Jeff Noon's and Steve Beard's LUDLUDA (With a few remarks on GOGMAGOG)

"What's wrong with him?"

"A demon is wanking off inside his head."

"Oh, I hate it when that happens."

One of the things I love best about the genre that we still tend to call "the New Weird"' is how just plain funky it is. The best work of its major propagators -- Jeff Vandermeer, China Mieville, Alastair Reynolds, et al -- oozes with fluids and crusts, seepages, saps, slimes, scabs, but never gets too too gross. Though your mileage might vary. 

Another master of the New Weird, though not traditionally as enraptured by the Grand Guignol as the guys I mentioned above, is Jeff Noon, who in his diesel punk/steampunk/biopunk (at what point do we just drop the modifiers and call it plain old "punk?") (but then an even better catch-all term occurs to me: Analog Punk) diptych with Steve Beard, gunks it up with the best of them from the very beginning of the first of the two novels. 

I'm here officially to talk about the second book, Ludluda, which I was so excited for after loving the first one, Gogmagog, back in April that when I saw it on Netgalley I realized I didn't want to wait any longer than I had to. I didn't review Gogmagog on this here blog back in April, though, mostly for health reasons, but I'm going to make up for it here, or try to.

Just, you know, it's Ludluda I'm honor-bound to review. I just don't think I can talk coherently about it without also talking about Gogmagog.

Which, Gogmagog is so richly imagined, baroquely plotted and populated with so many bizarre variations on what constitutes a person, a natural phenomenon, a creature or a monster, and is chiefly concerned with wild hybridizations of any or all of these, that I had to quickly read it again to recall what all was going on and who everybody was and which kinds of people have little wings of varying degrees of functionality and which sprout cute little psychic antennae at puberty but only after a ritual that involves fusing themselves with funny little insects and how many different ghostly entities (with very different priorities and personalities and orientations toward the world) were spawned when an enormous, as in 60-mile-long, dragon was killed by a heroic king from outer space. Yep.

So, you see, it's not that Gogmagog isn't vivid and memorable, just that it's a lot, and I read a lot of books every year, and I'm happy to re-read good ones anyway so, why not? 

But so, Ludluda. Which picks up the day after most of the events of Gogmagog as the ragtag crew of the steamship Juniper, after traveling upriver through the ghost body of the ghost dragon to the great capital city of Ludwich for a great festival and the chance for one passenger to maybe experience her strange psychic bug puberty and for the ship's captain maybe to get her about-to-bloom flower buds pollinated by the city's king's very special flower so the captain can finally reproduce after centuries and centuries of life.

Buckle up. 

Gogmagog kicked off as our protagonist, Cady Meade, retired steamboat Captain, met a strange pair who desperately wanted her to resume her trade and take them to Ludwich in time for The Hesting -- a festival when tons of people flock to the city to celebrate and trade while scores of young members of the tribe/species that has the weird puberty in which they grow their psychic antennae undergo their rite of passage. The pair are Lek, a glitchy old robot of a decidedly low tech/magical kind, and his tiny young charge, ten year old Brin, who is due to "Hest" there in just a day or so.

Cady, a character I just adore, is crusty, gross and cranky, a belching, farting, pooping, smoking, drinking and coughing old sea dog (river dog), who doesn't seem to have much left to look forward to except a dwindling life of cadging cough drops and rotten food (she prefers it when her vittles have gone a bit off -- we kind of learn why later) from local shopkeepers and friends, but of course has a heart of gold and lets herself be persuaded to make the trip despite the dangers she operatically warns about.

And off they went through many bizarre adventures, sailing up a filthy river and through the ghostly body of the dragon Haakenur.

A sort of semi substantial dragon Griaule is Haakenur, dead but still very much a force in her world and inhabited by all kinds of supernatural and mundane creatures, and very much a resource for all kinds of magical energy and effluent around which entire weird ecosystems and economies have grown up. But nobody calls her Haakenur anymore; Haakenur was the living dragon, and her physical body is long gone. What Cady and co. must steam through is her ghost, Faynr. And occasionally they must deal with incursions from her other, more evil ghost, the Gogmagog that gives the first volume of the dyptic its name.

What I liked best about these books is a central idea they embody that I don't see in a lot of weird/fantasy fiction: that magic and magical processes have byproducts and produce waste and leave scars on the land, like industry does in our world. So the landscape through which the Juniper chugs is blighted with various effluvia and junk and hazards left behind by a recent war (including unexploded bombs; the war that took place here is very much a parallel with World War II, and we learn in Ludluda that the story takes place in the 1950s of this world and ours), and the inhabitants of that landscape are grudgingly living with the effects of this, with varying degrees of success. 

This is all exacerbated by the fact that Faynr, the ghost body of the great dragon through whose body the ship is also traveling, is very sick and getting sicker. My favorite illustration of this comes when they pass the ghost dragon's gall bladder, which is developing gallstones in the form of great chalk cliffs to either side of the water, from which chunks have fallen. The chunks accrete more and more chalk and become serious navigation hazards until the river's course is almost entirely blocked and the Juniper is in danger of becoming another "chalkberg" as the material starts building up when the ship finally grinds to a halt.

Within the ghost organ of a ghost dragon. As one does.

But of course, since there is a sequel, we knew our heroes would get through this somehow, and they do, hence Ludluda.By the time the party reaches Ludwich, by the way, it has grown a bit with the addition of one Numi Tan, a sort of clay golem magically animated by the spirit of a dead girl who seeks the long lost lover with whom she romantically drowned herself (but the lover has never turned up among the clay golem people for a joyful reunion) and Pok Pok, another Thrawl that Lek rescued from a decrepit factory that used to churn out their kind. Pok Pok is too damaged to be a fully independent crew member but happily serves as a new figurehead and navigation assistant for the Juniper and utters gnomic observations in between steering directions.

As Ludluda gets underway, a few of the crew's quests are meeting successful ends, or at least apparent resolutions, even as others begin or continue. This results in the sundering of the company, who, after all, were newly met traveling companions who have reached their destination. Will we ever see some of them again? Will they appear as friends or foes? 

We also gather some new companions, like Jed Yeomanson, a promising young man (if he does say so himself) who attaches himself to the group just before everybody splits off, helps one achieve a stated end by dubious means, and signs on as the Juniper's cabin boy. And Leopold Hill, half of a famous cartography house, co-author of the river navigation charts that are Cady's most prized possessions, and possible holder of the secret Cady most seeks: the location of the flower that will allow Cady to seed a new generation of her plant-hybrid people!

Cady and her new friends are no sooner acquainted then sent off on a new quest that is only kind of a continuation of the original one; Brin has been revealed to be something other than the gormless little innocent she appeared to be and now must be stopped from pursuing her true aim, which threatens not only Cady's world but the good old mundane world that we know, too, kind of, meaning that yes, this second volume manifests as a sort of reverse portal fantasy for a little while when Cady enters the world of postwar London in pursuit of insights and artifacts from her old friend (remember, Cady is really, really old) Doctor Dee. Like you do.

I will confess to not having been at all prepared for this development, but I can't complain that it's not an organic one within the story. When fantasy is weird enough, it can go anywhere it pleases, after all, and Cady's adventures in de-mob London are every bit as tense and involving as those along the river Nysis or in the various districts of Ludwich. As are her experiences after this visit, which take her to incredible (and gross; it might seem hard to top the levels of disgust flavoring Gogmagog but Noon and Beard would very much like you to hold their funky, murky, smelly beers, please) depths and heights and leave her with as satisfying an ending as an ancient nature spirit-cum-river hag could ask for.

Noon remains a writer whose work is on my automatic buy list; Beard is not one I had heard of before but I will be seeking out his work soon, starting with his other team-ups with Noon. Meanwhile, they have my enthusiastic permission to continue this partnership and take it wherever the hell they want. I'm here for all of it. But then, I have a strong stomach. Do you?

Howard of Warwick's THE GARDROBE OF DEATH

One extremely common, perhaps even required, element of the historical mystery genre, at least since Caleb Carr took it on, is that of a particular kind of skepticism about the detective/hero's newfangled ways. Usually it's a matter of whatever science is cutting edge at the time, as Carr's hero is an early adopter of things like fingerprinting, at which the establishment still scoffs. Sometimes this is played for laughs, sometimes it is not.

In Howard of Warwick's Brother Hermitage series, it's played for laughs. Big, loud belly laughs that shake chairs and startle dogs. Because the newfangled science employed by Mr. Of Warwick's hero is reason itself, and the simple peasants, soldiers, servants and nobles of early Norman England* are such complete strangers to it that, well, let's just say if a woman weighed the same as a duck they'd try to build a bridge our of her.

The Gardrobe of Death , the second novel in Mr. Of Warwick's series, is thus already guaranteed to be pretty damned funny, just like its predecessor, because, in my book, horrible reasoning never stops being funny, but then there's the book's premise: in England's crappiest castle, surrounded by the least competent band of "guerrillas" the Saxons have to offer and ruled by the Normans' very worst specimen, a murder takes place in the crappy castle's crappiest place: its crapper. Or in the parlance of the day, its "gardrobe", a room that usually juts out from a high tower over a pretty good slope, to let the crap that emerges from its holey seats roll downhill.

Only this crapcastle's builders didn't understand that, so just put some seats with holes in them above the holes in the floor, so all that is produced there just plops down into the room below. Where the castle's priest lives. Or lived until said priest realized what had happened.

The priest hasn't lived in that room, and it hasn't been cleaned out or even opened, for years, by the way. Yeah.

And in said masterpiece of sanitation, late one night, a visiting Norman V.I.P. is murdered. By taking an arrow right up his poop chute. Insert Tywin Lannister joke here, I suppose, but I reckon this murder is way worse in every way. 

And funnier.

So yeah, in addition to the relatively highbrow yuks of reading the dialogue of characters with absolutely no grasp of abstract thought or language (or are just really stupid as when, for example, the Lord of the Manor first sees the victim and says "My god, no wonder he's dead. How on earth did he eat a whole arrow?" and then is flabbergasted when someone suggests that the arrow is on the way in, not out), we also have literal yucks. Lots of them.

This is not a book for people who get easily grossed out, is what I'm saying.

But if you can handle all the poop humor, this is another delightfully silly read, as well as being the ultimate Locked Room mystery. Think about it: with the room situated as I've described, how did someone shoot an arrow right up the bunghole of someone hunkered down on the seat of ease? Who could possibly solve such a disgusting mystery?

Only Brother Hermitage, the lowly monk with an eye for detail and next to no clue about social interaction, and his sidekick Wat, who as a dealer in pornographic tapestries is maybe the only person in Norman England with any social mobility at all.

It's tightly plotted, it's gross, it's shameless, it's ridiculous, and you'll absolutely love it. If you can handle the nasty, smelly truth of it. And if you can't, what are you reading historical mystery farce for?

*We're taking very early, like right after William the Bastard hopped the English Channel and changed his name to the Conqueror.

Howard of Warwick's THE HERETICS OF DE'ATH

You may recall last fall when my book-crazy mother, fan of all things with even a hint of medieval mystery fiction, turned me on to Howard of Warwick and his truly side-splitting historical farce, The Domesday Book, No Not That One. I was doubled over, I was in tears, I was gasping for air. I took many months to recover from teh funneh.

Then I finally attempted another of Mr. Of Warwick's books, and while I did not have quite the same life-threatening experiences, I did have a pretty good time getting to know one Brother Hermitage, who made a cameo appearance in Domesday but whose true character awaited discovery.

His true character being sort of an idiot savant Brother William of Baskerville, or a very sheltered Sherlock Holmes. And yes, he has an Adso/Watson of sorts in the redoubtable person of one Wat the Weaver, purveyor of pornographic tapestries, in other words, a perfect wordly foil to the decidedly unworldly Hermitage.*

In this first novel of his chronicles, Hermitage finds himself in a situation somewhat similar to that which made Brother William famous**, namely, a murder in a monastery.***Or at least a death, one which seems perfectly natural at first, but the innocent-seeming narrative of which is quickly seized on by powers greater than Hermitage as a way to further decidedly un-innocent ends.

How great those powers are, what is their scheme, and how it all relates to an exceedingly obscure and farcically pointless theological argument (did Jesus get sand in his shoes while enduring his 40 days in the wilderness?) (No, really, that's the point of contention) is kept secret until the denouement, when an entire novel's worth of bizarre and maddening tension is released as rapidly -- and perhaps with much the same sound -- as a balloon that has been inflated, but not tied off, flies around a room.

Or, in other words, this time around, the belly laughs are saved up for a big gasping mess at the end, like, say, verbs in a German sentence. As described by my mom, anyway.****

Speaking of the ending, it also sets up the most ridiculous conspiracy theory, maybe ever, concerning a certain very famous event in English history.

Now, if I can just figure out what a Dingle is. It can't be what my inner twelve-year-old thinks it is.

Great stuff. My compliments to the scribe.

*Whose name, we learn, was bestowed on him early in his monastic career, when his fellow monks realized his nature as a big ol' dork even by monk standards, and suggested strongly the he consider a life of contemplative solitude. And silence.

**I'm talking about Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, which every reasonably civilized person should at least watch in cinema form if they're not up to reading its very dense and allusive and erudite pages. But you'd be cheating yourself, however wonderful the film is (which is very).

***An edifice which rejoices in the name of De'Ath's Dingle. Um.

****I don't know much German.

Karen Maitland's THE GALLOWS CURSE

Mandrake root has been believed to be capable of many, many things, but who knew it also had narrative talent?

Such is the conceit of The Gallows Curse, in which a mandrake root tells the story of various intrigues taking place during the reign of King John the Worst*, aka John Lackland, specifically during the height of his dispute with Pope Innocent III over who got to pick the Archbishop of Canterbury, which, as the main flow of this novel opens, has not only resulted in John's excommunication but also in, effectively, a complete interdiction on church activity in John's dominions. While neither the King nor the Pope exactly chose this, their dispute left all the parish priests and bishops so afraid that most of them fled or went into hiding.

Result: no one can take confession. No one can get married. No one can have a Christian burial. Et cetera. With interesting results, conceit #2 being -- and I cannot dispute this or call it far-fetched in any way -- that the interdiction had the effect of driving good Christians at least partway back into the arms of a paganism that still survived at least insomuch as there were "cunning women" and all sorts of lively superstition still abroad in Merrie Olde, which superstitions and folk beliefs are cleverly disclosed between chapters in the form of extended quotations from something called the Mandrake's Herbal.

More specifically, The Gallows Curse involves the story of some returned crusaders who variously compelled or were compelled to perform an especially hideous act, the nature of which is kept secret through most of the novel. All we know as the story begins to unfold (told, as I say, by a mandrake root, though we could easily forget this for long stretches that are indistinguishable, narratively, from any other novel written in good old First Person Omniscient, without the odd reminder here and there in the form of the mandrake root's breaking the fourth wall and making a direct observation -- which, I'll confess, I found a bit disappointing, wishing that Maitland had tried harder to invent a real and unique narrative voice for the mandrake narrator) is that it was bad enough to weigh so heavily on one's conscience when he lays dying, and dying unshriven, that his best friend, Raffaele, resorts to tricking an innocent local girl into acting as a sin eater over his friend's corpse.

Much of the rest of the novel's plot spins out from that simple action, and while we spend far too much time with the local girl, Elena (who is, of course, not as innocent as she gave out she was when she was engaged by Raffaele; in fact, she was pregnant when she ate his friend's sins, which causes all sorts of interesting trouble later on), her course brings us into contact with some pretty interesting characters, many of them Bechdel-passing females of considerable wit and strength and interest -- they would not be out of place in a Dorothy Dunnett novel -- and, weirdly, into the heart of a plot against King John.

But chiefly for me, the interest in The Gallows Curse lies in its exploration of what  the world would be like if all of the folk beliefs in the Mandrake's Herbal were true, if sniffing a marigold every morning would keep you from getting sick, if carrying certain seeds made you invisible, if tying a sack of live mice around your neck would get rid of a cough, etc. Maitland does a pretty good job of imagining the inner lives of people living in that kind of world, something I've wanted to see every since I encountered the made-up academic disciplines of Clement Hollier in Robertson Davies' wonderful The Rebel Angels.

I did have to put this book on pause for a while, though. Like a lot of snobby readers (cough! SJ! cough!) I have some rage-triggers. Overuse of "whilst" is one I share with SJ, but I have one that sends me into tantrums worse than that, and one that writers employ all the damned time. I'm talking specifically about a phrase that gets slipped in when describing beverages. God, why do you writers keep doing this? Do you think it's sophisticated? Clever? Original? It's NOT. Anyway, I'm talking about mentioning a beverage, say, wine, and then, usually within the same sentence, describing it as "the [color] liquid." So one might come out with "'This beer is good,' Blah said, sipping (sometimes "quaffing") the amber liquid." Or in this case, one character offers another a flagon of wine and he pours "the ruby liquid." STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP. Really, it's perfectly okay to use a simple pronoun there. Pour it. Sip it. Drain it from a corpse and make it into stew. Whatever you fancy, I probably fancy it, too, because I'm not noticing it. And wanting to throw my ereader at the wall upon said noticing.

But anyway, that's just a pet peeve, and after a few days enjoyment of less doltish prose (that being The Six Directions of Space and some Patrick O'Brian), I returned to this gladly, because I wanted to see where the story was going, even if it was mostly with (sigh) Elena. And really, rage trigger aside, there is some nice prose here. And lots of inventiveness. It was worth getting over my ire, it really was.

And here I have to give a shout out to my own dear personal mom, who recommended it to me, albeit indirectly. When BooksFree finally punted on providing this and several others on her wish list, she decided to punt on BooksFree and finally let me get her an ebook reader, and agreed to share with me a list of as many of the titles she was missing out on as she could recall. Of course my sister and I got them all for her, to fill her new reader! Anyway, it wound up being quite an intriguing list. This is the first of those I've read -- I was sucked in by that fantastic cover art! -- but it won't be my last, and it won't be my last Karen Maitland, either.

Especially when I see via GoodReads that lots of people do not consider The Gallows Curse to be her best work!

*Wink to you fans of Disney's Robin Hood.