Head of Zeus, 2021, 413 p. Reviewed for ParSec 3.

One of the pleasures of the Alternative History tale is encountering real historical figures in a different context or circumstances, seeing how the author has woven them into the story, perhaps shedding a new light on what happened in our timeline. If judged by this criterion Absynthe fails to deliver. The setting is the US in 1928, ten years after a Great War ended, but despite mentions of everyday things that you might expect – wireless, airships, biplanes, Art Deco buildings and interiors, even horse-drawn cabs – the only familiar (to the reader) historical luminary alluded to in the text is Charlie Chaplin, whom one of the characters says has a new film coming out. In Absynthe all of the important (and all the bystanding) characters are entirely fictional.

Not that it matters, for this is a much transformed US. The capital has been renamed Novo Solis, the President is one Leland De Pere, a former soldier in that Great War, which was fought against the St Lawrence Pact, a somewhat unlikely combination of Germany, Canada, Britain and France. It is a US so altered that Bellecourt’s story could have been set in a completely imaginary country (or indeed on an imaginary planet) without making any difference to it.

Viewpoint character Liam Mulcahey is a veteran of the war whose memory of it is exceedingly patchy. In the course of the book we find that during his service he was a member of an elite squad known as the Devil’s Henchmen who had been given an experimental drug that meant they each saw, heard and felt what every other member of the squad did. De Pere and his enforcer side-kick Leo Kohler were officers in the Henchmen.

Bellecourt starts his tale at the inaugural journey of a high-speed flashtrain designed by the company owned by the parents of Liam’s friend Morgan Aysana, where the President is due to give a speech. During the ceremony we gain a first glimpse of weird when Liam witnesses a man entering one of the train’s carriages not through a door but through its side panelling. An ensuing kerfuffle, subsequently blamed on a revolutionary group known as The Uprising, leads Liam into the presence of Kohler and De Pere. On discussing the incident with the President, Liam finds his memories of it being altered, ending up feeling as if nothing untoward had happened. This is only the first instance of many in the book where the power to generate and maintain illusions tips the story over into Fantasy rather than SF.

In a subsequent meeting with agents of the Uprising Liam learns of the influence on De Pere of a shadowy group of powerful forces (somewhat disappointingly made up of the usual suspects of the elite and the media and given the rather mundane appellation of the Cabal) whose operations soon plague Liam and his companions. The novel sees the gradual recovering of Liam’s memories, which are accompanied by those of project instigator Dr Colette Silva, who utilised the properties of a bacterium named Echobacterum sentensis to blend the Henchmen’s consciousnesses. These memories reveal why the Henchmen’s memories were conveniently ‘lost’ at the end of the war as well as what subsequently became of Dr Silva. Meanwhile The Cabal as an enemy is supplanted by the revelation of the emergence of a superarching consciousness known as Echo.

The world portrayed here contains an odd mixture of technology – triplanes and those horse-drawn cabs but also more advanced stuff such as the armoured body suits called hoppers that the Devil’s Henchmen fought the war in, the corresponding goliaths of the St Lawrence Pact, those flashtrains, and war casualties whose damaged bodies have been augmented by what read like steam-powered prosthetics, which include lungs. Bellecourt uses the terms mechanika and mechanikal to describe these. Medical and psychological terminology in the text postdates that of the real 1920s. Also deviating from our 1920s is the degree of agency and autonomy the female characters have. Though Dr Silva remembers some prejudice against her during her researches, the treatment of women by the author and his characters is as if they are our contemporaries. (That is of course not a bad thing in itself but it does detract from any sense of historicity.)

Sadly the text at times also resorts to cliché (a veritable flock, the frequent use of ‘very’ to emphasise a noun, ‘miracle of miracles,’) or unwarranted archaisms, (he knew not why,) and contains a large amount of obtrusive information dumping. The absinthe of the (again oddly spelled) title does appear – if only twice – but plays no material part in the plot. Absynthe is perhaps not one for purists but if your readerly tipple tends towards towards action adventure with a hint of mystery and laced with body-count, this could be for you.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later” count: when it got to over forty I stopped taking note. Bonus points for ‘not all was as it seemed.’ Otherwise; “where a line of long-nosed limousines were letting out the VIPs” (where a line … was letting out,) bi-planes (biplanes,) “when the crowd shifted their attention” (its attention,) “the sort of smile serviceman shared only with one another” (servicemen,) “a creature out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars novel” (no need for that possessive ‘s’; so, ‘an Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novel’,) “a lanky banker with dirty blond hair and offset eyes named Charlie” (his eyes were named Charlie?) “a rendition of “Whiskey in the Jar”” (I was told in the early 1970s by a folk purist that that song’s title ought to be “The Cork and Kerry Mountains”.) “He shined the flashlight” (shone,) “they’d resolved themselves to staying away” (‘resolved’ is an odd choice of verb; ‘resigned themselves’ is a more familiar phrase – or else remove the ‘themselves’ and make it ‘resolved to stay away’,) “the only evidence that … were” (the only evidence … was,) bacteria (is plural. Bellecourt treats it as singular.) “’What in Samuel Hill?’” (is missing a comma, ‘What, in Samuel Hill?’,) “the team of doctors were there” (the team … was there,) “for all intents and purposes” (to all intents and purposes.) “’Then lay with me’” (OK, it was in dialogue, but it’s ‘lie with me’,) sunk (x 2, sank.) “Behind the officers … were a bunch of suits” (Behind … was a bunch of,) restauranteurs (that word has no ‘n’, it’s spelled – and pronounced – restaurateurs,) “’be ready tell me’” (‘be ready to tell me’,) outshined (outshone.) “‘And who’s fault is that?’” (whose,) “‘you’ve got another thing coming’” (x 2, ‘another think coming’,) “there were signs of their troops and tanks amassing along the Canadian border” (the usual military terminology is of troops ‘massing’,) “mounted to its front face were a series of gauges and dials” (mounted to its front face was a series of gauges and dials,) the name ‘Clay’ italicised at one point for no reason. “Rarely did Alastair acted surprised” (Rarely did Alastair act surprised,) “wracked with guilt” (x 2, racked with guilt,) “while other others confused the mechanika’s operators,) (no need for the ‘other’,) Reyes’ (Reyes’s,) “the crowd of thralls were focusing” (the crowd … was focusing,) “was something like out of a penny dreadful” (was like something out of,) “as if she was convince she was dead” (convinced,) “he’d been so confident when he’d began” (either ‘when he began’, or, ‘when he’d begun’,) undefinable (the sense was of indefinable,) “would no more than fall into a rhythm than Grace would change things” (‘would no sooner fall into a rhythm than Grace would change things’.) “’They’re going kill you’” (going to kill you,) “echo” (x 1, an entity otherwise named Echo,) shrunk (shrank.)

You may have noticed on my sidebar that I am reading a book titled Absynthe by one Brendan P Bellecourt.

This is to be reveiwed for the online SF magazine ParSec.

Mr Bellecourt is an author new to me and Absynthe appears to be his first novel.

I was attracted to by the publisher’s blurb given to Parsec wherein it mentioned “a palace full of art-deco delights.”