A Son of the Rock

Windmill Books, 2012, 574 p (plus no fewer than 9 p of puffs before the publishing information page.)

Clockworker Joshua Joseph Spork, son of Matthew a now dead former denizen of the Night Market, by contrast likes to keep his head down and his nose clean. An old woman called Edie Banister with her one-toothed, marble-eyed dog; the Death Clock left to Spork by his father; a plague of mechanical bees; various varieties of heavies, governmental and not, all lead to him becoming active rather than passive. On the way we encounter a train called the Ada Lovelace, which is a kind of travelling Bletchley Park, an Asian fiefdom ruled by a ruthless would-be-god, not to mention the resourceful Polly Cradle, all wrapped up in a plot which revolves around an Apprehension Engine, “‘a device which would allow one to know the truth of a situation, without fear of error,’” aka Angelmaker as, “‘It makes angels out of men…. It makes the world better, just by being,’” but with the potential to make the world infinitely worse.

Any plot summary suffers the possibility of being thought bonkers but we are driven on throughout by an insistent present tense – in which even the flash-backs are couched – and the brio of the storytelling plus the incidental details render any tendency to disbelief otiose. (Polly Cradle’s bed is a memorable construction.) The Night Market has echoes of Hugo and the names of Arvin Cummerbund, Rodney Titwhistle, Frankie Fossoyeur and Vaughn Parry evoke Dickens but this is really sui generis.

The book is exquisitely written – and fantastic entertainment – but in the end not much more than entertainment. I was left with a slight sense of disappointment that it wasn’t more meaningful. Still, that would be greedy. As it is Edie Banister and Polly Cradle are wonderful creations. To have two such in the one book is a pleasure indeed. I shall look out for more Harkaway.

Pedant’s corner:- the work gang look like astronauts from another world (the work gang looks like,) medieval. “But he has no Scots lilt, just a pure English diction… (Scots don’t speak pure English????) Brits (was this designation in use in the 1940s?) “Having your own engine means no timetables, no delays” (yes, acknowledging that signals etc will have to be set to accommodate this,) twenty foot away (feet; please,) “a wild exultant creel of power” (a wild exultant “rack”, or “basket for fish”, of power?) Decent batter (of Don Bradman; the English – as opposed to USian – usage is batsman,) “‘even with the new bodyline’” (in the 1940s bodyline was well past new,) twinging (twingeing?) mischievious (why do people add that extraneous “i” into mischievous?) “none of these blessings place the Watsons in the clutches of the system” (none of these places the Watsons,) “the enemy knows they’re on the edge” (the enemy knows it’s on the edge,) surpresses (suppresses,) “X-rayed, MRI’d and electron microscoped” (I would prefer MRI-ed; there are no letters missing to warrant an apostrophe. Also, the first two techniques would delve into the depths of an object – the required goal here – but electron microscopy only reveals surface details,) oxidisation (the verb is oxidise but the noun is oxidation,) novagenarian (nonagenarian, I think,) “‘I think I may have over-egged the nitro and gone a bit heavy on the toluene’” (a good line but a touch inaccurate. The first of these is possible, though chemically difficult, but the second would have the opposite effect to the one implied,) “written in a European alphabet Joe doesn’t recognise” (? As far as I’m aware European alphabets are Roman, Cyrillic or Greek. Surely all three are recognisable?) a magnet … so that any metal will move the catch (not any metal: only iron – hence its alloy, steel – nickel and cobalt are magnetic.) “The fire service withdraw their operators” (withdraws its operators,) the wrecking crew strip the dead machines (the crew strips; on the previous page we had, correctly, the crew slips away,) veterbrae (vertebrae.) I liked “brook no denay.”