Book Review – End of the Century
Books, Review | Professor Crazy | February 18, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Author: Chris Roberson
Cover Artist: Dan Dos Santos
Publisher: Pyr Books
Binding:Trade Paperback
Publication Date: Jan. 2009
With Chris Roberson’s latest novel, End of the Century, you get three novels in one. The good news is each of the three story lines are interesting and entertaining in their own right, and when the disparate charcters from the story lines and historical eras finally meet, the novel gets even better. It’s difficult to juggle three story lines successfully, but Roberson is an accomplished author, and pulls the feat off quite successfully.
You might perhaps be most familiar with his novels Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures: Book 1 and, yes, its sequel, Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures: Book 2, at least if you either have young children or are fairly young yourself. Both were made into movies; both are likely good novels and movies, for all I know, having neither read the books nor seen the movies. The commercials turned me off, by themselves, to any desire I might have had to see the flicks – but, who knows? Maybe they’re the best thing since sliced bread, or Star Wars, or a bacon, tomato, lettuce, sliced bread and Ewok sandwich.
All kidding aside, Roberson is a talented author, who has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award three times, twice a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and twice for the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Short form. He won it in 2004 with his story “O One.”
The three plot lines are all set on the Earth, at different times. The chapters are headed with the designation of “Twilight,” “Jubilee,” or “Millenium” (though later in the novel when the plots converge there is also the title “Unworld”). As I’ve mentioned, each separate story line is interesting enough to potentially have had a good novel made out of each one. Having the chapters and plot lines alternate, in this book and other which employ this technique, has both its good and bad points. On the good side, you get three books in one; on the bad side, if you’re starting to really get into one of the plot lines, you have to wade through another couple you may not like as much before you can get back to the one you like the most.
“Twilight,” chapters are set in Caer Llundain, or Londinium (present-day London, England), during the Sixth Century, CE, and center on Gallaad, a man who has had visions of a maiden trapped in a glass tower. He goes to enlist the aid of High King Artor (King Arthur) to help rescue the fair damsel in distress. This involves some convincing, as not even his own wife believes him, thinking his visions are likely the result of when a horse kicked him in the head. This occurence, after all, was when the visions began. But, King Artor is itching to go on another quest full of adventure, since he’s getting bored and complacent with routine governing chores and settling disputes, so he and his knights agree to see if there’s anything behind Galaad’s peculiar visions or not. His visions may have been brought on by epilepsy caused when the horse kicked his head (he smells flowers before the visions, and smelling certain oders are one harbinger of the visions people suffering from epilepsy smetimes have), but nevertheless, his visions seem to have truth in them.
Their quest takes them to an island that seems to be the one in Galaad’s visions, the island of Dumnonia (King Artor recognizes it from the description Galaad gives him). Its rule is split between two kings, both related to Artor. The one Artor and his men are more friendly with, Geraint, is the one whose court they stay at. Geraint and his people have been terrorized by a gaunt, corpse-like creature they call the Huntsman, who generally rides on a horse. He has a pack of vicious, almost indestructible dogs with him which attack without provocation. The Huntsman also wields a red sword that can cleanly slice through anything, even metal. The Huntsman is an important recurring character in each story line.
King Geraint and most of the townsfolk have taken, of late, to retreating behind the walls of Geraint’s castle at night, when the Huntsman and his pack are roaming around. He says he hasn’t seen a glass tower around anywhere in the past, but there might possibly be one now. He doesn’t know, because an ever-growing hedge of mist that started out being relatively small has taken over much of Dumnonia. He’s sent men to try to penetrate the mist and find out what’s behind it and causing it, but none who enter are ever seen again. The hedge of mist and the sightings of the Huntsman began at the same time, and the Huntsman’s range has increased along with the mist.
The “Jubilee” story line is set in London in 1897, during the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebration. This is a detective type of plot line, with Sandford Blank the Sherlock Holmes-style sleuth, and his beautiful companion Roxanne Bonaventure (brilliant in her own right) aiding him in solving a string of brutal murders. The way the victims are killed, with arms, legs, or hands cut off with precise cuts, or, in one example, a man sliced almost completely in two from his back to his front, harkens back in Blank’s mind to ten years previously, when there was another series of gruesome murders at the time of Victoria’s Silver Jubilee. The police fear that Jack the Ripper might be back, but Blank believes whoever is committing the murders might have as his motive the discovery of the Holy Grail.
One thing Blank learns that some of the victims have in common is that they had been members of a club, the League of the Round Table. Many famous people are on the list of members, including, as Blank tells Roxanne, “Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and the film maker George Albert Smith.” The current head of the LRT is Frank Podmore, and Blank notes in a painting of him in Podmore’s house that he’s been painted as the magician Merlin.
Sandford Blank’s adventures in solving the murders and the character of the Huntsman showing up again were some of the parts of the book I most enjoyed. He is working both for the Crown and for a mysterious enitity known as Omega, who also is a vital recurring being mentioned, and a driving force in, each story line. Sandford, we read in the third plot line, “Millenium,” also had been the mentor of one of its main character, the ex-M18 secret agent and occultist Stillman Waters.
Stillman Waters has been seen in a vision by American teenager Alice Fell, an epileptic who, like Galaad, is haunted by what her mind’s eye sees. “Millenium,” is, to me, the best of the three plot lines. That could be for a few reasons – the Lewis Carroll references; the proximity to our own times – this section is set in the year 1999 in London – the comparision of Stillman Waters to the actor, Michael Caine; and the numerous references to David Bowie. I saw Bowie at the Arizona State Fair for his “Serious Moonlight,” tour, when the songs “Let’s Dance,” and “China Girl,” were big hits on the radio, and he kicked some serious ass! So, it’s no wonder that I liked this particular story line the most of the three.
I also appreciated very much that Roberson obviously did a lot of research for each of the plot lines. He writes about each era as if he’d lived in them, and references many places, people, locations, and – at least with “Jubilee” and “Millenium” – street names, parks, museums, plays, and clubs, giving the plot lines a great degree of realism, despite the fantastic nature of the plots. Roberson, unlike other scifi authors, with End of the Century doesn’t create a world or universe out of whole cloth; but, he goes to incredible lengths and detail to make this particular Earth we all live on seem very real and a place where his characters fit in and participate in very well.
Sometimes, as I’ve hinted at, one of the story lines might be more interesting than the others. They’re all good, but a novel that attempts to tackle so many different things, as this one does, has its ups and its downs. Still, the novel, as a whole, while also being long – at over 480 pages – is one I’d recommend to anyone who likes their science fiction to involve time travel, action, numerous bloody casualties, and a Dr. Who type of ambience. It’s worth checking out for the cool references, alone, though who (no pun intended) can go wrong getting three books (figuratively speaking) for the price of one?
Tags: Chris Roberson, Dan Dos Santos, End of the Century, PYR, Science Fiction
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