Review Summaries

• Readers tend to praise the noir atmosphere and the way the novel makes the city feel alive. Some find the fragmented structure challenging, but the distinctive imagination is widely appreciated.

Reviews

• New Nuevo Tango music is deconstructing its own mannered precision to the raw absurdity of the tango life.

  物理の法則を越えた何でもありのケファフチ宙域が地上に降りそそぐところ。そのイべント・サイトを間近に臨む街が郷愁と憧憬のサウダーデ。サイトの向こうの世界に何かを探し求める謎の女が訪ねるのがバー黒猫白猫。そこにはツアーオペレーターのヴィック・セロトニンがいつもいるから。カウンターの向こうでヴィックのブラック・ハート・ラムを注ぐ女将は元パイロットのリヴ・フーラ。テーブルで亡くなった愛人を思って泣いているのがアイリーン・ザ・モーナで彼女に優しく接するのは宇宙を駆け巡り燃え尽きた"ファット"アントワイン。 こんなモノクロ・フィルムのような感じで物語は始まり、コードが進行するとすぐさま自由な即興が始まり鮮烈な色使いが披露されていきます。 サイトが海に接するところでビバップ・リミックスが聞こえてくればそこにあるのはカフェ・サーフというセッション・バー。その化粧室から次々と出てくる奇妙な男女は別世界からの訪問者。それをピンクキャデラック・コンヴァーティブルで観察しているのがアインシュタインに似たサイト犯罪課の刑事。臭いを嗅ぎつけた彼が向かうのはクラブ・セミラーミデで、そこを経営するのがヴィックのブローカーでもあり、軍部との絆も強い街の顔役ポーリー・デラード。彼がヴィックから買い取った半骨半金属の無気味なモノは派生コードをまき散らし、サイトには新たな物・事が発生してるようでサウダーデでの物語はスペース・ノワールへと展開されていきます。 音楽と会話と紫煙が醸しだす濃密な空気にスタイリッシュなシーンが魅力的ですが、その直下ではむき出しの不合理さがエネルギーを蓄積していくという感じです。認識を越えた宙域のコードのようにプロットが流れだし、走り出すアルゴリズムは意識の返縁を駆け抜けるメタファーのよう。そんな理解不能な派手な事象を描きながらも作品全体には静かなスリルが張り巡らされていて不思議な感触です。そしてカーテンコールは Nova Swingと郷愁と憧憬のサウダーデ。ボサノバなのかファドなのかあるいはニュー・ヌエボ・タンゴなのか。全体的にはシックでシリアスでありながらも、ものすごいスウィング感で最高に楽しめました。

• Like roadside picnic, with more of the picnic.

  Picked this up on recommendations it was similar to roadside picnic (a favourite), and it didn’t disappoint - some hypnotic writing which distracts from the mildly incomprehensible plot- although I appreciate I believe this part of a trilogy, so perhaps that was the issue!

• A Stand-Alone Sequel To 'Light' That Captures It's Audience

  Though Harrison himself admits that 'Nova Swing' can stand on it's own, it's best enjoyed if you've read his previous book 'Light', which introduces the legendary pilot Ed Chianese and the strange phenomenon known as 'The Kefahuchi Tract' - an area in space of alternate reality and strange physics. 'Nova Swing' uses this base with a new twist ... The Kefahuchi Tract has shifted, and part of it has fallen to earth in what is known as the Saudade Event Site. 'Nova Swing' is a complex novel, a generous novel; a character driven novel though it's still centered around an event that is slowly expanding. The characters are not only unique in their formation but also in the very naming of them - Harrison affectedly creating character in the very names of his protagonists. Vic Serotonin is a travel agent; but not the sort you'd expect to run into booking a tour with one of the great space-cruise ships docked in the non-corporate port of Saudade. For the right price, Vic will take you into the Event Site. On his heels though, is police investigator Lens Aschemann who bears a striking resemblance to the elder Albert Einstein. With Lens is an "enhanced" assistant, data streams running down the inside of her arm, who transferred over from Sports Crime. Vic can be seen at anytime in Liv Hula's bar called Black Cat White Cat, dangerously close to the Event Site, and named so after the streams of black and white cats that flow from the Event Site every morning. It's in Liv Hula's bar that Mrs. Elizabeth Kielar contracts Vic to take her into the site. Not only Vic but Liv is suspicious, due to the fact that Kielar - in her glamorous clothing and real fur coat - don't fit the stereotypical "traveler". She's an enigma, and why she insists on entering the site is a mystery. Vic's ever-present sidekick, Fat Antoyne Messner, deserts him after Irene The Mona begins to pay attention to him. (A Mona is a woman who's undergone body redesign to become Barbie-like with peppermint smelling hair). After Vic, in other ways, are Paulie DeRaad, a smuggler who paid good money for an artifact from the Event Site that is now changing him into something unthinkable. Emil Bonadventure, suffering his own side effects from years as a renegade pilot and expeditions into the Event Site, tries and fails to warn Vic, just as Emil's "daughter" (read to fully understand this) eventually writes off Vic and refuses to give him Emil's secret journal. In a world of "smart tattoos", body redesign and re-engineering, space cruises along the Beach and Radio Bay - Vic continues his tours and Paulie continues to decay, Aschermann cruises Saudade's streets in his vintage pink Cadillac and Liv Hula runs her bar night and day - the Event Site continues to expand and pour forth ruinous people and things from the most unlikely locations. Does an ending really come to all things, or is an ending a beginning to some? Despite its multifaceted and intricate plot, 'Nova Swing' is a very enjoyable read, though one you will have to pay attention to. This is not a light space opera to enjoy in brief spurts, this is a melding of SciFi and Fantasy that requires usage of your gray matter inside your skull. Not quite as fulfilling as Harrison's previous 'Viriconium', your palate will nonetheless be satisfied with it's characterizations and brief but puzzling forays into the Saudade Event Site. A solid five stars for lovers of a "thinking" SciFi/Space Fantasy. Enjoy!

• Four Stars

  Good service and product.

• Kinda of inventive, and kind of pointless

  I very much like the somewhat unusual narrative and plot style. It does in the end run a bit long. Which is where the pointless nature comes in. It doesn't seem to have anywhere to go. Nor any reason to get anywhere. I would give it a 3.5 if I could. But the nature of the writing is simply good enough in style to go on with a 4 rather than a 3 star rating.

• Lethargic, evocative, strange

  I loved the previous book Light, but it wasn't an easy read and neither is Nova Swing. The writing is brilliant in a sense; the prose has a turn of metaphor that is virtually peerless. Where it falls down, and it was the same in Light, is that people aren't people. They seem to be cardboard prophets, like that wasted guy you meet in a club who measures his self worth by his ability to regale you impenetrable pseudo-profound nonsense. No character ever responds to another in a way that matches any human being I have ever known. There's a kind of depersonalised grimness to it, which seems amplified in Nova Swing with the clear detective noir genre bend. Very little actually happens, and I found myself pushed to read on just for the language, but being creeped out by the actual story and people. The greatest irony is that the way I felt about this book is pretty much how Harrison describes visits to the alien 'site'. Impossibly strange but not at all a pleasurable experience.

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