<font color="forestgreen">Like some strange leviathan roused for it’s eon-long slumber, Mouse pokes this thread and it rises from it’s resting place on page 12 of the forum to once more contemplate the heady heights of page 1 with a jaundiced eye………</font>
Virconium by
M.John Harrison
Here’s the setup, I wander into my local library and browse the shelves. Suddenly my attention is caught by a book spine “Fantasy Masterworks” and the title as above. Having read the blurb (with quotes from Katherine Kerr and Clive Barker no less
) I grabbed it and took it home.
Soooooooo – what did I get. Well, this seems to me to be a mixture of a Jack Vance “Dying Earth” concept with sprinklings of Peake’s Gormenghast and Moorcock’s “Dancers at the End of Time”. It is chock full of decadence, decay and hopelessness. If you like that sort of quasi-gothic setting where all the characters are helpless pawns of an uncaring universe, then this is for you. As for me, I just could not care less. I can admire the imagery of the setting and some of the writing is quite stunning, but overall I just did not connect with this book. In fact, I almost contemplated abandoning it, but finally finished just for the hell of it.
Overall then, not a pleasure. If anyone is interested, for a much more enjoyable work in the same vein, check out
Perdido Street Station by
China Mielville