A Son of the Rock

Gollancz, 2006

After catching up with Grimwood’s early work I thought I’d read his latest. As progressively in the Arabesk trilogy and Stamping Butterflies, in End Of The World Blues the short staccato sentences of Grimwood’s really early books are (thankfully) gone. The prose here flows, the reading is consequently easier. This is the sign of an author totally in command of what he is doing. (But Grimwood still favours using sat as a participle. I wish he would kick that habit.)

Grimwood seems to like what are (for SF) unusual settings. In Arabesk and Stamping Butterflies he gave us North Africa and (some of) China. Here we get a bit of Japan, or at least Tokyo, before the action moves to London and then back. The violence in this one is noticeably less gratuitous than in the early books even though End Of The World Blues has plot up to its armpits.

Christopher Newton calls himself Kit Nouveau and has run away from his home and youthful indiscretions (not to mention any possible responsibilities) in Britain to live in Tokyo where he runs an Irish theme pub with his high-art-pottery-making Japanese wife. He also works part time as a teacher of English to local individuals, who include a gangster’s wife with whom he is having an affair. Kit’s pub is blown up and his wife dies. Then his old girl friend Kate’s mother turns up from Britain and tells him Kate has apparently committed suicide but her father doesn’t believe it and she asks Kit to find if Kate is still alive.

The above represents only a little of the convolutions of the plotting, but everything is clearly set out and there is no difficulty in keeping up with what’s going on.

Grimwood’s penchant for adolescent (or pre-adolescent) female characters is once more to the fore. Here she is Lady Neku, a smart street kid whom Kit occasionally buys coffee and who later follows him to London. Except Neku is also an aristocratic clone of a clone of a clone of a clone – from a rope world floating above Earth somewhen at the end of time.

However, despite being marketed as such – and winning the BSFA award for a novel in 2006 – this is not really a Science Fiction novel at all, but is instead at heart a thriller. None of the elements of the main story rely on any science fictional extrapolation whatever. The SF floating rope world elements seem tacked on and Neku could just as easily have been an ordinary Japanese cos-play, as she is in effect only a hook on which to hang the London end of the plot, though Grimwood takes care also to weave her into the Tokyo plot web. Moreover, it is the sections of the book set on the floating rope world that are the least convincing.

That said, the plot is gripping, the major – and minor – characters are all well drawn and their motivations are entirely believable. If you like tightly plotted thrillers with decent characterisation then check this one out.