The first one was Un Lun Dun by China Miéville. UnLondon is a shadow London the flip side of the real London. Broken things and obsolete technology slips through the veil between the worlds where they gain life and possibly sentience. Concepts pass through the void between the worlds and people pass between the worlds. Years ago there were two employees on on each double decker bus, the driver and a conductor. The conductor was declared redundant and half the employees were let go, they filtered into UnLondon and live there. Conductors work on buses again and they protect the passengers, because conductors contact electricity! This is a story about two girls who slip into UnLondon who are prophesied as the saviors of the city from the evil Smog, who is the 1950s death fog, made sentient. The book initially is a slog. The first 70 pages dragged on and on and I kept dropping the book until suddenly it took off and the sidekick did what all sidekicks do, kick ass. Well sidekicks in UnLondon anyways, except the sidekick broke all the prophesies. The next 300 pages just zipped by until the enemy was defeated and his government backers in London were disciplined. Slow start, good ending, but made me not want to pick up China's Railsea that I have in my possession.
Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith, or a first person narrative if the life story of a servant. Sounds boring, but if you are the person who is the manages the correspondence of royalty it gets more interesting. But still it is not enough. In this world, the Notaries all come from a University. Everyone who attends this University does not end up as a Notary for royalty, some of them become Heralds, messengers who carry swords, bookmakers and Mages. For some reason Royal notaries are the pinnacle vocation for graduates. They have to have major memory skills; they have to be able to parrot conversations of up to twenty thousand words from languages they don't even know and they have to be the person that their employee wants them to be and the role that they are asked to perform. This notary rises to one of the top roles a notary can perform, notary of the Princess and potential heir to the throne. Things develop and the Queen of the Empire gives her a Herculean task to determine if the rumours that a foreign government has mages using evil magic.
Really I was surprised, I liked the book. It was enjoyable narrative, a style that has not been over done. I could do a summary, but you can go to Goodreads to get one of those.
I read The Windup Girl next. This was my third book that I have read by Paolo Bacigalupi and it predates the other two, but it is in the same world, a future dystopia where climate change has gone unchecked and GMOs have had to compete with super diseases and super blights; the world little resembles the world of today. The setting is Thailand, a setting that I have never read about before. A kingdom that has never been conquered and it's people fiercely Independent, steeped in a Buddhist tradition. It is a world where these two things strangely work for e novel. The tradition of independence has lead the nation to push away the world's calorie merchants and become self reliant, but the mega-corporations are beating on the door to get the foods and fruits that appear to be resistant to all the bugs and viruses. One of e characters is the Windup girl, a GMO human, made to service the CEOs of Japan. The natives despise these creations and one faction within the state is bent on destroying all non-pure abominations, the White Shirts, and quasi political paramilitary group that polices agriculture and disease. Add that the political nature of the society was all pro monarchy, but that political coupes seem like a common occurrence and the the book is constantly on edge, between riot and full blown war.
I found this book to be unpredictable and the end a complete surprise, what I thought might be the ending was not; I was left shocked.
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaimen, is the not exactly sequel to American Gods. It is in the same universe, but has only one of the characters, but he only has a bit part; he dies in the second chapter. The single most revolutionary part of this book is that race is never stated, for any character. To me Race does not matter and I feel that it should never be important, but it is a vital part of a setting or a character description. Not having it there creates a discordant feel throughout the book and pushes the reader to examine there own racial prejudices. If you are white like me, you will assume that e main character is white. If you hear the audiobook version, spoken with a Jamaican accent, you would assume that a character is black. You would have to know who Anansi is to have a clue what race and what colour his skin is. When ever a character is introduced you are asking yourself what they look like and it is not important but our own prejudices become clear.
The story itself was fabulous, a surprising easy read. I finished the book in one day and I am a self admitted slow reader. It is humorous and informative, giving the readers an insight into a series of myths that are unknown to people raised in a European culture. Sure I know a bit of the Norse, and a bit of the Celt mythologies, but I know the Greco-Roman mythology inside and out. Me I also know some of the Hindu mythology, but that is because I have an interest. Anansi stories are similar to Native American myths but different.
Overall I found the story good, and at one point I stopped reading and laughed a full belly laugh for over a minute.
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