Queen of Nowhere by Jaine Fenn

The Sidhe, who once enslaved and ruled all of humanity, have returned and inserted themselves into key positions of power right across human-controlled space. Only a few are aware of their return, and the data expert Bez is working hard to bring about their downfall. Her plan requires perfect timing, the recruitment of trustworthy allies and, if necessary, blackmail. But when her strongest ally apparently betrays her, Bez is left to face the Sidhe alone.

Queen of Nowhere is the fifth novel in the Hidden Empire sequence. This sequence is interesting because it tries to be a fairly tightly-serialised space opera whilst trying to make each book a stand-alone, with the focus moving between different groups of characters. Queen of Nowhere brings Bez, a fairly minor character in the earlier books, into sharp relief (Jarek, Taro and Nual, our 'regular' protagonists, are relegated to bit-players in Bez's story). Compared to the frequent point of view changes and shifting between planets of the previous volume, Bringer of Light, Queen of Nowhere benefits from a tight focus on Bez and her storyline.

That said, Queen of Nowhere also depicts events on a fairly large scale, some of them happening many light-years from where Bez is. The book's structure intercuts between Bez and brief scenes on other planets as members of Bez's network get ready for the decisive moment of action and their enemies try to protect themselves. It's an efficient structure which helps get across a big story in a modest page count.

Fenn's biggest weakness - her fairly prosaic, indifferent prose style - has been addressed, with more colour and strangeness in her descriptions. A visit to a planet with both segregation of the genders but also a relaxed attitude to sex is fairly vividly described. Her characterisation has also taken a big step forwards. Bez may be the most compelling protagonist Fenn has created so far, her very ordinariness and lack of material resources (despite her immense data-mining abilities) or superpowers being contrasted against Fenn's more familiar characters. Action sequences are handled with skill and there's a general feeling of improvement across the board.

The main weakness is that this is part of a series, despite the author's attempts to make things approachable for a newcomer. Indeed, newcomers may be frustrated by what they'll see as deus ex machina (such as Taro and Nual's Angel powers) whilst long-term readers may be disappointed by a lack of development on dangling plot threads from earlier in the series. The 'greater threat' which even dwafs the Sidhe and was introduced in Guardians of Paradise goes completely unmentioned, and there's certainly the feeling in the book's conclusion that we still have some way to go to reach the endgame, despite some elements being wrapped up in this volume.

Queen of Nowhere (***½) is, by a whisker, Fenn's best novel to date. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Game of Thrones: Season 3, Episodes 6-10

The second half of the third season of Game of Thrones is more inconsistent than the first. After the strongest five-episode run in the history of the series (seven, if you count the last two episodes of Season 2), the show suddenly screeches into fillersville and some of the worst excesses of Season 2 come back to haunt the viewer: characters wheel-spinning for episodes on end and lots of characters tramping around Northern Irish woods and vaguely hoping it looks like they are thousands of miles apart from one another.

The Climb is the weakest episode of the season, though it still has some very strong moments such as the barbed confrontation between Olenna Tyrell and Tywin Lannister. Diana Rigg and Charles Dance bring their all to this scene of courtesy and threats and it pays off very well. The actual Wall-climbing sequences are visually hugely impressive, amongst the best things the show has ever done, but the saccharine final image and the uncharacteristically awful CGI in the final shot let down the hard work elsewhere. Aiden Gillen, whose performance as Littlefinger has been underwhelming throughout the whole series so far, gets a rare opportunity to shine in the role during his closing monologue, which is one of the more disturbing scenes the series has done. However, in the middle we have a whole load of random scenes thrown together to see what sticks, and it doesn't really work.

George R.R. Martin has written the two best episodes of the whole show so far, so it's a bit disappointing that The Bear and the Maiden Fair does not rank on the same level. It's solid, and certainly a welcome improvement on The Climb, but it lacks the oomph of his other episodes. The stand-out scene of the episode, Jaime Lannister's Big Damn Hero moment, was even moved over from another episode. Dany's confrontation with the Yunkish envoy is also very good (with some exceptional dragon CGI). Theon's appearance may be one torture scene too many for people (but fortunately the last one of the season), although it does confirm what the novels only later vaguely infer. Gendry standing in for Edric Storm is also a good example of a change from the books that is economical and makes sense, though the route Melisandre takes him to get back to Dragonstone - going hundreds of miles out of their way to King's Landing - does not.

Second Sons is also pretty decent, with the titular mercenaries being well-introduced. Ed Skrein nails Daario's arrogance and it's good they dropped his flamboyant appearance from the books (one of the more unconvincing elements in the books is Daenerys falling for a blue-haired ponce), although I'm not sure going for the long-haired pretty boy look was a viable replacement. Tyrion's wedding is a suitably grim affair, the Dragonstone scenes are very well-done (Liam Cunningham is killing it this year as Davos) and the long-awaited 'Sam the Slayer' scene is handled well.

The Rains of Castamere is the most talked-about episode of TV drama this year, and it's easy to see why. The build-up to the infamous Red Wedding is handled well, with some great tonal variations (especially due to David Bradley's superb performance as the loathsome Walder Frey) and a late-building sense of dread. The concluding ten minutes is one of the best sequences in the history of the show, with Michelle Fairley, Richard Madden and Michael McElhatton all delivering stand-out performances. Both Jon and (thankfully) Bran's stories also suddenly kick into high gear. We also get a great action sequence as three of Dany's retainers storm the gates of Yunkai to great effect. Whilst it's not quite as well-paced and measured as And Now His Watch is Ended, it's not far off and of course the final scene is even more powerful and impressive.

Mhysa, the season finale, has to settle for merely being a well-written epilogue. There's an interesting feeling of melancholy as certain characters cross paths for what might be the only time in the whole series (Sam and Bran, most notably) and others take hugely significant decisions (the Dragonstone scenes avoid repetition from earlier storylines and get Stannis's story onto a different track). Other storylines are let down by the promise of more filler and wheel-spinning: Arya looks set to spend most of Season 4 yet again traipsing around the Riverlands. Pairing her with the Hound for longer than in the book is a really good idea, but I'm not sure I can take a whole season of it. The revelation of Ramsay Snow's true name and nature, and Theon's final capitulation to his will is a terrific scene (though it doesn't quite justify the static nature of their story through the whole season), as is the brief ironborn sequence on Pyke. Unfortunately, another key scene - where Tywin lies the smackdown on Joffrey - is underwhelming, with none of the normally-reliable actors hitting the highs of the corresponding book scene. Some terrific and iconic dialogue, such as where Tyrion and Tywin share for a moment the horror that they may have put a new Mad King on the throne and Tywin ominously hints he won't let that come to pass, is also lost, which is a shame.

The most awkward moment of the episode is in Daenerys's storyline. After a strong and decisive start to her storyline this season, it just tails off at the end, not helped by that awkward crowd-surfing scene with its unintended-but-still-uncomfortable overtones of the great white saviour. This can be subverted by what's coming up in Daenerys's storyline, but for now it feels like a really weak way to end the season compared to the very obvious alternative option.


306: The Climb (***)
307: The Bear and the Maiden Fair (***½)
308: Second Sons (****)
309: The Rains of Castamere (*****)
310: Mhysa (****½)

Forthcoming: Season 4 of Game of Thrones will start airing in March or April of 2014. Season 3 should be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in February or March 2014.

Interview with Brandon Sanderson

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Joel Williams, a writer for CNN's website, who had interviewed Brandon Sanderson last year ahead of the publication of the final Wheel of Time novel, A Memory of Light. Ultimately the website decided not to publish the interview so Joel kindly offered to let me publish it here. As it was written for a more general audience than the SFF hardcore, there's little new information here, but it's always interesting to here Sanderson's thoughts on finishing off The Wheel of Time.

When it comes to the Epic Fantasy genre, Robert Jordan is a legend. You know what Robert Frost is to poetry? Jane Austen is to literature? That’s what Robert Jordan is for fantasy. Jordan started his book series, The Wheel of Time, in 1990 and proceeded to publish 12 more books in the series before passing away in 2007 of a rare blood disease. He left the series unfinished and his millions of fans wondering if they’d ever know how the epic saga ended. Much like the characters in the books they loved so much, millions of Wheel of Time devotees needed a hero. Among dozens of other characters, the series follows Rand al’Thor, a backwoods youth who finds out that he is the next in a long line of reincarnated heroes destined to fight “The Dark One” to rid the world of evil. Not doing it for you? Don’t worry. There’s almost certainly another character in the series that will pique your interest. Jordan was notorious for spending lots of time developing side characters, often to the detriment of plot momentum. But it’s those side characters, and the love Jordan obviously felt for them, that turned casual readers into devoted fans.

Jump back to 2007. With the series in jeopardy, Jordan’s widow and editor Harriet recruited accomplished fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to finish the series using Jordan’s notes. With the Wheel of Time series having sold upwards of 40 million books, you can understand the pressure Sanderson felt to do the job right. As a lifelong fan of the series himself, Sanderson knew that this was an opportunity to end the saga as Jordan would have wanted. I spoke with Sanderson shortly before the final volume of Wheel of Time was set to hit the shelves. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Despite the fact this his series takes up a lot of real estate on bookstore shelves, Robert Jordan is not a household name. Why is that?

Sanderson: Epic fantasy is a very challenging genre, I love it, but I’m aware it’s a little harder to pick up. When you go to a bookstore and there’s a series of 14 books, where one is bigger than three other books. That’s not for everyone. But for those of us who read Epic, that big thick book is part why we love it. Not because it’s thick, but because it’s an entire world.

What was it like to take on the project of finishing Jordan’s series? Did you have any idea what you were you getting into? Did any unexpected challenges come up?

Sanderson: I certainly did not know what I was getting into. I started reading these books when I was 15, back in 1990, and I’ve loved them ever since. So I was aware of the complexity of the series and I understood how excited people were, but I didn’t know how much or little Mr. Jordan finished before he passed away. So on the one hand I had an inkling, but on the other I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Famously, before he passed away, Jordan had been telling fans that this book would be so big that they would have to sell luggage carts to get them out of the bookstores. He was planning an enormous, epic finale to his series. That’s what I was anticipating. When I got the notes it was all there, in theory. The notes indicated a great epic book. But not a whole lot had been done yet. He had written some important scenes, but most things were just outlines or pre-outlines. A project that I expected to take year and half, ended up taking up five years of my career in order to do it right.

You mention that started reading the books at the age of 15. As a fan of the series, did you ever think you’d be the one called upon to finish the series?

Sanderson: It completely blew my mind. When Robert Jordan passed away I made the choice that I didn’t want to be the literary version of an ambulance chaser. So I said to my agent, we’re not going to pursue this. I would love to do it, but I don’t think it’s appropriate. When I got called about it, it completely blindsided me. I had consciously decided I wasn’t even going to let myself consider it. I never thought I’d be here where I am. I’ve gotten to participate in the dreams and vision of an author that inspired me to be a writer in the first place. That’s been incredible, but if you had asked me what are the chances of doing something like this, I wouldn’t have given myself any reasonable chance.

Are you concerned because you were a fan, you put something in that might’ve been cut by Jordan? Are you confident you ended it the way he wanted it?

Sanderson: There were a lot of holes in the notes. I had to put in scenes where I don’t know if Jordan would’ve put it in. We’re different writers. The idea was to capture the feel, the mood, the tone. [Jordan’s widow] Harriet was also his editor. She discovered Jordan when she was working as an editor and then she married him. I like to joke that it’s one way to make sure your editorial advice is taken. If I strayed, Harriet would let me know. She has the final say. And we’ve been upfront about it, I’m not ghostwriting this. I’m a coauthor. There wasn’t enough done to be finished off by a ghostwriter, it needed somebody to fill in holes. That’s why I was brought on and that’s what I’ve been doing.

When you were working on this project did it all feel like you were cheating on your world? Maybe feel like you were cheating on a spouse?

Sanderson: [Laughs] That’s an interesting way to put it. Not cheating on a spouse, but cheating on my hobbies. I was still able to release Way of Kings, which is my big capstone epic I’d been working on up until that point. I was still able to do a book in the Mistborn sequence. I had to put a lot aside, but it didn’t feel like I was cheating because I view these characters as closely to my own as possible. Beyond that Jordan, even though I never knew him, was a mentor to me. His writing is what I studied when I was trying to figure out how to be an author. I picked up Wheel of Time and tried to figure out, how is he doing this? I wouldn’t have said yes to anything else, but I said yes because it was Wheel of Time and I was so familiar and attached to these characters.

It’s all coming to end, for yourself as well as the millions who read the books. What does that mean to people reading the books?

Sanderson: I can get a sense for it because I felt it myself in 2007. When I first was offered the project, and we signed contracts and I flew to Charleston where Harriet lives and I read the last scene that Jordan had written. The last scene in the book and the epilogue are his writing. I read that and got the same sense fans are having now. Having been on a long journey, with many wonderful experiences along the way, and having time to think about what it meant and why you loved it so much. It’s bittersweet, when a journey is done. There’s a sense of loss and regret. I felt it back then and I suspect that’s what a lot of fans are going to be feeling.

Dragon Age: Origins

The lands of Ferelden are threatened by a Blight, a horde of monstrous creatures known as darkspawn erupting from underground and destroying everything in sight. The Grey Wardens are charged with defending the land against the darkspawn. In alliance with the King of Ferelden, the Grey Wardens are assembling an army to face the Blight at Ostagar, but treachery awaits and it falls to the order's latest recruit to help save Ferelden.

Dragon Age: Origins is BioWare's reflective look at their own origin (so to speak). It's a big, broad, swords and sorcery epic meant to evoke memories of the Baldur's Gate series, where BioWare got started in RPGs. It's also in 3D, with streamlined controls, inventory management and in-engine cut-scenes. It's BioWare's attempt to blend their original, more hardcore RPGs with their later, stripped-back and more cinematic games like the Mass Effect series. It's a game that tries to balance the old with the new and does not quite succeed.

Which is not to say it doesn't have a go. The game is huge, taking upwards of 50 hours to complete. Cleverly, the game reorganises its opening two hour prologue based on your race and class: a dwaven noble starts in a separate location to a human mage, with a totally different cast of supporting characters, enemies and opening quests. The fact that you can replay the game several times and get a different opening, with the various versions not aligning until you reach Ostagar, is quite clever and rewards replaying the game. Indeed, the choices in these sections reverberate throughout the whole game, with your eventual return to your starting location allowing you to address unfinished business. It's the game's main selling point and is something that is handled very well, making it all the more bemusing that the concept was completely chucked out the window for the two sequels.

As is traditional with BioWare games, your main character is fully customisable but the supporting cast are set in stone. You can accumulate up to ten companion characters throughout the course of the game and take three of them with you on missions. Your inactive party members hang out at a campsite you can periodically visit to exchange information, form friendships (and even romantic relationships) and improve everyone's equipment. The game has a reputation system for each character, and winning their trust will give you bonuses in combat and open up additional questlines. It's a nice idea but also one that's easy to neglect. The game also treats morally ambiguous sorceress Morrigan and sarcastic warrior Alistair as almost the secondary main characters, each with huge roles to play in the endgame, which is rather bizarre if you've just gone through 95% of the game favouring other characters instead. All of the companion characters are nicely-developed, though it's far from the strongest cast BioWare have produced for a game and some self-derivation can be detected: Shale is awesome, for example, but feels a little too reminiscent of Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.

You spend the game doing what you usually do in a BioWare games: a broad variety of quests, varying from the mundane to the epic, and getting into lots of conversations and fights. A lot of fights: you seem to spend the overwhelming majority of the game in combat, and violence seems to be the solution to almost every problem in the game. There's a few quests based on diplomacy and dialogue, and a few fights can be avoided through intimidating or persuading the enemy, but otherwise be prepared to do a ton of fighting. Fortunately, the old 'hit space to pause' option is still present and correct, allowing you to assign orders to characters and take stock of the battle as it develops. A quickbar allows easy access to abilities, spells and weapons. Combat is generally satisfying, although health spells feel a little weak (at high level they restore so few hit-points it's almost not worth bothering with them). The biggest weakness is positioning: enemy units can clip or shove past your units with ease, making it impossible to create bottlenecks in corridors and engage the enemy with warriors whilst wizards and ranged fighters engage from afar. This seriously limits tactical options and can make fighting large numbers of tough enemies particularly difficult. Some abilities also feel overpowered: the enemy's ability to encase your characters in null-magic zones where healing magic simply does not work can result in total party wipe-outs all too easily.

In technical terms, the game is okay. Graphically it looks solid on PC (but a bit washed-out on consoles) and mods are available to improve textures further. The game is a bit flaky on multi-core PCs but runs fine if you assign it to run on just one core. Camera control is a bit of an issue: the PC version allows you to play the game from an overhead viewpoint (reminiscent of Neverwinter Nights except, bizarrely for a seven years-newer game, far less customisable) but you can't zoom out very far, and enemies often engage you from outside this viewing range. Switching to the over-the-shoulder view (which the consoles are limited to) is great for spotting distant enemies and engaging them at range, but is useless for melee. You can switch between them easily enough, but it feels a bit annoying you can't stay in the viewpoint you favour throughout the game. The overhead view also sometimes seems to get confused on whether it should be 'locked onto' your selected character or allowing you to free-roam.

The writing is a mixed bag. A lot of dialogue in the game is obvious, expositionary and risible, not helped by severely variable voice acting (Claudia Black is the standout as Morrigan). There are attempts at nuanced characterisation - key villain Loghain has his reasons for doing what he's doing, though he's such an unrepentant martinet that most players will feel zero sympathy for him - but they mostly fall flat. The game also makes a nod towards gritty realism through its political infighting and bloody combat, though the game goes completely over-the-top with your characters walking out of fights covered head-to-foot in gore. The political angle also doesn't work very well due to the politics being rather boring and it's difficult to care about Ferelden when you spend most of the game hearing about how isolationist and racist it is, riven by internal conflicts with few genuinely good people in positions of authority.

Despite the clunky writing, poor camera controls and focus on violence as the solution to just about everything, the game just about manages to keep its head above water. It's satisfyingly huge and the worldbuilding is derivative (a mash-up of standard fantasy tropes with more than a bit of inspiration from George R.R. Martin) but somewhat interesting. The differing opening sections of the game give some good replay value. Combat is solid if unspectacular. There's a germ of a really good game here, but there's also an overwhelming feeling of blandness and predictability that rears its head all too often.

Dragon Age: Origins (***½) is a very solid game from BioWare, although it's self-reflection on BioWare's past is rather pointless: the Baldur's Gate series is still extremely playable and frankly on almost every front bar the technical one are better games than Dragon Age. For those simply after a big, enjoyable fantasy RPG, Dragon Age certainly fits the bill. Its ambition is impressive and even in failing to fully achieve it, it's still very playable and worth a look. The game is available now - in an 'Ultimate Edition' also including its expansion Awakenings and several DLC episodes - in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

Matt Stover interviews Scott Lynch

Matt Stover, author of the splendiferous Acts of Caine SF/fantasy series, talks to Scott Lynch, author of the also-splendiferous Gentleman Bastard series, over on the Orbit blog.

No, I haven't got one. No, you can't have it afterwards if I do get one.

Scott has also revealed that ARCs of The Republic of Thieves are being assembled at Gollancz Supreme Headquarters in preparation for distribution to the masses. Since revealing this news, Gollancz Towers have become encased in an impenetrable forcefield and ED-209s have been seen patrolling the grounds, so don't even think about it.

The Tudors: Season 2

England, 1533. King Henry VIII is anxious to formally annul the marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and to wed Anne Boleyn in her stead. However, the Pope remains adamantly opposed to both the union and the king's reforming of the Church in England. As a major schism looms, the king finds himself at odds with some of his most loyal friends and supporters, including Sir Thomas More.

The second season of The Tudors covers what is generally considered to be the most pivotal period in the life of King Henry VIII, extending from his marriage to Anne Boleyn to the latter's fall from grace and execution just three years later. This period includes the separation of the Church of England from Rome, the martyrdom of Thomas More, the birth of the future great Queen of England Elizabeth I, and the rise to prominence of Jane Seymour, who is destined to become Henry's third wife. It's a rich period of history, dramatised many times (but arguably most famously in the play and film A Man For All Seasons, which focuses on More). The Tudors, due to its wider scope, has the ability and freedom to take this story and integrate it into a wider dramatisation of Henry VIII's entire reign, which has positive and negative consequences. Negatively, this is arguably the heart of Henry VIII's story and what comes after cannot help but be anticlimactic in comparison (though the producers of the show certainly give it a go). On the plus side the great time afforded the story by a television series means that the show can do some very interesting things, like devoting the entire final episode of the season to the hours leading up to Anne's execution, a move which succeeds splendidly and gives us what may be the best episode of the series.

A noticeable gap in the cast is that of Sam Neill, whose character of Cardinal Wolsey died at the end of the first season. The less-well-known James Frain has to step up as his effective replacement, the ruthless reformer Thomas Cromwell, and does an excellent job. The show also brings in the legendary Peter O'Toole as Pope Paul III, mainly to show the reactions to Henry's policies in Rome. This is a bit of an odd move, as this storyline never really goes anywhere. The Pope commands King Francis I of France to invade England, an ominous development which is subsequently ignored, and is later shown having frustrated episodes over the work of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Amusing, but it forms a digression that might have been better spent in England fleshing out the existing, more prominent characters. O'Toole is, of course, brilliant, but his presence in this role does feel a little bit of a waste of a major casting coup.

Natalie Dormer continues doing excellent work as Anne Boleyn, and has the difficult task of portraying the queen's descent into paranoia as she suffers miscarriages and earns the king's enmity. The show adopts a sympathetic approach to the queen, showing her to be distressed by her inability to bear the king a living son and innocent of the charges brought against her (though heavily indicating that she may have been promiscuous as a youth before meeting the king). Jeremy Northam also does good work as Sir Thomas More, the man of conscience and integrity who tries to balance his belief in his faith with his love for the king and dies for it.

In the central role of Henry VIII, Jonathan Rhys Meyers shows early signs of improvement over his inert Season 1 performance. This may be attributable to his decision to 'do a Riker' and grow a beard between seasons. Unfortunately, the beard is rather unimpressive (a quarter-Riker at best) and his performance soon returns to a binary state of either being coldly inscrutable or insanely furious. Scenes which require him to smile or be jovial feel forced and unconvincing, and the less said about the spontaneous way he meets and immediately falls in love with Jane Seymour the better. The whole storyline with Jane Seymour is rather badly handled, with the show deviating even further than it normally does from history (Jane had been at court for a year before Henry and Anne even married) and treating the relationship rather tritely, despite Anita Briem's best efforts with the material.

On the plus side, Henry Cavill improves significantly this season as the king's best friend, Charles Brandon. He shows Brandon's growing maturity as he casts aside his philandering ways to concentrate on his family life, in contrast to Henry's constant flitting between mistresses, and also his growing spiritual crisis of faith at the things he has to do in the name of the Reformation. This is a theme that continues into the third season.

Overall, the second season of The Tudors (***½) is much as the first: it's tosh but watchable tosh which gets a lot of the details of the history wrong but does succeed in nailing the broader picture. However, the second season is elevated over the first by the richer, more dramatic events being depicted and some improvements in both writing and acting. It is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

A century or more in the future, Melanie Tarent is killed in a terrorist attack in Turkey by a frightening new weapon. The only trace the weapon leaves behind is a triangular scorch mark on the ground. Her husband, Tibor, returns home to Britain and learns that the same weapon has been deployed on a larger scale in London, leaving a hundred thousand people dead. There appears to be a connection to something in Tibor's past, something he has no memory of.

The events in Tibor's life have ramifications across the years. During WWI a stage magician is sent to the Western Front to help make British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy and has a chance meeting with one of the most famous writers alive. During WWII a young RAF technician meets a female Polish pilot and learns of her desperate desire to return home and be reunited with her missing lover. And in the English countryside of the near future, a scientist creates the first adjacency, and transforms the world.


Reviewing a Christopher Priest novel is like trying to take a photograph of a car speeding past you at 100mph without any warning. You are, at the very best, only going to capture an indistinct and vague image of what the object is. Photography, perspective and points of view play a major role in Priest's latest novel, as do some of his more familiar subjects: stage magic, WWII aircraft and the bizarre world of the Dream Archipelago. The Adjacent is a mix of the familiar and the strange, the real and the unreal, the lucid and the dreamlike. It's the novel as a puzzle, as so many of Priest's books are, except that Priest hasn't necessarily given you all the pieces to the same puzzle.

The book unfolds in stages, draped on the skeleton of Tibor's adventures (for lack of a better term) in the Islamic Republic of Great Britain. The normal eye-rolling which accompanies any suggestion that Britain could ever become such is mediated here by knowing some of Priest's narrative tricks. This is a future, not the future, and it is possible that it may not be the future of our world but another where history has unfolded differently. From this linking narrative we move back to the First World War, forwards to the Second, sideways to one of the islands of the Dream Archipelago and, in the middle of it all, a short interlude in an English scientist's garden which may hold the key to the whole thing. The book's ending is revelatory, but only in the sense that you can now see the destination, not necessarily that you understand how you got there. As is also traditional with Priest's books, a full and richer understanding of the text will have to wait for re-reads. That said, Priest does play fair: by the end of the first read you should be starting to get a handle on what's going on.

Of course, the novel's satisfaction as a puzzle and an impressive work of intellect would be nothing without Priest's formidable skills with prose, character, detail and atmosphere. His research is put to good use, with the historical settings of the First and Second World Wars evoked to good effect. The future world he paints is convincing as well as disturbing. His central characters - many of whom seem to be doubles or reflections of one another - are convincing and detailed, with their growing frustration as events become more bizarre and inexplicable well-depicted. It also helps that all of the puzzles and mysteries surround that simplest and most traditional of narratives: a love story.

If The Adjacent has a weakness, it's that it's a novel that, whilst readable by itself, will especially reward those already familiar with Priest's work. In particular, the sideways trip to the Dream Archipelago will likely completely confuse those not familiar with it, but readers of The Dream Archipelago, The Affirmation and The Islanders will be able to nod sagely and think that they are 'in' on what Priest is doing (or at least they can kid themselves they are). The Adjacent feels like a culmination of the ideas and tropes Priest has been exploring since at least The Affirmation was published thirty years ago, and is thoroughly rewarding on that basis. Newcomers unversed in the 'Priest Effect' (a term coined by David Langford to describe Priest's way of writing) may find some of the ideas in the book more impenetrable.

The Adjacent (*****) is puzzling, brilliant, frustrating, page-turning, disturbing and absorbing. It is traditional Priest. The novel will be published on 20 June in the UK and USA.