The loudest movie never made
One of the things that’s weird for a first-time author is to have people you’ve never even MET saying stuff about your book. Some throw rocks. Some throw roses. But every once in a while someone says something so totally on-point you feel like that they’ve read your mind. And understood exactly what you were trying to do.
Such a man is Dave Hutchinson, one of the illustrious editors of the Strange Pleasures anthologies (which are well worth checking out). On his blog, Dave writes that “if [THE MIRRORED HEAVENS] was a film it would be the loudest ever made, and it would make the most kinetic of Michael Bay’s movies look like Merchant-Ivory productions.” Be still my beating heart . . . nor does he stop there, going on to commend the book as having “a body-count that makes Neal Asher’s bloodiest book (and I’m an Asher fan) look like an average Saturday night out in Newcastle.”
Which is the single best soundbite yet.
He #$# rules.
Of course, he then accuses me of all sorts of serious stuff too:
While this is thick-ear stuff dialed up to eleven, Williams is also asking pertinent questions about memory, espionage, loyalty, the use of weapons, possibly even what it means to be human. The prose is…unsettling. Choppy. Terse. Stripped-down. A little unusual in places. The dialogue is off-kilter and occasionally very funny. The geopolitical background is nicely thought-out. There’s a point where several rugs are pulled out from under the reader which I didn’t see coming. It is enormously fucking complicated, and I lost track of who was screwing whom, and I’m going to have to read it again to get it straight in my head, which will not be a trial. I finished The Mirrored Heavens and came out blinking into the sunlight slightly stunned. I found myself comparing it to Neal’s stuff, but really this is a different kind of horse. I can see this not being to everyone’s taste, but I liked it a lot.
And I can die now. My life is complete. If any artsy girls with dyed red hair are out there wearing powered armor, feel free to come on over and zap me.
Tags: books, future of war, Mirrored Heavens, novel, science fiction, scifi, SF, weaponisation of space, Weaponization of space
June 30th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Cor, my first ever published review.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Awesome dude! I’m enjoying it as well so far!
Forever forward!
-Zak!
June 30th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Of course, now you’ve posted a link to my blog people will click on it and all they’ll find me doing is posting LOLcats…
July 1st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
@ Dave: nothing wrong with LOLcats! (and thanks again!)
@ Zak: right on, brother . . . keep me posted. . .
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Hey David, finally managed to end the novel and post a review at Amazon.com. I’ll post a copy below:
There’s a lot to be said about this book, and most of it is even good.
Basically from the first page of the story, it takes you on a rollercoaster ride with half a dozen characters that is so full of twists and turns that keeping track of what is actually happening becomes a task of its own after one’s halfway through the novel. The action is unforgiving and direct, with the battle raging through the streets of bleak concrete molochs, the emptyness of space, the grey wastes of the moon and the depths of cyberspace. The writing style immerses the reader directly into the action after a short while. It’s a tale about a looming world war, about idealism and about the uncertainty of identity in a future where mind and technology can interfere with each other very easily.
The picture David paints of the future is deeply dystopian, with the world locked in a cycle of inner and outer conflict, with a completely collapsing ecosphere and a society where a life’s worth less than even in ancient Rome. It’s a world that’s been completely thrown off balance, a world in which sometimes your own side is far more dangerous to you than your supposed enemies might be.
The technology shown in “The Mirrored Heavens” is not too far out there. Whether we will truly be that advanced with regards to neuro-interfaces and cyberspace by that time is up for speculation, but at least the space technology and weapons systems shown already exists in their basics today.
The novel is a great one – once you’ve adapted to the writing style. Usually I’m not fan of first person present tense writing, but with this novel it works rather well. There’s also a certain degree of ambivalence in me with regards to the dystopian setting. I’m no optimist, but I think that most political systems primarily strive to achieve internal order. Thus, while the setting works well for the novel, I’m no great friend of it. Moreso, the very literal mindf*** that nowadays cyberpunks presents us with is, well, positively disturbing. If one has ever seen Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, he know’s what I’m talking about.
My last point of critcism is that the actual information you get about the world is rather thinlayered. I understand that the novel focusses on the plot, but there is hardly said more than a) there are the Eurasians, and they have different factions; b) there is the USA and within it different factions intriguing against each other for influence on “The Throne”; c) and there are Combines and the Euromagnates, on which basically nothing substantial at all is said. I’m an avid fluff-reader, digging through pages of explanations is a good read to me, so that disappointed me somewhat.
All in all I’d call “The Mirrored Heavens” a solid and action-packed work and definately a great first novel of David Williams. Maybe the world it plays in will be elaborated on in possible sequels.
regards,
Wired
July 6th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hey Wired- Thanks a ton for this, and for posting it on Amazon as well. I’m glad you enjoyed it (though with regards to the writing style, I think you mean third person present rather than first?) . . . and with regards to the Eurasians, rest assured, we’ll see more of those guys in the sequel. Stay tuned . . and stay in touch . . .
D
July 6th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Ah, yeah, got that about the perspective wrong. Will correct that in the review asap.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
great reviews on amazon, congarats-Dave.
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