The Mime Order

Quick on the heels of reading The Bone Season, I've finished Samantha Shannon's second novel, The Mime Order, which follows on directly from its predecessor. With the characters and the setting established by the first book, The Mime Order avoids many of the weaknesses of its predecessor — especially the indigestible info-dumps and the rather lumpy pacing — to deliver on the potential hinted at in The Bone Season.

The book opens on the immediate aftermath of Paige Mahoney's escape from the Rephaite prison colony of Sheol I in Oxford. Having masterminded a breakout with the help of her mentor and jailor, Arcturus Warden of the Mesarthem, with further assistance from her old gang of mime-criminals, the Seven Seals, Paige and a small group of others have got themselves aboard a train that runs between Sheol and the Scion Archon in London. Sneaking off before the train arrives at the Archon, the prisoners escape through the Tower of London station, suffering heavy losses in the process. Having won her freedom Paige finds herself facing a difficult decision: whether to return to Jaxon Hall, the Mime Lord of the Seven Seals, giving up her independence in return for the dubious protection of her old syndicate; or whether to strike out on her own, better to concentrate on fighting the Rephaite — something to which Jaxon is almost completely indifferent.

Having only seen them in supporting roles in the previous book — they appear in flashback and in the section where Rephs attempt to capture a leading voyant in Trafalgar Square — the opening of The Mime Order brings the Seven Seals to the forefront of the action and adds new levels of detail to their characters. Nick Nygard is familiar from The Bone Season and continues in much the same vein, with his involvement in the syndicate purely a matter of pragmatism: he feels he can offer more help to his fellow voyants as a gang member than as a lone outsider. Nadine, Zeke, and Danica are a still a lightly drawn, but the book gives a much clearer picture of Eliza Renton, the group's medium. Able to channel the spirits of dead artists, Eliza is the Seals' money spinner, forging paintings by her various different muses, which the rest of the group then sell on the black market as lost masterpieces. Pathetically loyal to Jaxon, despite his sometimes horrible attitude towards her, Eliza is the heart of the gang and the one who tries to convince Paige that her best interests really do lie with her gang.

Paige's short spell of independence is cut abruptly short when Scion, reacting to the breakout from Oxford, put the London Archon into lockdown, announcing that she and her fellow escapees are enemies of public. Forced to accept Jaxon's protection, Paige reluctantly resumes her role as the Seals' mollisher, second in command, attending spirit auctions, shaking down the district's voyants, and acting as a general enforcer despite the price on her head. During the delivery of a gift to Haymarket Hector, the Underlord of London's voyants, Paige finds herself first on the scene of a slaughter: Hector and his gang, all except his mollisher Cutmouth, have been killed in particularly brutal fashion. With the Underlord dead and no natural successor available, the Abbess, another syndicate head, takes on the role of interim Underqueen and announces a scrimmage to determine Hector's successor.

Paige's rebellion and return finally gives us a really good feel for the character of Jaxon Hall, charismatic psychopath and mime-lord of I Cohort. Having helped with the rescue — Eliza claims he spent the six months of Paige's absence tirelessly searching for his missing dreamwalker, but her judgement is somewhat suspect — Jaxon's immediate response to her return seems to be one of huffy hauteur: he is obviously annoyed by her new-found independence and confidence, but he's willing to play along in order to draw her back in on his own terms. Having got his mollisher back, Jaxon promptly starts pushing her around, docking her pay and getting her to do his dirty work while he loafs around in his den drinking absinthe. Then, when things finally get serious for Paige with Hector's murder, Jaxon sees it as opportunity for blackmail, using her presence on at the scene of the crime to tighten his grip on her, ensuring that he has a combat-ready deputy to support him in the scrimmage for the position of Underlord.

The other thread to the narrative reasserts itself when Paige has an unexpected run-in with Terebell Sheratan, a Rephaim from Shaol aligned with a group who oppose the ambitions of the ruling Sargas family, who informs her that the Warden has gone missing. Concluding that her mentor has probably been taken prisoner, Paige uses the psychic bond between them to trace him to a particularly unsavoury warehouse in Camden. Unable to call on the syndicate for help — Jaxon has made it very clear what he makes of her continued obsession with the Reph — she uses the cover of a training session with Nick to stage a daring rescue. Sneaking through the warehouse Paige turns up evidence that suggets that Warden's captures have come to know too much about Rephaim too quickly for trial and error, suggesting that the syndicates have more experience and contact with her enemies than she'd previously suspected.

From this point the story rushes on to its conclusion, with Paige trying to solve the mystery of Hector's death and the involvement of the syndicates in Warden's abduction before she and Jaxon have to enter the Rose Ring to fight those of London's mime-lords who have put themselves forward for the scrimmage. The stories dovetail together nicely from this point on, pulling out various hidden elements in a way that works rather well. The pacing of the conclusion lacks the unevenness that troubles The Bone Season while the final fight, which shows both Paige and Jaxon finally kicking back and showing their stuff, cranks up the tension nicely. The final revelation, in the very last chapter, is foreshadowed earlier the book and makes me wonder whether some of the behavioural echoes of a couple of the character are coincidence or whether they're evidence of a much closer connection.

The shift from brooding, gothic Oxford to the London Archon works well and despite the familiarity of some of the place names, the city feels very alien and different. Most of this can be attributed to the historical inflection point in 1859 when the Raphaim revealed themselves to Palmerston, which seems to have had the effect of suppressing any desire to clear away the worst of the city's slums — many of locations condemned by Dickens, including Devil's Acre, Jacob's Island and St Giles' Rookery, feature in the story. In combination with the apparent lack of world wars in the 20th century and consequent lack of destruction of the medieval components of the city, serves to give the Scion Archon the feel of an early Victorian city. This feeling is reinforced by the fashions, which Paige describes as being drab and heavy, and the mime slang with its mollishers and rotties and kidsmen. Even Jaxon's vices — gramophone records and absinthe — have a dated feel, while the occasional technological incursions — Paige very intermittently uses a burner phone and coffee shops occasionally have televisions — are so rare and removed from the voyants' everyday life that they don't seem overly anachronistic.

Having been a little doubtful of The Bone Season I find it much easier to be positive about The Mime Order, which comes closer to living up to the some of the hype accorded to the first novel. The world building is handled a good deal more gracefully, the plotting feels a more assured and controlled, and the pacing is more successful. The world is intriguingly drawn and final twist, despite being foreshadowed, is enjoyably surprising when it's finally confirmed and leaves me wanting to know where the story goes next.

Self-publishing and virtual brown paper bags

Quote of the week via Rachel Manija Brown's piece on self-publishing over on Charlie Stross' blog:

A number of writers are doing quite well selling short erotic stories for between 99 cents and $2.99. The latter may seem outrageous if you think of it as the price of a short story. It's less so if you think of it as the price of an orgasm.

The whole article is a really interesting read, not least because it explains the subtle dance authors have to carry out when putting up their self-published porn in order to ensure that interested readers can find something that matches their precise tastes without using any forbidden terms on the cover material:

Marketing on Amazon is done largely by inputting keywords when uploading your book. Keywords and phrases are search terms readers use. For instance, "gay young adult novel" or "strong female characters" or "zombie steampunk." In erotica, you can use the real terms in keywords even if they're banned from blurbs. So if you go to Amazon and type in the banned word "orgy," you'll get books that used that as a keyword but have discreet titles like The Arrangement. (Or less discreet titles that at least don't include "orgy.")

Amazon is aware of this, of course. It seems that they're less interested in outright banning all erotica than in banning certain types and in keeping a virtual brown paper wrapper over graphic language visible in the storefront.

Call me as out of touch as a high court judge, but I had no idea dinosaur erotica was a thing until I read about it in a Guardian books post and now I know, I'm not sure whether it is something I wish my wife or my servants to read or not...

Epic afternoon of climbing stuff

Epic day of climbing, starting with a bunch of top-rope with M. Following a fortifying pause for tea and cake, I carried on lone-wolfing it with a bunch of bouldering and auto-belays until E arrived. Eventually losing interest in the 40 degree board, G took pity on me and we climbed a handful of lead routes on the prow.

Apart from poor clipping technique on the first few routes — my off-hand clips were pretty rubbish, largely due to a lack of practice — I breezed up most of the routes, including things I'd previously tried and bottled, and generally really enjoyed myself in a way I haven't done for a while. G pointed out that everything was good when I was relaxed; that when I knew I had to make a quick clip I was smooth and precise and it was only when I had time to pause and think that I messed things up; and also that I flashed everything I tried — I went as far 6a+ — giving the impression that everything was under control and I was well within my capabilities. Which is impressive considering I was four hours into an unexpectedly mammoth session.

G, master that he is, breezed up everything, making it look smooth and easy. It took a while to get used to his trick of clipping two quickdraws from the same position — which, as he says, makes sense if you can reach both points from the same place because it expends less energy and means you can make do with one good position rather than having to search for two — but it was a fun end to really good afternoon...

ETA: I really paid for this on Monday, spending the whole day in a state of tired, uselessness. I spent a solid hour trying to debug hostbased authentication before I realised that I'd disabled it in my own secure shell configuration file and that was why it wasn't working...