason that such "god in the machine" endings, once highly popular among ancient Greek theatre-goers (which is where we get the term), have fallen out of favor among contemporary audiences, because these kinds of endings always feel like a cheat; whenever the last 50 pages of a novel rely on events and concepts that were never mentioned even once in the 400 pages leading up to the climax, in many ways it feels to the reader like the author saying, "And then a big f-cking finger came out of the sky and squished them all to death." And that's a letdown, and makes many people feel like the previous 400 pages they just took the time to read were ultimately a giant waste; and that was enough of a problem here for the book's score to drop a bit by the end, just for this reason and this reason alone.
It's for all of these things mentioned that such so-called B-novels are so hard to review, and why so many critics tend to simply skip these kinds of books altogether; because I don't exactly want to recommend End of the Century to everyone out there, but neither do I want to dismiss it, even with it being full of small elements we have every right to be dismissive of. Ultimately it gets a recommendation from me today, but only a limited one, and with me absolutely not wanting to get any angry letters along the lines of, "I picked this up because you told me to, but it was crap!" You may very well feel this way about today's book by the time you're done, so consider yourself duly warned; all you fangirls, however, might very well want to pick up a copy anyway.
Out of 10: 7.3
When it comes to the subject of genre projects, I like to think of there being two main types of artists out there: at the top you find a small number of so-called "A-writers," people like Neal Stephenson and JJ Abrams who are able to elevate their material beyond the usual genre tropes and thus appeal to a large general audience; and then there are the much more numerous "B-writers," the ones cranking out the majority of projects in that genre, who are not necessarily that bad (not necessarily) but for sure are the ones helping to more and more cement the rules of that genre, not break them. And let's face it, most of the time this isn't such a horrible thing, which is why the ten-point scale I use here at CCLaP is designed the way it is (for those who have never gotten to read the ridiculously long guide to CCLaP's scoring system I wrote a couple of years ago); it's why books that score only in the sevens and eights here might actually be fantastic, simply that they will appeal only to existing fans of that genre, while for a title to get a nine or above it simply must in one way or another transcend its natural stereotypes, and not just be well-written.
Take for example End of the Century, the latest title by science-fiction veteran and multiple genre-award nominee Chris Roberson; because it's not a bad book at all, not by a long shot, and will be thoroughly entertaining to anyone who's already a fan of, say, Buffy or Xena or any of those other Saturday-afternoon genre television shows. But much like these shows, the novel is simply a little hacky, with a plot that is too easily guessed and dialogue that is often subpar. In many ways, after all, this is precisely how we define fans of a particular genre in the first place (otherwise slightly insultingly known as "fanboys" and "fangirls"), is by how willing they are to overlook things like weak dialogue and easily anticipated plot developments, in order to wallow in the fetishistic touches of that genre they love so much; and this book is no exception, more than making up for its general-lit problems with a whole cornucopia of string-theory-this and steampunk-that, and all the other little details that SF fanboys are always on the lookout for. And this is simply bound to please some and frustrate others, which is also the whole point of having genres in the first place.
In fact, this is not only the steampunk story just mentioned, but actually four stories rolled into one: a medieval tale, a Victorian tale, a contemporary "cyberpunk" tale, and a thread concerning a shadowy time-traveling secret society that ties all these interwoven sections together. And yes, if this sounds exactly word for word like the concept for Ian McDonald's much superior Brasyl, put out last year by the same publisher (all the way down to similar indestructible glowing "quantum swords" only a few molecules thick, which I don't mind divulging because there's one right on the freaking cover), that's because it is; in fact, such a story structure is rapidly becoming so popular within the world of SF that you could almost count it as a new subgenre unto itself, which I suppose we could call the "tri-history tale" today for convenience's sake.
And like all tri-history tales, the whole point of End of the Century is to get caught up in all the witty details on display, the various clever shoutouts to the existing pillars of these particular story types; for example, the steampunk section revolves around a Sherlock Holmes pastiche named Sandford Blank, who in this case lives on York Street instead of Baker, who plays the flute instead of the violin, who's known for his bowler and silver-tipped cane instead of a deerstalker and briar pipe, whose companion is an attractive young woman named Bonaventure instead of the dowdy Doctor Watson. And yes, if the name 'Bonaventure' sounds familiar to Roberson's existing fans, there's a good reason; as he explains in the book's postscript, nearly every character seen here has some connection or another to nearly ever other book he's already written, in effect creating a self-contained Robersonian alternate universe, yet another hallmark of prolific B-writers no matter what the genre. (And by the way, it ain't just genre writers who enjoy creating pervasive alternate universes where all their books are set; see John Updike's "Rabbit" series, Philip Roth's "Zuckerman" titles and other such "general literature" books for ample proof of that.) And so do all these references work in two different directions; not only is the subversive antihero of the contemporary section a tough leather-jacket-wearing teenage girl, just like every single other cyberpunk story ever freaking written, but the Richard-Branson-type billionaire she eventually robs turns out to be one of the major characters as well from Roberson's earlier Paragaea: A Planetary Romance.
Yeah, I know; I can literally hear the eyes of several thousand CCLaP readers rolling as we speak, even as I hear several hundred others (you know who you are) quietly muttering, "Ooh, cool, I gotta check that book out." And that's the nature of genre work, and why we invented the term 'genre' to begin with, simply because it's work that naturally appeals to some and naturally repels others. Or to use an example that I already mentioned, let's take Buffy's creator Joss Whedon again, because the fact is that I myself am not much of a fan of his although most of my friends are; and that's what lets those otherwise very intelligent people get a sincere pleasure out of such shows as Angel and Dollhouse, that to me seem more appropriate for easily-impressed fourteen-year-olds than for sophisticated grown-ups. As I'm constantly reminded now that I'm a critic, not every artistic project we consume has to be designed solely for sophisticated grown-ups wishing to challenge themselves; in fact, most of us would probably burn out within mere weeks if we were to try maintaining a steady diet of only Pulitzer winners (or only Hugo winners, or only Stoker winners).
In fact, apart from this more philosophical debate over A-writers versus B ones, there's really only one thing about End of the Century that I feel worth legitimately calling out for criticism; and that's the rushed, exposition-heavy, literally deus-ex-machina ending Roberson tacks on, which I won't spoil but will say is the literary equivalent of the Simpsons' "Poochie" episode, where at the end they quickly explain away Poochie's death with a ridiculously nonsensical story thought of on the fly at the last moment. ("I must go now. My planet needs me." And then Poochie's spaceship blew up. The End.) There's a reason that such "god in the machine" endings, once highly popular among ancient Greek theatre-goers (which is where we get the term), have fallen out of favor among contemporary audiences, because these kinds of endings always feel like a cheat; whenever the last 50 pages of a novel rely on events and concepts that were never mentioned even once in the 400 pages leading up to the climax, in many ways it feels to the reader like the author saying, "And then a big f-cking finger came out of the sky and squished them all to death." And that's a letdown, and makes many people feel like the previous 400 pages they just took the time to read were ultimately a giant waste; and that was enough of a problem here for the book's score to drop a bit by the end, just for this reason and this reason alone.
It's for all of these things mentioned that such so-called B-novels are so hard to review, and why so many critics tend to simply skip these kinds of books altogether; because I don't exactly want to recommend End of the Century to everyone out there, but neither do I want to dismiss it, even with it being full of small elements we have every right to be dismissive of. Ultimately it gets a recommendation from me today, but only a limited one, and with me absolutely not wanting to get any angry letters along the lines of, "I picked this up because you told me to, but it was crap!" You may very well feel this way about today's book by the time you're done, so consider yourself duly warned; all you fangirls, however, might very well want to pick up a copy anyway.
Out of 10: 7.3
May 23, 2020
No idea how to classify this book... it's a legend wrapped into fantasy, evolving into sciencefiction.
This book starts like three different stories: Galaad in Londinium (Roman age), Blank and Bonaventure in Victorian London and Alice in modern day London. Each story evolving along its own path, slowly revealing the connection of that which they have in common.
However, that which they have in common takes too long to come about and when it finally does, it completely unravels into a pile of words that even the author must have gotten lost in.
The set-up of the story takes too long, the middle section feels rushed and the ending feels like a disjointed mess. It's not a colossal failure of a story (my 3 stars aren't a lie -- I did like it in some weird way), but I doubt I'll be reading anything again by Chris Roberson.
This book starts like three different stories: Galaad in Londinium (Roman age), Blank and Bonaventure in Victorian London and Alice in modern day London. Each story evolving along its own path, slowly revealing the connection of that which they have in common.
However, that which they have in common takes too long to come about and when it finally does, it completely unravels into a pile of words that even the author must have gotten lost in.
The set-up of the story takes too long, the middle section feels rushed and the ending feels like a disjointed mess. It's not a colossal failure of a story (my 3 stars aren't a lie -- I did like it in some weird way), but I doubt I'll be reading anything again by Chris Roberson.
February 21, 2013
This book took me forever to finish, which is not entirely the fault of the book. I kept misplacing it! For awhile it seemed like I couldn't read more than a couple of chapters at a time before discovering that once again, I had to go hunting for it. There were a few times I couldn't find it and started reading something else, which of course meant I'd find my copy of End of the Century again once I got halfway through the new book.
The other thing that slowed me down, though, was the format. There are three distinct stories in here, each trading off one chapter at a time. First there's a chapter of Galaad, then a bit of Sandford, then Alice, then we start over again. The stories have very different feels to them, not just because of the difference in narrator, but because the time periods and even the type of stories being told are so far removed from each other it was like hitting the reset button for every chapter. I'd just get into the swing of things when the chapter would end and I'd have to adjust for a new character telling a completely different story, and they don't start crossing over into each other until quite late in the book. The constant shifting between three stories means the "setting up" part of the book drags on for what seems like forever, since each world has to establish itself and its cast of characters individually, with constant interruptions from the other stories, so none of the plots really start moving until somewhere around the one-third mark.
Each of the stories here has its own charm, and the way the elements connecting them to each other start with subtlety and gradually grow in significance is really quite fun. Galaad's story is probably the strongest of the three, a more traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy that steals characters from the Arthurian tales and putting just enough of a twist on them to keep them interesting. Sandford Blank's Sherlock impression is a bit more dry, and I enjoyed the "friendly professional" relationship between him and Roxanne, although I generally prefer a little less of the infodump in my murder mystery. I got the impression Roberson wasn't quite sure what to do with Alice, since she tends to spend more time reacting to what's going on around her than setting anything in motion. Once she arrives in London, which is where her story begins, she essentially lets the people around her push her into where she needs to be for the action to happen.
This is a book for someone who wants a leisurely stroll, who doesn't mind waiting for things to coalesce a bit before moving on. It's not going to appeal to someone looking for something with plenty of action. Even the fantasy elements build slowly; at first they're barely there, just a light touch, but as the story deepens, more and more of the fantastical is revealed.
The other thing that slowed me down, though, was the format. There are three distinct stories in here, each trading off one chapter at a time. First there's a chapter of Galaad, then a bit of Sandford, then Alice, then we start over again. The stories have very different feels to them, not just because of the difference in narrator, but because the time periods and even the type of stories being told are so far removed from each other it was like hitting the reset button for every chapter. I'd just get into the swing of things when the chapter would end and I'd have to adjust for a new character telling a completely different story, and they don't start crossing over into each other until quite late in the book. The constant shifting between three stories means the "setting up" part of the book drags on for what seems like forever, since each world has to establish itself and its cast of characters individually, with constant interruptions from the other stories, so none of the plots really start moving until somewhere around the one-third mark.
Each of the stories here has its own charm, and the way the elements connecting them to each other start with subtlety and gradually grow in significance is really quite fun. Galaad's story is probably the strongest of the three, a more traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy that steals characters from the Arthurian tales and putting just enough of a twist on them to keep them interesting. Sandford Blank's Sherlock impression is a bit more dry, and I enjoyed the "friendly professional" relationship between him and Roxanne, although I generally prefer a little less of the infodump in my murder mystery. I got the impression Roberson wasn't quite sure what to do with Alice, since she tends to spend more time reacting to what's going on around her than setting anything in motion. Once she arrives in London, which is where her story begins, she essentially lets the people around her push her into where she needs to be for the action to happen.
This is a book for someone who wants a leisurely stroll, who doesn't mind waiting for things to coalesce a bit before moving on. It's not going to appeal to someone looking for something with plenty of action. Even the fantasy elements build slowly; at first they're barely there, just a light touch, but as the story deepens, more and more of the fantastical is revealed.
January 4, 2013
Oh, this book. It has three different plotlines, in three different time periods, which means you spend a really long time just setting the scene for the story to develop. You need to meet everyone from every world, after all. The first time I tried to read this book, I was anxious and this book was too slow-going. I couldn't concentrate. This second time trying to read it, I was successful in getting through, and my, what a ride it was.
The three stories seem unrelated at first, but slowly you start picking up on clues that everything's connected, and the way it comes together is just too cool (if a little confusing). The book lacks an epic pay-off, but the ending is sweet, so I don't mind too much.
I can't say I really took to the characters much, nor was I particularly taken with the writing style (it seemed a bit stiff, at times), but the story, the story! And all things considered, the characters had really cool qualities (homosexuality not being a taboo for them, a historically plausible king Arthur!), though I never really fell in love with them. In the end, that wasn't really necessary either, but it might have added something to the story, for me.
In short: a fascinating book, though not without its faults.
The three stories seem unrelated at first, but slowly you start picking up on clues that everything's connected, and the way it comes together is just too cool (if a little confusing). The book lacks an epic pay-off, but the ending is sweet, so I don't mind too much.
I can't say I really took to the characters much, nor was I particularly taken with the writing style (it seemed a bit stiff, at times), but the story, the story! And all things considered, the characters had really cool qualities (homosexuality not being a taboo for them, a historically plausible king Arthur!), though I never really fell in love with them. In the end, that wasn't really necessary either, but it might have added something to the story, for me.
In short: a fascinating book, though not without its faults.
August 16, 2022
This book was not an easy read but it was one that was well worth the time it took.
First of all there are three parallel story lines told one chapter a time for each story. Story line one in part 1 and story line two in part 2 with story line three in part 3 and then back to story line one in part 4 and so on. Story line one starts in 498; story line two in 1887 and story line three in 2000.
So then take the tales of King Arthur add in Alice in Wonderland and the James Bond novels and you have the bones of the story. For seasoning add a scifi component and you will have the book.
It is a fascinating read to see how Chris Roberson puts this all together in a memorable read.
First of all there are three parallel story lines told one chapter a time for each story. Story line one in part 1 and story line two in part 2 with story line three in part 3 and then back to story line one in part 4 and so on. Story line one starts in 498; story line two in 1887 and story line three in 2000.
So then take the tales of King Arthur add in Alice in Wonderland and the James Bond novels and you have the bones of the story. For seasoning add a scifi component and you will have the book.
It is a fascinating read to see how Chris Roberson puts this all together in a memorable read.
May 19, 2018
I put this aside back in 2013 with the intention to some day finish it. It's 2018 and I still haven't touched it. I officially give up. It was really not a well written book; I just wanted to like it because it was Arthurian, but I don't like it.
Read
December 24, 2025Saw a pic of me reading this around xmas time .
January 7, 2009
Chris Roberson wisely dedicated his 14th novel to Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, and Kim Newman, three authors who pioneered the difficult to execute non-linear, historical, time-travel adventure. Following in their perennially successful footsteps, Roberson’s End of the Century recounts three unique interrelated tales from three distinct time periods.
In 498 Anno Domini, the timid Galaad journeys to Caer Llundain — later known as London — for an audience with High King Artor, Count of Britannia. Visions trouble the traveler; dreams of a White Lady that he is compelled to share with the ruler.
“At least that’s what I call her. At first I thought she was instead one of the goddesses of our grandfathers. Perhaps she was Ceridwen, who made the potion greal in her magic cauldron, on her island in the middle of a lake.” He shook his head, lips pursed as though he’d just eaten something distasteful. As a follower of the precepts of Pelagianism, he knew there were many paths to the divine, but still the thought of pagan goddesses contacting him made Galaad uneasy. “But perhaps it doesn’t matter who she is, only what she is showing me.”
Summoned by Scotland Yard to investigate a particularly gruesome murder on the eve of Queen Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee, legendary detective Sanford Blank, who solved the Whitechapel Ripper case many years before, and his lovely companion, Roxanne Bonaventure, fear the carnage marks the return of the Torso Killer — a murderer who was never caught.
“I’ve never seen cuts like these,” Blank said.
“And here I thought you had seen everything, Blank,” Miss Bonaventure said in a ill-advised attempt to mask her own squeamishness with levity. Blank shot her a hard look, and her weak smile grew even weaker. Subdued, and looking away from the bloody remains, she went on. “But no, I’ve never seen the like, either.”
“I take it the head and hands have not been retrieved?”
“No.” Melville shook his head. “No sign of them, same as ... ” He bit the words off, but Blank knew what he’d been about to say.
Same as last time.
Blank and Bonaventure quickly uncover at least two more recent victims whose deaths previously seemed unrelated.
With medication, the epileptic Alice Fell repressed the visions that first plagued her as a child. Now in London, 2000 CE, the 18-year-old Alice stands before the London Eye, a 400-foot ferris wheel that looms over the city, and confronts her seizure dreams:
An eye over a city. (What city, she didn’t know.)
A jewel or diamond or crystal that seemed to shine with an inner light.
Large black birds. Lots of them. (Origin-ally Alice thought they were crows, or maybe even oversized grackles, but when she saw a nature documentary a while later, she knew she’d been wrong. They were ravens.)
A small body of water, a pond or lake, the surface motionless as glass, smooth and featureless as a mirror’s face.
A man she didn’t know whose eyes were ice-chip blue.
At first clearly delineated, the three narratives of Roberson’s tale slowly coalesce into a cohesive plot about the Holy Grail and a mysterious entity known as Omega.
Roberson successfully repurposes the techniques of A. Conan Doyle and other 19th-century wordsmiths to accurately portray the world of the Bland-Bonaventure narrative. His three stated literary antecedents relied on similar tropes to great effect in their own works, most effectively in Moorcock’s Metatemporal Detective stories, Newman’s novel Anno Dracula , and Moore’s graphic novel series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .
The author stumbles a bit in the third, near-contemporary, tale — Fell, a petulant adult, earns little sympathy in this least interesting story — but he captures the essence of each era, wielding his extensive knowledge of historical minutiae to set the scenes and mimic the proper literary stylings through the machinations of dialogue and even sentence structure. The use of archaic words make the Galaad selections slightly more difficult to read, but they thrust the reader into an unfamiliar world along with the young, naive protagonist, thus creating the most intriguing adventure of the three.
The latest novel in the author’s Bonaventure-Carmody Sequence, End of the Century requires no previous experience with any of his other books, though as events unfold, prior knowledge of Roxanne Bonaventure and her extended family grant the experienced reader additional insights. A World Fantasy Award finalist and winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Short Form, Roberson ultimately delivers a superior multi-linear novel worthy of the authors to whom he dedicated End of the Century.
This review originally appeared in The San Antonio Current, January 7, 2009.
In 498 Anno Domini, the timid Galaad journeys to Caer Llundain — later known as London — for an audience with High King Artor, Count of Britannia. Visions trouble the traveler; dreams of a White Lady that he is compelled to share with the ruler.
“At least that’s what I call her. At first I thought she was instead one of the goddesses of our grandfathers. Perhaps she was Ceridwen, who made the potion greal in her magic cauldron, on her island in the middle of a lake.” He shook his head, lips pursed as though he’d just eaten something distasteful. As a follower of the precepts of Pelagianism, he knew there were many paths to the divine, but still the thought of pagan goddesses contacting him made Galaad uneasy. “But perhaps it doesn’t matter who she is, only what she is showing me.”
Summoned by Scotland Yard to investigate a particularly gruesome murder on the eve of Queen Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee, legendary detective Sanford Blank, who solved the Whitechapel Ripper case many years before, and his lovely companion, Roxanne Bonaventure, fear the carnage marks the return of the Torso Killer — a murderer who was never caught.
“I’ve never seen cuts like these,” Blank said.
“And here I thought you had seen everything, Blank,” Miss Bonaventure said in a ill-advised attempt to mask her own squeamishness with levity. Blank shot her a hard look, and her weak smile grew even weaker. Subdued, and looking away from the bloody remains, she went on. “But no, I’ve never seen the like, either.”
“I take it the head and hands have not been retrieved?”
“No.” Melville shook his head. “No sign of them, same as ... ” He bit the words off, but Blank knew what he’d been about to say.
Same as last time.
Blank and Bonaventure quickly uncover at least two more recent victims whose deaths previously seemed unrelated.
With medication, the epileptic Alice Fell repressed the visions that first plagued her as a child. Now in London, 2000 CE, the 18-year-old Alice stands before the London Eye, a 400-foot ferris wheel that looms over the city, and confronts her seizure dreams:
An eye over a city. (What city, she didn’t know.)
A jewel or diamond or crystal that seemed to shine with an inner light.
Large black birds. Lots of them. (Origin-ally Alice thought they were crows, or maybe even oversized grackles, but when she saw a nature documentary a while later, she knew she’d been wrong. They were ravens.)
A small body of water, a pond or lake, the surface motionless as glass, smooth and featureless as a mirror’s face.
A man she didn’t know whose eyes were ice-chip blue.
At first clearly delineated, the three narratives of Roberson’s tale slowly coalesce into a cohesive plot about the Holy Grail and a mysterious entity known as Omega.
Roberson successfully repurposes the techniques of A. Conan Doyle and other 19th-century wordsmiths to accurately portray the world of the Bland-Bonaventure narrative. His three stated literary antecedents relied on similar tropes to great effect in their own works, most effectively in Moorcock’s Metatemporal Detective stories, Newman’s novel Anno Dracula , and Moore’s graphic novel series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .
The author stumbles a bit in the third, near-contemporary, tale — Fell, a petulant adult, earns little sympathy in this least interesting story — but he captures the essence of each era, wielding his extensive knowledge of historical minutiae to set the scenes and mimic the proper literary stylings through the machinations of dialogue and even sentence structure. The use of archaic words make the Galaad selections slightly more difficult to read, but they thrust the reader into an unfamiliar world along with the young, naive protagonist, thus creating the most intriguing adventure of the three.
The latest novel in the author’s Bonaventure-Carmody Sequence, End of the Century requires no previous experience with any of his other books, though as events unfold, prior knowledge of Roxanne Bonaventure and her extended family grant the experienced reader additional insights. A World Fantasy Award finalist and winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Short Form, Roberson ultimately delivers a superior multi-linear novel worthy of the authors to whom he dedicated End of the Century.
This review originally appeared in The San Antonio Current, January 7, 2009.
October 5, 2009
Really pretty interesting book, but there were a couple of detractors from making my rating of this book higher. There were three subplots, each with their own time period, and the book skipped between them each chapter for most of the book. If something really interested was happening at the end of a chapter, the next chapter would still be the next time period's plot. This got to be really frustrating if not slightly confusing. Then, towards the end of the book, instead of switching plots at the end of the chapters, he started switching in the middle of the chapter, thankfully putting the subplot's main character's name to differentiate between the plots. Switching the way time ran for part of the story was even more confusing. In spite of the slight confusion, the way the author presented the story was really intreguing and interesting.
December 12, 2010
This is probably more of a 2.5 or so. Regardless, this is a book that tries to be four stories at once, and not all of them work, and the way they're kludged together is a little much. It started out fine, but I was getting a severe case of the "get on with it already"s midway through, and I nearly gave up completely about 100 pages from the end. I probably should have, to be honest, but yeah.
Highly disappointing, as this came highly recommended and well-reviewed from many of the book blogs I read. I really expected something else and something better, unfortunately.
Highly disappointing, as this came highly recommended and well-reviewed from many of the book blogs I read. I really expected something else and something better, unfortunately.
June 19, 2010
Quite an enjoyable book. The author does a good job of weaving three plots in three times and bringing at least two of them together in the end. I was quite engrossed by the story. My only problem is there were some concepts he used, particularly in the second time frame, that were completely unnecessary for the plot (although he does say, in the Epilogue, that they are characters and concepts from others of his books).
March 17, 2009
A totally enjoyable read, a grail quest novel taking place simultaneously at the end of three different centuries. it's the Shining Knight issues of Seven Soldiers smashed up against a Sherlock Holmes pastiche & post-singularity episodes of Dr Who and Torchwood. It names its antecedents as works by Alan Moore (LOEG), Michael Moorcock, Kim Newman, and Philip Jose Farmer. It pretty successfully follows in all their footsteps while forging its own three headed path.
October 27, 2013
Apparently this book features several characters who also appear in some of Roberson's other books; time-traveling heroes and rapscallions from the future and the past who wield strange weapons, practice martial arts and never lack for a bon mot or two. I liked how a very SF plot device becomes a fantasy epic when woven into human history. There are a few holes and inconsistencies, but overall this is an entertaining read.
January 31, 2012
This novel was a bit of a slow start, but once all the pieces fell into place I couldn't put the book down. My only suggestion is to read Robertson's novel "Here, There, and Everywhere" first. While other novels tie in tangentially, "Here, There, and Everywhere" contains elements that make parts of this novel much easier to comprehend.
March 17, 2012
I loved Alice, Galihad and Mr. Blank. This book was a great read. Some of the other reviews complained about the going back and forth between the three stories and timelines; but seriously was that any different then the way plots go on the televisions we all spend too much time infront of? Another great read by Mr. Roberson!
July 12, 2012
Good book, but too many disparate threads. There are also too many links to other books that hurts it when I haven't read any of the other books in this universe. Since it's not a series, but a collection of interconnected books. Using characters whose unique nature have nothing to do with the plot of the book can be somewhat misleading.
July 18, 2009
I just wasn't a fan of this one. Rather than tying together the plotlines from the different centuries, it ended with some sort of super computer consuming one character, reviving another, and being corrupted by yet another. Not a keeper -- it's already gone to the used bookstore for credit.
August 3, 2009
Fascinating mix of periods & genres. This three-track book starts out with three different narratives that merge very well at the climax of the book. Marvelous read and it's going to force me to find more of Chris' books.
January 18, 2009
It´s the best 2009 book I´ve read in 2008 - and, I suspect strongly, it will continue to be so until the end of the year.
May 24, 2013
It was interesting, though the point of views and skipping around has a tendency to get really confusing.
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