Kéthani by Eric Brown
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction, Eric Brown at 18:00 on 23 February 2010
Solaris, 2008, 294p
The usual caveat applies to this review.
Despite having the outward appearance of a novel this book is in fact a fix-up, stringing together a series of shorter pieces which Brown has published in various magazines or anthologies over the years along with one original story. In addition there is an introductory prelude, shorter “interludes” to link the stories, and a coda; all written for this publication. Despite the potential scope the stories are without exception located in and around a small town in West Yorkshire which Brown calls Oxenworth.
The enigmatic aliens of the title have appeared suddenly, offering to restore the dead to life – either to come back to Earth or to help in populating the galaxy. An implant under the skin of the temple starts its mysterious work when its bearer dies. The uncorrupting bodies are then ferried to the nearest Onward Station for their essence to be beamed off-planet for the process to be carried out. Returnees come back six months later, subtly changed, to carry on with their interrupted lives or to say farewell to friends and family before departing to the stars on Kéthani business.
There is something about the Onward Stations that is reminiscent of the tower which featured in Brown’s collection The Fall Of Tartarus – see link above – and also recalls a similar structure in Brown’s early novel Meridian Days.
The Brown tendency to feature religion is again to the fore, this time mixed with those perennial literary issues of love and death as the author works through the many responses humanity brings to the aliens’ gift. A new focus, here, is on the vagaries of married life and the joys of fatherhood. An uncommon (or should that be common?) touch is the frequent mention in the earlier segments of Leeds United Football Club.
Curiously it always seems to be snowing in Brown’s West Yorkshire. Did the Kéthani bring a change of weather with them?
There is a huge erratum on page 59 of my edition, covering two lines of text. I had to read the paragraph containing it several times in order to get the full sense. Other typos were few in number. I mention this only because such things are avoidable.
The stories, despite the inevitable repetitions entailed in their initially disparate origins, do add up to a coherent, if disjointed, narrative, though on occasion they can feel a little rushed. (This could be explained if Brown had a strict word count to adhere to for their original publications.) Despite having different narrators most adopt a similar tone. All are eminently readable.
Throughout there is the nagging doubt about the nature of the Kéthani’s motives. Brown never fully resolves this issue – though the last segment comes close. A US author would certainly have taken the idea in a completely different direction to Brown and I was reminded a little of Murray Leinster’s The Greks Bring Gifts (whose title is a nice play on “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”) a novel of which Brown may be unaware.
The inherent difficulty with a scenario such as this is how do you portray the returnees as different from the characters they were before resurrection? Brown does not quite bring this off, not helped by having the narrator of the interludes die partway through the book – though appearing in later segments as a returnee. Force majeure, perhaps, in that that segment may have been written early in the sequence and Brown was stuck with it.
As a working-out of what it might mean for humanity if death were to have no dominion, however, the lassitude and ennui that may ensue, the new goals that would need to be sought, Kéthani is a worthy achievement.
