Well, it finally arrived – the third and final volume of the ‘Book of Dust’ trilogy. Parts 1 and 2 are reviewed here. I was critical of the third book of the ‘Dark Materials’ trilogy (review here): would Pullman pull it off this time, I wondered? Well …

Story-telling is an important part of Lyra’s character and a pervasive theme in both series, so I assume it’s important to Pullman himself too. And like ‘Dark Materials’, this is a good story. There’s plenty of intrigue, action, fantastic creatures old and new (notably gryphons), a return of the witches, scheming, friendship and betrayal played out by some familiar and some new characters.

But I feel that if ‘The Rose Field’ and its two precursors were ever to be studied as part of an English Literature syllabus there would be many faults found. Some episodes covered in detail disappear like water in the sand and are never followed up; new characters enter the narrative, are described in detail and then dropped; some seemingly important concepts (‘good numbers’ and the disembodied voices who first mention them, for example) are referred to and discussed but never appear again. Of course it’s a story, a fantasy, and not everything has to be explained or resolved; after all, that is part of the world in which it is set. Mysteries are allowed! But I can’t help thinking that Pullman has indulged himself by bringing in some ideas that he finds intriguing, like quantum mechanics, number theory, or the strange ‘wandering lake’ of Lop Nor (a real thing), purely because he wants to write about them. Consequently the story sometimes loses focus, leaving the reader thinking “What was that all about?”, or “Why did we have all that stuff earlier?”

But despite all that, and repeating my views on ‘Dark Materials’, I think most readers will be carried along by the pace and excitement and not worry too much about these problems. It is after all a cracking good tale!

It’s just over ten years ago that I first read a full-length novel by Dave Hutchinson. It was the first in his ‘Fractured Europe’ series, and I’ve been a fan ever since: ‘The Essence’ is now the ninth I have read.

If I were to choose one word to describe to all these novels it would be ‘weird’. In some the weirdness is dialled up high with time-shifts, alternate realities and sci-fi technology. In others, including ‘The Essence’ , the weirdness creeps into the narrative almost by stealth. The story opens with its protagonist, Michael Brookes, in a hospital which

was not, strictly speaking, a hospital. It was more of a rest home for fuddled gentlefolk. It occupied a big house in several acres of grounds tucked away at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac on the edge of Mill Hill. (p7)

It turns out that the not-hospital is run by the security services: Michael, who worked as an economist in a fairly insignificant part of MI6, is there because he had some kind of extreme breakdown at work which seems to have ended with an office room being trashed, but Michael has no memory of what happened. The nice people in the hospital are doing their best to look after him, rehabilitate him and bring back his lost memory. So far so normal. The plot seems fairly familiar.

Michael makes steady progress. His medication is down to two different pills once a day. He’s allowed – encouraged – to make independent excursions first to the local shops, then further afield. At last he’s allowed to go home. He still feels mentally fragile, but they have given him a friendly social worker who visits every few days and he seems to be coping. He’s not back to work yet, but HR want to see him to discuss his work situation. He goes in, and surprisingly finds they want him to go to the Netherlands to find out why there’s been a problem between the British and Dutch intelligence services. He doesn’t feel he’s ready but it seems he’s the only person who can do this. Just a quick visit, out and back, one day. Two days at most.

And so the weirdness begins to build. An attempt to kidnap him is foiled, and he finds himself mixed up with a group of people – they call themselves ‘essenceheads’ – who believe there is some mysterious phenomenon which they call ‘The Essence’ which manifests seemingly at random and interferes with the known laws of physics.

No more spoilers; you must read the book for how this plays out. The action happens in the Netherlands and Poland, both of which Hutchinson knows well. As in his other novels there’s a good cast of characters to keep track of as the story unfolds, and it all moves at a good pace with plenty of action. While the final plot reveal may not come as a complete surprise, the ending itself is completely consistent with Hutchinson’s practice of leaving some things unexplained for the reader to puzzle over and imagine what might happen next.

And in case you’re wondering if it really is weird – does The Essence exist? – you’ll have to make up your own mind. All I’ll say is that there’s a teleporting dog in the story.

These are the first two books of Pullman’s second trilogy about Lyra, the mysterious substance called ‘Dust’ and the attempts of the powerful and sinister Magisterium to suppress all knowledge of it. The third book hasn’t yet been published. The two books are set in Lyra’s world which was introduced in the first trilogy, ‘His Dark Materials’ but this time there is no crossing over into other worlds.

The first book, ‘La Belle Sauvage’, tells Lyra’s origin story; her birth, parents, and how as a baby she came to be accepted into ‘academic asylum’ in Oxford’s Jordan College. Some characters from ‘His Dark Materials’ appear as they were some eleven years before those events; other important characters are introduced for the first time.

The second book, ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, takes up Lyra’s story about ten years after Dark Materials. Now she is a 21-year-old student at St Sophia’s College in Oxford, but she has changed as she grew older and she and her daemon Pan are hardly on speaking terms. Meanwhile the power of the Magisterium is growing and Lyra’s life is at risk, though she doesn’t realise this at first. Many of the characters who have been part of her earlier life are caught up in her story.

Pullman is a great story-teller and both books carry the reader along at a brisk pace. I found it easy to gulp them both down in big chunks over a short time. Although ‘La Belle Sauvage’ has its darker moments, ‘The Secret Commonwealth’ is much darker and more violent than anything before; enough I suspect to keep it off the ‘young adult fiction’ library shelves where ‘La Belle Sauvage’ is sometimes filed.

As for the outcome and any resolution, we must wait for the third and final book due, according to the author, in late 2024 (or, I suspect, more probably in 2025).

Another ripping success for Hutchinson with this his second, and overall the third “book of the Aftermath” (if this doesn’t make sense, see the footnote here). This time the setting is mostly Oxford, but of course it’s not an Oxford of dreaming spires and honey-coloured stone but rather a bleak, wet and dangerous place seen through a constant veil of sleet. One thing that hasn’t changed is the animosity between the Colleges and the civil administration. Much-loved Oxford landmarks are transformed and remodelled into the story line.

Adam, the lead character in Book One, ‘Shelter’, returns along with a few others. And there are new characters as well who, as always with this author, are splendidly written and have the potential of becoming firm favourites if ever the story were to continue. Oh, and there are talking heads too, but not of the TV interview kind.

The plot twists and turns in the now-familiar Hutchinson way, and there’s another tantalising ending leaving future developments to our own imaginations. Now we just have to wait for Adam Roberts’ Book Four and wonder if it will link with this part of the story, and if so how.

This is the second book in the collaboration between Dave Hutchinson and Adam Roberts which started with Hutchinson’s ‘Shelter’. The third title, Hutchinson’s ‘Sanctuary’ has just been published; I have not yet received my copy.

I have nothing original to say about ‘Haven’. Although Robert’s storytelling style is different to Hutchinson’s it’s not so different. ‘Haven’ is set in the same post-apocalyptic world created by Hutchinson but a bit later in time. There are more great characters: I particularly admired the Interval section filling out the back story of one of them. Action-wise, Roberts keeps up as good a pace as Hutchinson.

I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to ‘Sanctuary’.

In ‘Shelter’, written after completion and publication of the ‘Fractured Europe‘ novels and with the strapline ‘Book One of the Aftermath’, Hutchinson returns to the setting of a post-apocalyptic world. However in this one there is no time distortion, there are no parallel worlds; it is firmly anchored in a familiar location in southern England a century after a shower of meteorites from a breaking-up comet has devasted the planet leaving only pockets of survivors to cope with the total breakdown of society.

As always, Hutchinson weaves his story with a cast of well-drawn and intriguing characters; you never know which ones are going to become main players, and even those who don’t might crop up in the next story. Because yes, there’s Book Two and Book Three definitely following and Book Four expected*.

Hutchinson has a great ability to imagine the future after such a cataclysm and the plot is consistent and credible. The story moves along at a good pace with plenty of action, sometimes violent, with twists that I certainly didn’t foresee. Definitely a good read.

* An interesting concept here. Hutchinson’s follow-up is Book Three, ‘Sanctuary’, which will be published later in 2023. Book Two is ‘Haven’ by Adam Roberts, which was published in 2018 and which at the time of writing I have ordered but not yet read. Roberts will then provide Book Four (title as yet unknown). I look forward to seeing how this collaboration works out.

If like me you enjoyed Dave Hutchinson’s “Fractured Europe” series (links to my reviews are in the sidebar – or scroll all the way down if you’re reading this on your phone) you will like ‘Cold Water’. It’s set in the same dysfunctional future but extends further than before and follows a hint left in ‘Europe at Dawn’. The story stands alone in its own right; knowing the background would help but it’s not essential. The book’s central character Carey (though she was calling herself Roxanne at the time) is trailed in a short story by Hutchinson called ‘Nightingale Floors’ published in the collection ‘London Centric’^*; the short story forms part of the back story in ‘Cold Water’.

Everything I’ve said before to describe the “Fractured Europe” series applies here too: imaginative, intriguing, fast-paced, meticulous, and with great characters.  To say much more would risk giving spoilers!

*London Centric; Tales of Future London, edited by Ian Whates, NewCon Press

Intriguing, imaginative, inventive, impressive. Claire North’s character Harry August and his fellow kalachakra live Groundhog lives rather than Groundhog Days. Unlike we normal ‘linear’ folk their lives are both sequential and repetitive in time. Like the Ouroboros continually swallowing its own tail, they “loop perpetually through the same course of historical events, though [their] lives within may change”. In his tenth life Harry could be both 32 and 530 years old. Parallel universes don’t quite fit the narrative, but once you accept the premise and go with the story it’s a great journey.

It’s quite long – my Kindle edition is 406 pages – but North keeps the story moving with action, intrigue and a mystery which develops into a thriller as Harry tries to stop the world rushing to a premature end brought about by the rogue actions of one of his fellows. To say more would be a spoiler, so I’ll just say I thoroughly enjoyed it!

So the fifth-richest man in the world has bought up an entire county in Iowa, rebuilt a small town, recruited top scientists, and is building the world’s most powerful supercollider – one that will dwarf the LHC at CERN. What could possibly go wrong?

This is a story by Dave Hutchinson, so of course things do go wrong. Badly, strangely wrong. And when they do they change our reluctant hero, journalist Alex Dolan, hired to write a book about the collider, in ways neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen.

The story moves at a good pace with plenty of examples of Hutchinson’s pithy wit to elicit a guffaw from the reader. And any book that can work Calabi-Yau manifolds into the story has to be worth reading, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So here it is, the fourth and presumably final book in Dave Hutchinson’s ‘Fractured Europe’ series. Does he pull off the challenge of a coherent and satisfactory resolution to the complex puzzle he’s constructed in the first three? Short answer; “Yes”.

That’s not to say that everything’s served up on a plate. The reader still has to work to keep track of who’s who and what’s going on especially, as we’ve found from the earlier books, the flow of time is a bit – shall we say, variable – in Hutchinson’s worlds.

One of his strengths is the plausibility of his vision. Taking familiar experiences and behaviour he extrapolates just far enough for you not to baulk at the situations he describes. The way of life on an island of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean could be in a documentary film report in a few years’ time. In a stranger setting where Heathrow Airport is effectively cut off from its normal surroundings for several years, the day-to-day life that has evolved among the people caught there is exactly how you would expect it to be.

There’s plenty of the action and cool humour found in ‘Autumn’, ‘Midnight’ and ‘Winter’, and Hutchinson continues to build his puzzle until quite near the end. If the puzzle is a jigsaw it’s one with no edge pieces and no obvious shape. As he presents you with the final few pieces they slot into place neatly, but inevitably – and completely consistently with the story – there are some gaps, leaving you wondering where the other pieces have gone and whether the picture is actually finished.

Taken overall the four books are a remarkable achievement. Well done, Dave, you pulled it off!