Wolfhound Century

[sawyl]

On something of a whim, influenced by Francis Spufford's enthusiastic review Radiant State, I decided to read Peter Higgins' excellent Wolfhound Century. Set in a parallel version of Russia, where creatures from folklore are commonplace and where vast stone angels have crashed to earth for reasons no-one seems to understand, it follows a provincial policeman as he is summoned to the capital and ordered to track down a criminal agitator who appears to enjoy high level political protection.

Vissarion Lom, an able, honest, overlooked detective from the provincial town of Podchornok finds himself summoned the capital by the Minister of Vlast Security. Arriving in Mirgorod, he learns that Under Secretary Krogh wants him to track down the criminal agitator Josef Kantor; and that because of Kantor's suspected high-level political connections, Lom must work alone and in secret. But unknown to the Minister, Kantor is not the master of his own destiny: having received a series of telepathic visitations from an archangel, petrified and fallen to earth in the far east but still alive, Kantor has been ordered to destroy a mysterious artefact called the Pollandore which the angel believes threatens its continued survival.

Meanwhile Kantor's supposed daughter, Maroussia Shaumian, appears at home of Raku Vishnik, the out of favour historian with whom Lom is staying, to ask him about the Pollandore which she suspects of triggering a series of surreal visions of the city. Initially horrified by Lom's presence — the Vlast's police are not greatly trusted — Maroussia gradually comes to realise that his fight against Kantor and his corrupt backers has something in common with her own search.

Lom's search seems to go from dead end to dead end until he learns that Kantor's record has been seconded by Lavrentina Chazia, the Head of the Secret Police who has dabled extensively in experiments involving the insertion of fragments of stone angel flesh into humans — something with which Lom is all to familiar: a fragment of an angel was inserted into his forehead during early childhood in an attempt to control his budding telekinetic abilities.

Higgins skillfully blends the traditional fantasy elements with a vision of something like Tsarist Russia to create a strange semi-modern society where giants are called upon to do manual labour and the might of the state is enforced by the mudjhiks — golem-like creatures created by embedding the brain of a dead animal into a statue-like body created from the stone of the fallen angels. The city, normally real and concrete, has become increasingly plastic under the influence of the Pollandore, with tiles turning into flowers or waitresses in cafes suddenly finding themselves weightless and shops and locations appearing and disappearing seemingly at random.

The book draws heavily on real history for its villains. Josef Kantor, intelligent, charismatic, sociopathic, and domineering is clearly an alternate version of Joseph Stalin; a likeness made even more obvious when Lom is granted a vision of a statue of Kantor, five hundred feet tall, bestriding the skyline of Mirgorod like a new colossos. Meanwhile Kantor's covert accomplice, Lavrentina Chazia, the Head of the Secret Police, is a gender-swapped version of Lavrentiy Beria, who held the same post under Stalin.

Wolfhound Century is an exciting read with fine attention to detail and a fascinating take on Russian folk culture. As the first part of a series, the story ends on an inconclusive note, but that doesn't matter all that much at this point because the second and third books are already out...