Titan Books, 2025, 288 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Ever since something known as the weatherbomb hit it, cutting it off from its past and erasing some of its inhabitants, Jamie Pike’s Fairharbour has been a city enveloped in everlasting winter. All contact between its island and the mainland has been severed, any expeditions sent out over the frozen wastes of the sea never heard from again. Black-clad officers called Doormen patrol the streets enforcing order, sealing entrances and windows to keep heat inside buildings. Jamie spends a lot of his time tinkering in the workshop of his vanished uncle by marriage, Pawel, a mechanical whizz, and watching what remains of the work of his grandmother Carmen, a famous film-maker.

By contrast, after the weatherbomb, Esther Pike has lived in a Fairharbour bathed in perpetual summer, with sunlight a relentless presence. In her Fairharbour too, an authoritarian regime, The Fenestration, exerts power, forever cutting holes in the walls of buildings. She, too, strains against the restricted life of her city.

With this premise of a city with a doubled character, City of All Seasons has a superficial similarity to China Miéville’s The City and the City but is in the end much more interesting than his novel (which was really only a murder mystery with an unusual setting.)

Both Jamie and Esther wonder what has become of the other and of their lost family members but both have encounters with the city’s mayor, a curious apparition always dressed in a diving suit yet who seems to be able to bridge the divide between the two manifestations of the sundered city. Their two stories are told in strictly alternating first person narratives as their interconnections begin to mount.

One of those connections lies via an atypical Tarot deck, three of whose cards are involved in the exchanges between the winter and summer city. Illustrations of those, The Two of Fish, The Stage, and the Nine of Smiles, preface three of the book’s four sections.

To plot, though. Jamie catches a glimpse of greenery and begins to wonder if there is another existence just out of reach. He constructs a kaleidoscope from some glass fragments, wing mirrors and a tube, and leaves it where he hopes it might be found by Esther.

The story delves into Jamie and Esther’s past lives and of their family before the split (crucially their uncles Jan and Remi were forever unable to share) while also gradually revealing the lore and customs of the city. In this, the tale of the city’s emblem, the smiling knight, assumes significant importance. In an old interview with Carmen she told of this as her inspiration for an intended film about a man who uses his death for the benefit of the city and prophesies, “‘When I die; it will be spectacular.’”

Also prophetic are a suit worn by her, black on one side, white on the other, slashed diagonally from right collarbone to left ribcage, and a two-handed saw made by Pawel. All of this comes together in the city’s Lavender Theatre, the source of the divide.

Though there is a slight imbalance between the two strands Langmead and Whiteley let their tale unfold at just the right pace, the similarities and differences between the situations of Jamie and Esther counterpointing and emphasising each other, the influence of their extended family to the past and future gradually becoming clearer in this well-written and characterful novel elegantly resolved.

One final note. Very few fantasy novels have as a plot point the construction and subsequent playing of a glass harmonica. A pleasing touch.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  “the orchestral pit” (usually ‘the orchestra pit’,) “to keep him a state of permanent uncertainty” (to keep him in a state of,) “crow’s feet” (crows’ feet,) “but Fairharbour’s artist population were never meant to” (Fairharbour’s artist population was never meant to.) Descendent (Descendant,) Esther has dyslexia [“the alphabet still runs away, even now”] but she is narrating half of this story with no apparent difficulty. “Hardly a shard of its enormous windows remain” (Hardly a shard … remains,) “one less eyesore” (one fewer eyesore,) “none of the Fenestration guards … have spotted” (none … has spotted,) “with nine people stood upon it” (standing upon it; there were more instances of ‘stood’ for ‘standing’,) a single opening quote mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech; all other such marks are double. “The fishing fleet are out already” (The fishing fleet is out.)  “The crowd of Doormen part around him” (The crowd … parts around him,) “golden candelabras” (candelabra is already plural,) a new sentence without an initial capital letter, focussed (focused – used later,) “at the far end of the lawn were a large group” (was a large group,) “I dove” (I dived,) “-together, intense,” (- together, intense,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “It lays open on the wooden bench” (It lies open.) “The rippling of all the droplets dripping from the ceiling distort it” (The rippling …. distorts it,) “at the peripheral of the city” (at the periphery.) “They put her hands to her throat” (‘They put their hands to her throat’ makes more sense,) “they sweat” (‘the sweat,) “untameable enormity” (it wasn’t a terrible thing, just a large one; so ‘untameable size’ or ‘untameable extent’,) fit (fitted.)

Or at least it ought to be.

The publication date was yesterday.

I’ve not accessed my copy yet but this one should contain my reviews of:-

City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley

The History of the World by Simon Morden

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Those reviews will appear here in due course.

Recently arrived from ParSec magazine and now on my sidebar, a new book to read and review; to wit City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley.

I haven’t read any Langmead up till now but have read a couple of Whiteley’s books. She writes well.

The deadline for ParSec 14 is probably a bit too imminent for the review to make that issue but there will be ParSec 15 to come.

I even missed the announcement of nominees this year.

The winner was Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles.

The other nominees were:-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
A River Called Time by Courttia Newland
Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley – I have actually read this.
Wergen: The Alien Love War by Mercurio D Rivera

This is the first such BSFA booklet to contain nominations for the Best Book for Younger Readers. The extracts seem to be mostly first chapters from the nominees. I didn’t read any of those since I doubt I’ll ever go on to read the whole book for any of them. I may get round to some of the Best Novel contenders – already have done so for Aliya Whiteley’s Skyward Inn – but probably not all.

As to the Best Shorter Fiction we have:

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard¹
Thanh is the daughter of the Queen of Bình Håi, but had spent time in the overseas country of Ephteria effectively as a hostage. Strange instances of small fires plague her. She is assisting her mother at a trade meeting with representatives of Ephteria when she is surprised by one of the delegates, Princess Eldris, and even more surprised when Eldris reveals she wishes to rekindle the affair they had had in Ephteria. This ends inconclusively, as if it were an extract from a longer piece – but it isn’t labelled as an extract.

Light Chaser by Peter F Hamilton and Gareth Powell²
This too ends inconclusively. Perhaps they’re all extracts. Interstellar legend Amahle the Light Chaser travels the Domain at near light speed on a cycle through the worlds. The story begins with her deliberately crashing her ship the Mnemosyne into a red giant to create a quark star before moving into a scene from one of her trading visits.

O₂ Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki³
For some reason this story is preceded by a “Content Warning; Cancer, Death or dying, Sexual assault, Terminal Illness, Violence.” Leaving aside the fact that these could be said to apply to just about all modern Science Fiction at least one of them isn’t true. There is no sexual assault described in the story. Sexual harassment and requests/demands for sexual favours in return for good exam grades are imputed by two of the characters as applying to another (minor) one but no actual assault occurs in the narrative. (The other warnings stand.)

But to the business of the story (which does have an ending.)
Global warming has killed off phytoplankton. Oxygen is so scarce it is rationed by cost. Currency is by means of O₂ credits. Our narrator has gone through University but is now at a strict law school so as to get the best job possible to earn credits. (The school is riddled with sexism and favour-seeking lecturers.) His friend Ovuke is also a student but is dying of ovarian cancer and her family is running out of money, leading the narrator to resort to desperate measures to get some. The story here is fine but its execution is marred by excessive info dumping and unnecessary insertion of acronyms.

Things Can Only Get Better by Fiona Moore⁴ also comes to an ending. It is one of those light-touch would-be humorous tales that can be extremely irritating if they don’t work. Moore just about gets away with it. Our narrator is an autologist called in by the police to investigate a case of illegal gambling in a syndicate centred on the hospital where she used to work. This is in a future where people and machine intelligences (Things) both work on the wards.

I also read the bits from the non-fiction works. These are mostly precis/preambles to the full work. How anyone can choose between such diverse works which is the best is a moot point.

The winners were announced here.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹“sharp inhale of breath” (inhalation,) vermillion (x 2, vermilion,) “laying low” (lying low,) “that room Giang falling to her knees” (needs a comma between room and Giang,) unneeded paragraph indentations and line breaks. ²“was very different beast” (was a very different beast,) stranglet (later ‘strangelet’,) relatavistically (relativistically.) ³ “Not that the air there was any better there” (has one ‘there’ too many,) “letting her lay back” (lie back.) ⁴ “even if the only things to which that description could be implied was to Wills and me” (were to Wills and me,) no full stop at the story’s end.

Flipped Eye, 2021, 252 p.

Skyward Inn lies towards the edge of the Western Protectorate with a view over the Bristol Channel to Swansea from where the rocket ships rise from the Kissing Gate to make their way into space. The Kissing Gate was discovered fifty years before the events in the novel. The Coalition used it to travel to Qita, but the Western Protectorate disagreed with this action, and with the use of technology inside people’s heads, and so separated themselves from the rest of the world. The Coaliton’s take-over of Qita was complete but odd, as there was little resistance. “Why just move over and let us take it? No battle. No military. Not one voice raised – at least, not theirs.”

Jemima had in the past left her son, Fosse, to travel to Qita where an implant called Coach “bound us altogether in our heads” but now, in the inn, she dispenses Jarrowbrew, which her Qitan partner Isley, (with whom it is not possible for her to have a physical relationship,) prepares in the basement. Fosse has become something of a loner, who seeks solace among the buildings of an abandoned farm.

One day another Qitan, Won, turns up having travelled to Earth alone, but her suit needs a replacement device without which it will not restart. In an attempted bargain with a band of smugglers Jem and Isley lose the Jarrowbrew they had brought as payment for the device and nearly their lives. Meanwhile Fosse has been disturbed at the farm by three incomers who say they are taking it over. After an odd confrontation with the three where their flesh appears to meld together Fosse kills the man and flees to Swansea and takes the Kissing Gate to Qita.

So far, so SF, so good.

But things get stranger. Soil in the local graveyard begins to liquefy and the contagion spreads. Isley and Won get closer – literally. Fosse is taken on a cross-Qitan journey by a local during which he encounters its oddness. Through bodily contact with Isley, Jem is able to access Fosse’s mind but the Inn’s basement is soon filled with locals joining with Isley and Fosse (again literally) at which point SF ceases and we are in fantasy territory. The true nature of Jarrowbrew is revealed. It seems that Qita may not have been conquered after all but is taking revenge of sorts.

As a wordsmith and portrayer of character Whiteley is absolutely fine and presumably the way she takes her story is where she wanted it to go. But the journey, a little like Fosse’s on Qita, takes on an aspect which strays too far from the entirely believable. Sf/fantasy crossovers have a long history in the linked genre (A Voyage to Arcturus springs to mind) but in Skyward Inn I thought the two did not gel at all comfortably.

Pedant’s corner:- “neither of us move” (neither of us moves,) “they were not been welcoming to him” (‘being welcoming to him’ makes more sense,) Klaus’ (x2, Klaus’s.) “at he found he wanted the axe again” (‘and he found he wanted the axe again,) “their shoulder hunched” (shoulders, surely?) a missing full stop, Fosse (x 2, when Isley was meant.) “Every customer forces their laughs and drinks too fast and none of them want to say why” (wants,) “the questions he had been asked about it by his workmates was one of the reasons why he’d kept to himself” (questions is plural so needs were as its verb [though I can see why it would sit awkwardly with ‘one of the reasons’.) “He would not be charge after all.” (in charge?) “when Fosse looked up from the task from negotiating path” (task of negotiating a path.) “‘Let get on it.’” (‘Let’s get on it’.) “He glances at my hands at the sleeve pulled low” (sleeves,) “mowed grass” (mown grass,) “facing him with it arms raised” (its arms,) “to bomb the entire of the Protectorate” (yes it was in dialogue but ‘entire’ should still have been ‘entirety’,) miniscule (minuscule,) “and her saw her hand” (and he saw her hand.)

Titan Books, 2019, p. Published in Interzone 285, Jan-Feb 2020.

As readers of Interzone already know, Whitley writes impressively. Here she takes a modern domestic setting and gradually blends it with strange happenings and figures from Ancient Greek myth to make a tale that is always readable and looks at sexual politics from an oblique angle.

On the day she receives an invitation from a dead woman, Marianne Spence has an encounter with a pervert at closing time at the library where she works in Wootton Bassett. The incident prompts Marianne to accept that invitation to the Skein Island of this novel’s title; a retreat for women only, set up after the Second World War by the adventurer Lady Amelia Worthington. The only requirement for beneficiaries is to make a written Declaration of their reasons for visiting, to be kept in the island’s library. Marianne’s mother Vanessa had herself gone to the island seventeen years before – and never returned; prompting Marianne’s father, Arnie, himself to retreat, into moroseness, spending his evenings at The Cornerhouse, a pub with a dubious reputation – and odd goings on in its back room. The ramifications of Marianne’s decision rumble through the novel as husband Dave takes to lying in wait for the pervert to prevent him offending again. Here his path crosses that of Police Community Support Officer, Samantha, who also hopes to catch the offender. The narrative is delivered in two strands which for the most part alternate; a present tense first person chronicle from Marianne’s viewpoint and a third person past tense account focusing on Dave.

Threaded through the initial stages of the novel is the appearance in the narrative of either squares or cubes coloured red, blue, yellow and green and an emphasis on a quote from Homer’s Odyssey, “Each man delights in the work that suits him best.”

The dead woman is a bit of a tease on Whiteley’s part as the invitation was not in fact written by her but by Marianne’s mother to whom Lady Amelia bequeathed the operation on Skein Island. Vanessa tells her the cubes represent the four types of men in the world, heroes, villains, sidekicks and wise men, corresponding to the four colours. In the library Marianne reads Lady Amelia’s Declaration in which she described looking for the Throne of Zeus in a cave on Crete and instead found a monstrosity which caused her male companions to rip each other to pieces. Amelia tamed it by telling it her life story, turning it into a statue which she took back to the island and locked underground to keep it away from men, naming it Moira after the Greek fates. Its appetite for the stories which bind it is fed by reading the Declarations to it. Marianne encounters Moira in the basement and recognises its strangeness. Her roommates remain unconvinced, but the possibility it was all illusion is not supported by the rest of the narrative. Things go awry when in his attempts to find Marianne, Dave finally gets to the island and his presence there leads to a demolition and Moira’s disappearance.

Thereafter, in the wider world, men’s behaviour, already somewhat overbearing, changes; their tendencies towards being heroes, villains, sidekicks and wise men, to “protect” women, becoming exaggerated. Marianne reasons that Moira’s constraint seems to be necessary for equable relations between the sexes so Marianne’s task becomes to find Moira and restore “her” to captivity on the island.

On the face of it Skein Island has an explicitly feminist perspective but Marianne’s thought that Moira’s existence means men are meant to be more important than women sits oddly with that. However, “When a hero walks into a story, he doesn’t do as he’s told,” is an entirely consistent proposition. In this context the relationship between Dave and policewoman Samantha also struck a discordant note.

As to Moira: it may be a rather well-worn trope but for supernatural beings to exert influence on human behaviour is a problematic feature of a fantasy since that automatically removes agency – and responsibility – from its characters. Characters’ behaviours should not be exculpated in this way. They can also be perceived as dancing too much to the author’s tune rather than behaving as if independently.

I should add that, completely unheralded, either in the blurb or the title page, and taking up 35 pages here, is the inclusion in the book of a novelette, The Cold Smoke Declaration, a ghost story partly set on Skein Island. Value for money then.

The following did not appear in the published review.
Pedant’s corner:-“the physical cracks that lead to emotional ones” (context suggests ‘led’ rather than ‘lead’,) zipper (zip,) “to not have to field questions,” (not to have to; many instances of ‘to not’ rather than ‘not to’,) “a chemical brand that irritates my nostrils” (this is of a washing powder, what does Whiteley think any other brands of washing powder contain apart from chemicals? The phrase ‘chemical free’ is a nonsense.) “There are a number of caves in Crete” (strictly, there is a number,) Zeus’ (Zeus’s,) sunk (sank,) fit (fitted – used on the next line!) smoothes (smooths,) “the eldest girl had thrown back her shoulders and sang to the vaulted ceiling” (that ‘had’ carries on so the next verb ought to be ‘sung’,) “it would be impossible to spit it into sentences” (split, I think,) “exclamation points” (exclamation marks,) “the lay of the island” (it wasn’t a tune; lie of the island.) In the novelette, “a strong draft” (draught.)

The latest Interzone (no 285, Jan – Feb 2020) popped onto my doormat this morning.

As well as the usual fiction and features this one contains my reviews of Aliya Whiteley’s Skein Island and Ian McDonald’s The Menace From Farside.

I am expecting a couple of books for review in Interzone 286 through the post any day now.

Interzone 284 has arrived. This issue contains my reviews of Automatic Eve by Rokuro Inui and of the short story collection Incomplete Solutions by Wole Talabi.

My next review for the mag will be of Skein Island by Aliya Whiteley, which came today. Ms Whiteley has had several stories in Interzone over the past few years and took over the mantle of SF/writing columnist in Interzone when Nina Allan gave that up.

Sep-Oct, 2018. TTA Press

In her guest editorial Aliya Whiteley wonders who owns a story as influences can colour story telling as if by osmosis. Andy Hedgecock’s Future Interrupted notes a new approach to doorbell ringing by those under 25 in his consideration of the changes wrought by the internet and the false sense of agency fostered by advertisers and data brokers. Nina Allan’s last Time Pieces muses on what a difference four years can make, in politics, in Doctor Who, in the inclusiveness of SF as a whole. In Book Zone^a Duncan Lawie welcomes the wide perspective in the anthology Twelve Tomorrows edited by Wade Roush, Ian Sales appreciates Hannu Rajaniemi’s latest novel Summerland despite its lack of SF bells and whistles but is slightly more critical of Liminal by Bee Lewis, I wax lyrical over Francesco Dimitri’s The Book of Hidden Things but less so with Supercute Futures by Martin Millar, John Howard approves of the anthology Infinity’s End edited by Jonathan Strahan, Andy Hedgecock describes Literature^® by Guillermo Stitch as a promising debut and Julie C Day’s first collection Uncommon Miracles (can there be common miracles?) as not merely promising but astonishing while Stephen Theaker enjoyed Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s Secret Passages in a Hillside Town.

In the fiction:-
Inscribed on Dark Waters by Gregor Hartmann has a student on a work experience programme on an ocean world at a factory producing liquid hydrocarbons biochemically being befriended by an inspector who has her own agenda. The student has an idea to improve the processing.
The Sea-Maker of Diarmid Bay¹ by Shauna O’Meara is another sea-based tale. Four boys on a fishing expedition on a global-warmed, polluted planet come across a mythical creature, a sea-maker.
The narrator of Joanna Berry’s The Analogue of Empathy² is a robot, a Cognitive Intelligence Personhood Emulating Robot to be precise. Doctor Harris is developing its – her – consciousness in an attempt to save humanity from itself. Since its structure, form and feel so closely resemble Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon I would be amazed if this story did not take its inspiration from that source.
Territory: Blank³ by Aliya Whiteley is a journal based story but the entries are presented to us out of order. Narrator Saffron enters one of the domes; simulated environments designed as entertainment for the masses. Either she goes mad or the domes generate inimical entities by themselves. The third explanation – that Saffron is the experimental subject – is vitiated by the manner of her second dome excursion.
Samantha Murray’s Singles’ Day⁴ – Singles’ Day is like Black Friday but only for the partnerless – is a multi-viewpoint tale of four winners of a Singles’ Day lottery (via Smile to Pay) for passage aboard a starship intended to travel through The Rift to the planet of Zorya to escape an overcrowded Earth. The story does not need the info-dump of its preamble.

Pedant’s corner:- ^aStokes’ (Stokes’s,) one book title is given as Infintiy’s End (the book’s cover has Infinity’s End,) Watts’ (Watts’s,) Dickens’ (Dickens’s,) “reflections on these parallel projects show remind us” (either show or remind, not both.)
¹a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, vortexes (vortices,) miniscule (minuscule.) ²Harris’ (Harris’s,) terphthalate (terephthalate,) chassis’ (chassis’s.) ³“Each has their own way” (Each has its own way,) maw (it’s a stomach! Not a mouth.) ⁴“to not live,” “to not be,” (not to live, not to be,) “there were even a couple of birds” (there was even a couple,) fit (fitted.) “The latest crop were blooming” (the latest crop was blooming,) wracked with pain” (racked.) “The team of seven photographers were” (the team was.)