The Half-Made World
By Felix Gilman
4/5
()
About this ebook
A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realism
The world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared—the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope.
To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.
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Felix Gilman
FELIX GILMAN has been nominated for the John W. Campbell and Locus awards for best new writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Thunderer and Gears of the City, and The Half-Made World, which was listed by Amazon as one of the ten best SFF novels of 2010. He lives with his wife in New York City.
Read more from Felix Gilman
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Reviews for The Half-Made World
33 ratings29 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The American West meets steampunk.
Doctor of psychology Liv Alverhuysen is caught between the forces of the Line and the Gun, seeking out the mental wreck who might be the fabled General of the Red Republic, who may hold the secret to a weapon which can bring victory to its user. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really fantastic, imaginative adventure set in something a bit like America's Wild West of old. Like many Westerns, the main characters are damaged people in pursuit of their own interests, demonstrating occasional bursts of heroism. But unlike most Westerns, people are queer, female, and not necessarily white. And of course, there is the magic: the Line, with their noise-bombs that tear at the mind and their sentient engines; and the Agents of the Gun, whose weapons confer superhuman power but can also control the minds of their possessors; and the indescribable magics of the First Folk, to whom names are anathema. The characters are interesting, the adventure thrilling, and the world absolutely enthralling.
I can't wait to read the next book! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5 starsI really liked this one. It's got elements of Manifest Destiny; The Wild, Wild West; The Dark Tower; and China Mieville's Railsea all mashed up into a nice dark adventure.The story weaves together several arcs, but they all center on what might be contained in a former general's head. On the one hand, we have The Line, an industrial, train-driven culture that consumes and dominates everywhere it goes, leaving behind noise, pollution, industry, and discipline. On another, we have their sworn enemies, the Agents of the Gun, men and women who are controlled by a supernatural committee of spirits (for lack of a better word--they communicate by speaking directly into their agents' heads). On the third hand, we have remnants of The Republic, who had aimed to steer clear of both sides and live their own lives in peace, but who were broken in battle. The General was left for dead in one such battle as the book opens, but his broken mind might have information about a weapon that could decide the contest between The Line and the Agents of the Gun. The chase is on!Our protagonists:--Dr. Lysvet (Liv) Alverhuysen, a neurologist from the settled East, who is heading west to treat the General. She'd have been played by Katharine Hepburn, back in the day. --John Creedmoor, an Agent of the Gun who aims to track down the General for his Masters, but who's also having doubts about this whole subservience thing. He's a cynic, a wiseass, and could have been played by Humphrey Bogart.--Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry of the Army of the Angelus Engine (of The Line), who's also tracking down the General. He has no doubts about his duty at all...he will follow through to the bitter end.The book follows our cast as Liv heads west to the hospital where the General is a patient, and then into the wilds as the net closes on them. The journey, the building tension, and the three-way battle climax are very satisfying, but the very last pieces of the story seem a bit abrupt and thin, which was a disappointment. I just discovered that there is a sequel, though, so maybe that one gives us more.As I said, I liked this one very much. The world-building is excellent, as are the pacing and the characterizations. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I received an advance copy of this one from the First Reads giveaway.
The book flipped between the viewpoints of one Agent of the Guns, one commander in The Line's army, and one normal psychologist from the eastern seaboard.
I liked the changes in viewpoint; they worked well, and being able to see all 3 of the major points of view helped in fleshing out the world, its history, and how it worked without being pedantic or tedious. One funny point is that both sides of the war think the other side is insane, and most third parties think both sides of the war are insane.
All three of the main characters are engaging, interesting, and well rounded. Their flaws and redeeming qualities stand out even more when they travel into the far western, unmade portion of the world where they have no contact with their controllers and must, for the first time in decades, make decisions on their own.
While the majority of the action is wrapped up at the end, there's plenty of unresolved bits of plot, so I assume this is the first in a set, not a standalone novel. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm not sure I enjoyed The Half-Made World. I was intrigued by it, which is something different. There's nothing here to hang your hopes on, to get emotionally attached to: the Linesmen are interchangeable, the Line unpleasant; the Agents of the Gun are as bad or worse, though at least they're individuals; the General is nothing but a tool for the plot; Liv is colourless... Even the Republic is hollow. The narration follows a Linesman, an Agent, and Liv, who is neutral. It really just emphasises that there is no right or wrong: it's a sea of moral ambiguity. I don't even know what moral goodness would look like, in this world.
Creedmore is, despite being despicable, at least an interesting character. His conflict, his relationship with Marmion, his unpredictability and irreverence... If I kept reading for any of the characters, it was for him. He's colourful, at least, even if it's the colours of hell!
The world itself is interesting -- the concept of it, the idea of the Line and the Guns, and the half-made nature of it as you go out West. I was intrigued by the steampunk and Western aspects (though, again, I'm not sure I'd use the word enjoyed). Some of the most interesting things, the Folk, drift around on the outside...
And it's all very inconclusive. Has anything changed, at the end? It doesn't feel like it's waiting for a sequel -- it just trails off.
Despite all of that, which sounds very critical, I was (here's that word again) intrigued: I kept reading, all four hundred and eighty pages of it, which is something. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A good book, if a slow-starting. I don't know if it's philosophizing and portentousness is meaningful or not, but an interesting world created, and at the end, I wanted to follow the story further.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was pretty amazing. I think I liked the characters best (and the way they were written explains U K Le Guin's blurb on the front of the book).
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Meh. All teddibly clever, and yet it left me stone cold. They could all get eaten by a giant space goat and I'd pretty much breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of not hearing about them any longer. Nice prose in the service of... ??? I ended up irritated and dissatisfied. Like attending a looonng night of very experimental theater without enough free booze to make it tolerable.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A slow burning fantastical wonderPoised deliciously between wonderful world building and fantastic characterisation this 1st in a dulogy(?) slowly built but the by end left me quite breathless.The world? Well it's a A wild west frontier torn between the logical, industriousness of the Line and their giant locomotives ripping through the landscape, consuming and twisting all to their needs. Their armies full of grey men, with their mind shattering bombs. Humanities last gasp, the Red Army was defeated long ago and The Guns, chaotic beings who love to possess outlaws cannot hold them back. No one thinks much about the natives who sulk on the edge of reality or are enslaved by the thundering progress of The Line. Into all this, looking for an adventurous new start is psychologist Liv. From the staid East to a home for the war broken. A home that contains an old general who in his broken mind may hold the secret to ending the war. It’s a wonderful premise, that as you can tell is hard to summarise. The characters that form it grow to be delicious, the pitch perfect tone of the demonic gun, wheedling and cruel in equal measure or the terribly fragile humanity of Liv (one of my favourite characters period). Liv's journey West and the drawing together of all forces keeps you entertained whilst furiously building the story and then goes in unexpected places. Be warned I don't think it hits the wow factor for a while and it always refuses to fall into easy plot tropes of epic battles and glorious romance; passivity with chaos and sudden, very real bravery against familiar cowardice. It maybe a page turner but it’s not nonstop action.It is the first book is in a series, but the ending is satisfying whilst leaving it wide open for the next. Yet I think whether this books really shines is going to rest on the next book.. I have much invested in this now.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Order and Chaos. The Line and the Gun. The battle between the two elemental forces of order and chaos has long been a favourite for fantasy literature and it has provided fallow fertile ground for many tales of human society as it gets caught in the middle of these two titanic ways of viewing the universe. What better stage for displaying this great and never-ending battle than the American West? What other time period more succinctly portrays the stark differences between these two great forces? Felix Gilman has taken this stage, albeit in an alternate world that only mirrors that of our own, in order to paint in the stark blacks and whites of this endless battle. Standing in for Order and Chaos we have, as has already been mentioned, the Line and the Gun. These two great unnatural (supernatural? abnatural?) forces are presided over by demonic spirits who drive on the humans in their service in an attempt to forever destroy their opposites. The Line are housed in great Engines that control and drive their human slaves in the name of industry and progress. Their tracks criss-cross the West and lay waste to all in their path, flattening the hills and mountains and filling in the valleys to turn all into orderly, flat wastelands populated only by their great Stations and factories. The Guns take a more personal approach, inhabiting their weapons of steel and wood and brimstone and riding their bearers, shaping them into superhuman gunslingers, able to move almost faster than the eye can follow and heal from grievous wounds in mere moments.
The alternate world that Gilman has created for this story has a great continent broadly divided into two great zones: the settled East, where things have been 'made' or 'shaped' into their final forms as we know them. Peace, order and (good?) government are the rule here and the countries of the East seem to combine elements of both the settled eastern states of the historical U.S. and the 'old world' of Europe. Science and Technology, law and order, are well-founded here, though not with the inflexible singleness of vision of the Line. Out beyond the borders of the map, however, lies the West. Beyond the great, and aptly named, World's End Mountains, lies a country that grows more lawless, and even physically unformed, the farther out you go. Only the Line has brought Order to parts of the West, but its order is a sterile thing, consuming all in its path and replacing it with factories and stations for its great engines, peopled by its hive-like minions who are driven to build and destroy in equal measure. The Agents of the Gun are themselves compelled by their masters to halt the Line wherever they are able, revelling in death and chaos no matter the price. Caught between these two forces are the small communities of 'normal' people who seem to simply sit back and hope that both the Line and the Gun will ignore their presence, at least in their own lifetime.
Amidst these great swathes of black and white, however, Gilman does manage to include many shades of grey in his story at both the macro and the micro level. At the macro level we have the Red Valley Republic, a gathering of many smaller nation-states of the unformed West under one banner and the leadership of the great General Orlan Enver. The Republic is another great power, able in its heyday to do the impossible: hold off both the Line and the Gun, and prosper in the unformed West. They are not, apparently, driven by any demons or supernatural forces, but only the human ideals and hopes of their founders...though these prove to be as dominating and heedless, in their own way, as the more metaphysical powers. At the micro level we have Gilman’s nuanced characterisation, especially as seen in his three main protagonists who move the plot forward: Liv Alverhuysen, a bored widow and professor of psychology at the Koenigswald Academy who dreams of the possibilities of adventure that await in the West, John Creedmoor an aging charmer who also happens to be an Agent of the Gun, and Sub Invigilator (Third) Lowry, a lowly cog in the great human machine of the Line.
As the story proper begins the Red Valley Republic is nothing more than a dream and a memory: a failed fable and cautionary tale of the price of opposing the two great Powers. Liv has received an enigmatic letter requesting assistance from the aptly named House Dolorous, a hospital and hospice on the very edge of the settled West designed to care for those broken by the endless war of the Powers. She jumps at the chance to leave her comfortable and staid life behind and go into the unknown. Creedmoor, a somewhat cowardly and lazy adventurer who has been laying low and avoiding the call of his harsh masters, is suddenly prodded back into service and set on a track that will lead him to cross paths with the other main players of the tale. Lastly, we have Lowry, the lowly, but ambitious, peon of the Line, destined to rise in the ranks of the great machine as he too is goaded on by his masters to find the prize that all three characters will eventually pursue: the great General Envers, thought lost, though now convalescing at the House Dolorous in a fit of madness brought on by one of the horrible weapons of the Line. Apparently the general holds a great secret of the First Folk (the somewhat elvish, somewhat aboriginal, somewhat otherworldly first inhabitants of the West who are enslaved by everyone else when they are not free to roam the unformed wilderness), that both Powers crave for their own, and fear may fall into the hands of their enemies.
I really enjoyed this book, and Gilman's prose is very fluid, so even though it is a sizable tome I found that the pages flew by fairly quickly. This is my first introduction to what has been labelled the ‘Weird West’ in genre circles, and which shades mildly into areas of steampunk, and if it’s an indication of what else is out there in this genre then I’m excited to continue in my discoveries. I thoroughly enjoyed this book both for the extensive worldbuilding that Gilman did, as well as his admirable work with characterisation. Each of the main protagonists is nuanced and interesting, and even Creedmoor and Lowry are able to rise above being simply placeholders for their respective Powers. For his part Creedmoor combines the nostalgic regret of an old gunslinger seeing something of the error of his ways, though held back from change by inertia and cowardice, while Lowry, despite being born and bred as simply a cog in a wheel, displays aspects of individual thinking and initiative that could just as likely get him killed by his Masters as promoted by allowing him to complete his goal. Liv stands in for the rest of us, those ‘normal’ people not beholden to any supernatural Power for their goals and abilities, and who must make her way in the world with only her own intellect and conscience to guide her. General Envers, even though insane and mostly silent for the majority of the book, is also a very interesting figure who, despite his affliction, looms large in the story and stands almost as a power unto himself.
Highly recommended. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5BrilliantSpirits are housed in Guns and Engines which war against each other via their Agents in an imaginative retelling of the wild west. Gilman takes and re-forges the tropes of Gunslingers and railroads. The distilled noise of the Engines of the Line take your sanity so the Agents of the Line use Noisemaker as well as poison bombs when they attack. The Agents of the Gun are always losing but never defeated. The people of the East live in the well-made stable world. The people of the West live in the newly made world and to the far West is the shifting half-made world. The Red Valley Republic warred against both Line and Gun but eventually failed. Their most famous general is caught by a Noisemaker but is not killed and just may have a secret buried in his head which both sides seek. He is a patient at the House Dolorous which is protected by a powerful spirit. Dr Liv Alverhuysen has a troubled past but is a proponent of the new science of psychology and goes West to take up a post at the House Dolorous. John Creedmore is an Agent of the Gun tasked with infiltrating the House Dolorous to steal the secret in the General’s head and Lowry is a soldier of the Line tasked with getting the general, and through a series of field promotions finds himself in charge. Gilman has woven a gripping story which seamlessly imports some Western-“ness” without spoiling a vividly imagined world building. He has also taken three very mortal, very human protagonists to illustrate the fantastic story of that world. I loved the world and I loved the characters and how they interacted so I heartily recommend this book.Overall – Well told tale in a fantastic and fantastically weird world
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Far from the old established countries in the East, the West is still young. Here is a war-ridden, strange, young land with different rules. And further west, beyond the World’s End Mountains and towards the shores of Uncreation, the world isn’t even made yet, but is just a half-shaped badland of dreams and sliding shapes. For several hundred years the West has been at war. On one hand the Line, a noisy, industrial, small-minded empire of grey functionality and order, ruled by it’s living Engines. On the other side the Gun, a secret brotherhood of demons, vastly outnumbered, but with flamboyant, larger than life Agents, armed with possessed guns and dealing in stealth, betrayal and violence. Gun is losing, always losing, but is never conquered. And in the hills still dwell the eerie Folk, the land’s indigenous people, pale, bearded, spindly creatures, perhaps not quite human at all.Thirty years ago, the Red Valley Republic took a stand against both Line and Gun, and failed gloriously. Now it’s most famous general is just a husk of a man, his mind destroyed by one of the Line’s noisebombs. He’s a patient at the House Dolorous, a hospital close to the edge of the made world, protected by a powerful spirit.Dr. Liv Alverhuysen is a scholar in the new field of psychology way back east. She is asked to come to the hospital to conduct a field study. Irked by curiosity, sorrow and boredom, she accepts. Little does she know that the general is one of her coming patients. And that somewhere in his shattered brain is a secret, a pact made with the Folk, that could mean the end of war forever. John Creedmore is an Agent of the Gun, one of the old-timers. But it’s been so long since his service was required, he’s almost hoping he’s free. He’s not. He’s given the impossible task of infiltrating the House Dolorous and steal the secret inside the general’s mind.And Lowry is a clerk in the service of the Andalus Engine, a grey, petty little man battling hard with stifling his personal ambition – a trait not appreciated in the Line. Through a series of coincidences he finds himself promoted, and in charge of the hunt for Creedmore.Felix Gilman’s weird and deeply original version of the Wild West is a joy to read. Taking every trope in the book and twisting them into something new and strange, this is a world not like anything else I’ve visited before. The two warring factions are beautifully described, and the lead trio are believable, frail and very human - in completely different ways. The plot is well-paced and engaging, slowly winding down to the concentration of the final third of the book. Here the action more or less gives way to a slower exploring of the inner mechanics of the characters, rather fitting in a book where psychology plays a big part. It might lose a bit of the first half’s hungry page-turner quality for it, but gains something else. For me, the wide-open ending kind of works, but I was happy to learn that this is the first part in a duology, the conclusion of which is just out. I can’t wait to get my hands on that one. Gilman’s voice is a fresh take on what I guess must be labeled New Weird, and I’m very eager to read more. Highly recommended, but be prepared for a bit of gore and more than a bit of darkness. If you need your fantasy heroic, perhaps look elsewhere.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The setting was the best part of this book, something on the nature of Whedon's Firefly mixed with King's Dark Tower. The characters are slightly less compelling, although by the end, I found myself rooting for them in ways I did not expect.My only real problem was with the ending, which seemed like more of a stopping place in a longer story, rather than an actual conclusion. I was under the impression that this was a standalone book, but it definitely way not. Our characters reach a new status quo, and take on a quest, but that's about it.Still, it was an enjoyable read, and one that I hope to be able to recommend more strongly once I've read the sequel.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Half-Made World is a Western-inspired fantasy (is the fantasy/Western mashup a new trend now? I’ve read quite a few recently – Brandon Sanderson’s The Alloy of Law, and R.S. Belcher's The Six-Gun Tarot.)Dr. Liv Alverhuysen, a psychologist, has received a letter from a veteran’s hospital at the very edge of the tamed world, offering an opportunity for her to study mental ailments that are unknown outside the industrialised and war-torn West. She has never really thought about adventure, but ignoring her colleagues’ ridicule, she sets off to lands she barely knows anything about. Unfortunately, her peaceful research opportunity doesn’t exactly turn out as she envisioned – one of the patients at the hospital knows a secret that could shake the foundations of the New World, and the two dominant Powers of the West, the Gun and the Line have sent their forces to retrieve him. As you can imagine, hijinks ensue.Felix Gilman takes the romance and promise of the American exploration of the West – the engines of industry, the famous outlaws, the unexplored territories, the mistreated original inhabitants of the land, and creates a whole new world where metaphor becomes reality. The Engines are immortal demons that control armies of Linesmen intent on spreading industry and homogeny wherever they go. The Guns are their arch rivals, spreading their influence through superhuman outlaw Agents of the Gun, who go by monikers like Hang-‘em-High Washburn and rob banks and blow up train tracks. Unsettled land is malleable by nature – the landscape is not fixed, thoughts can create independent entities and words have much power. Human settlement solidifies the land but does not entirely drive out the magic – the settlers instead controls it by enslaving the original population, the First Folk.The characters are also terrific. Liv starts out very wide-eyed, but slowly gains her footing and learns to take herself less seriously as the novel progresses. She’s also pretty amusing sometimes – she constantly psychoanalyses herself, but manages to completely ignore her dependence on her “nerve tonic” (laudanum). She ended up being one of the more memorable characters I’ve read about recently – she’s not especially brave or confident or even nice, but she comes through in the end.The Agent of the Gun Creedmoor was the ultimate anti-hero (I’m not actually sure he qualifies to be a hero at all). He’s not very nice either, and he’s terrified in some ways. He makes a perfect foil to both Liv and his direct antagonist Sub Invigilator (Third) Lowry of the Line (who’s an upper-level bureaucrat who tries his hardest to be self-effacing but cannot quite succeed). It was great to get points of view fron the Gun, the Line and an uninvolved party (Liv) – it made for a very compelling method of storytelling. The side characters were also pretty compelling – the loyal giant Maggfrid, the outwardly gruff businessman Mr. Bond, the lonely but sane Director of House Dolorous, and of course, the object of everyone’s search – the General.Gilman’s writing is top-notch; I especially love his sense of humour. The story never really drags, and Gilman does a great job of telling you just enough to keep you satisfied, but still intrigued.Here’s the point where I usually say I can’t wait for the sequel (The Rise of Ransom City), but I actually read the sequel instead of writing this review. So, yeah, it’s that good, and I can’t wait for whatever book Gilman releases next! I’ll also be checking out his back catalogue.----More reviews at Just a World Away
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very good novel, exploring themes of the frontier - the dehumanization of industry and railroads vs. the outlaws, murderers, and thieves, with a distant dream of democracy and the Republic just beyond reach. Plus, whip-cracking action and adventure with tightly drawn characters. Hard to recommend this highly enough.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Felix Gilman builds a breathtaking, brutal world filled with the creeping horrors of progress against the wild backdrop of the West. The Half-Made World combines the speculative nature of science fiction with the merciless gunslinging of the Wild West, and then populates the pages with imposing supernaturals. On one hand, we have the workers of The Line breaking the land under the steel tracks of new railroads, and enslaving the world in the name of progress; on the other hand, we have the Agents of The Gun chosen to fight The Line—even if it involves killing all of mankind to win. Only one man is capable of stopping them—and his mind was carved out under the weight of a devastating bomb from The Line. What follows is an epic adventure into the depths of the West to end the war between bitter, unseen Gods. Brilliant read—I had to stop myself from drooling my appreciation across the pages. Prepare for me to pummel you with this recommendation. Ideal for: Sci fi nerds who appreciate some gunslinging; readers who love grand mythology with a steampunk aesthetic; folks who like their morals (and heroes!) muddied.(less)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a book that defies easy categorization—an anti-hero Western set inside a steampunk novel in a fantasy world that uses a metaphor based upon alternate-history settlement of the American frontier? Yep, that's about it. About the only categorizations that I'm comfortable being firm about are "inventive" and "try this if you like any of the above."The inventive part is what struck me the most. In Gilman's epic struggle between the forces of Technology (the bad guys) and the forces of the Dark Side (the other bad guys) and the loser forces of Democracy (not quite good guys) and just plain, decent humanity (a complete also-ran in this power struggle) there are echoes of mythological strains we find in Stephen King's novels. In the colorful, often incredibly able characters that populate the story there's something of Michael Resnick's creations. In the story telling there's something of Gene Wolfe. Yet, none of these evoke a sense that Gilman is being derivative or returning to a well that has run dry. In this respect, this is a must-read if you're a fan of any of the above-named genres. Why then, is this not a 4-star or more story? Despite 480 pages, there's not enough of the story given to us. I finished the book feeling that it was still chugging up the hill, perhaps not to a conclusion, but at least to a resting point where I could say that I was fully engaged and waiting for the next installment. In fact, though I feel that this is likely to be the first of a multi-part series, that's not even certain. The ending could conceivably be The End.I sincerely hope not. Gilman has got too much going here to stop now.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I am not in love with this book. I enjoyed reading it and I do recommend it, but I was left not fully satisfied. I am not sure what it is about the story that left me wanting more. I think it was not that I needed to know more about the world since that would have destroyed the mystery that makes for a good fantasy, but perhaps to know more about the characters so I could love them as characters rather than tropes.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Weird steampunkish novel where the West is a land where physical laws break down more and more the further west you go. In the more settled areas of the West, two demonic forces are fighting a continual war. The anarchic Gun, whose demons inhabit weapons that are carried by bearers who are given superhuman powers, and the Line, whose demons inhabit train engines and who spread industrialization and uniformity across the lands they control. When both sides learn that a general of the defunct Red Valley Republic, which defied both sides, may still be alive they send their agents to capture him. A psychologist from the East, Liv Alverhuysen, who has come to the West to work in a sort of veteran's hospital, and who is caring for the general becomes caught up in trying to protect him from both sides.This is one of the more interesting and original books that I have read in a while. The taming of the West becomes a literal thing as the Line spreads across the land, assimilating as it goes, and seeming to fix the world into a more static form. On the other side, much of the book is from the point of view of an agent of the Gun, John Creedmoor, who is an entertaining character. The battles between the sides bring in plenty of action along with the allegory. My main issue with the book is that, although it is not advertised as such, it seems to be the first part of a longer story and has a very inconclusive ending. I will look forward to the next book, but it would have been nice to expect only part of a story from the start.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dr. Liv Alverhuysen, a young widowed psychology doctor is going to the edge of the made world, or close to it. Out West. To help with victims of the four century war between The Guns, The Engines, and Hill Folk. All of the victims including the ones who had their minds shattered.Creedmoor, we meet while he is traveling on a gambling boat. To the edged of the world he is sent by his masters, The Guns, in search of a mad man. Creedmoor's character will have you curious of his history right away.Lowry, a Sub-Invigilator for the Line and servant to the Engines, is sent to extract the General, from the West. Lowry will not stop for anything and will not fail his mission and the only thing at the end of failure is death.This is a hard one for me to review as I have mixed feelings on this book. I enjoyed the blend of demons and guns, the engines and demons (which may be what many consider steampunk), and the un-made world not yet ready for time and so many new creatures - the Wild West we could say. This idea and world was unique to me, and made me curious about the connection of the two. I even liked the idea of the general having a knowledge that could end all, but felt that I never got any more information to move the story plot further forward. I felt it kind of stalled in the plot movement for me. The story telling style reminds me of a similarity to Joe Abercrombie, yet different as it's not as abrupt with battles nor character drawing for me.I enjoyed two of the characters out of the whole cast: John Creedmoor and the General. Yet, as much as I enjoyed reading of the scenes with John Creedmoor or seeing if the General will get better, they seemed to be the only characters I could get into. John Creedmoor and his attachment to the Guns was one of darkness and yet almost feel as he's fighting for something that just might be good. In the end I new more of the world and characters created here, but nothing more of the happenings of the story plot. I might pick up the next book to see if I can find more out.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If a book is part of a series, shouldn't the cover say so? A fun, great read begins fantastically, then that has one of the slowest and middling middles ever, moves into a strong, redemptive finish but then dies miserably with a terribly weak and unresolved finale. A great world filled with demon-powered gunslingers, mechanical bureaucrat armies, wild creatures all against the sprawling backdrop of a three-sided civil war in the Old West. So much potential, but it's unfortunately a half-baked book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the first few pages I knew I was going to enjoy this book. Love me some steampunk! Western steampunk too!The Gun and the Line are in constant conflict and just us ordinary folk are caught in the middle just trying to make a world out in the wild west.Do you like magic, demons, and all around good storytelling?Get it!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Half-Made World is a handsome book. The cover is made to look old - yellowed and mildewy - with a man flying a stramnge winged contraption on top. This clues one in that there might be a steampunky adventure inside. And there is a bit. I must also comment on and compliment the layout of the book - the typesetting is attractive and a good size for easy reading. I like books with chapter titles, and this has them in a very attractive layout. This may seem like a minor point, but here I believe it enhances the story.The Half-Made World is more wild western than anything, an alternate-world dystopia mixed with some supernatural fantasy. The prologue of the story pulled me right in, but the initial chapter then put me off a slight bit with our introduction to one of the main characters, Dr. Liv Alverhuysen. Her colleagues are a bit annoying. She is leaving her safe world to go west into the unknown and presumably adventure, and a quest. Unfortunately as the book progressed I could never identify strongly with her or her motivations. That said, I liked this novel but didn't love it. I found myself disappointed that this seems to be a half-made book. Clearly this is part of a larger story and I don't automatically count that as a strike against, but I want resolution within a book of the story at hand.Personally I'd like to read more about this world - a prequel perhaps more than anything else. So, I can recommend this story with reservations as noted. I give this book props for inventiveness as well. I received this book as part of the early reviewers program, but I do not believe that influenced my review.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was an Early Reviewer book. The Half-Made World paints a gritty and grim picture of a world where our worst traits come to life in the form of demons . It's a world whose landscape is marred by the war being fought between Line - Engines which have minds, needs and desires of their own - and Gun - whose Agents are made supernaturally strong and long-lived and enslaved in order to dedicate their lives to stopping the Line from taking over the world.We are introduced to this war through the eyes of someone who grew up and lived in the 'civilized' or fully-made part of the world. She, on a whim, decides to go westward because she's found her life staid and dull. And she sees an opportunity to learn from those broken in minds by the fearsome weapons of the Line.The world-building in Half-Made World is terrific. The Reader is drawn into the created reality and immersed in it fully. It's believable, in that it portrays the realities of the miseries wrought by men (or demons) determined to war until the bitter end.My only complaint is that I thought the characterization was light. We're never allowed to care enough about any of the major characters. It's as if we are only observers watching their struggle, and never allowed to understand them enough to make an emotional connection to them. This seems purposeful, But as someone who needs that emotional connection to a protagonist, I thought it limiting.Even so, I found the book compelling. I wanted to solve the mysteries of this world and of its demons. I wanted to traipse through the unmade portion of the world to its wild and unknown end. Mostly, I wanted to discover the mystery of the one weapon, or thought, or idea that might, possibly, bring an end to war.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I found the basic premise of The Half-Made World to be intriguing and couldn’t wait to read it. Unfortunately, I was so unimpressed with the characterization of the heroine that it wasn’t until the last 50 pages that I actually felt real interest for the story. Imagine a Wild West populated by a mystical indigenous people (The Hill People), add demon-possessed guns (The Gun) that use humans as assassins and huge scary sentient engines (The Line) that control humans like ants and you have The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. The Line and The Gun have been warring for years. The known world in the east is slowly being devoured by The Line, which turns cities into little more than factories. This is the setting for the story that starts with a General of the Red Republic (rebels for a new world) becoming a victim of a Line noise bomb. Liv Alverhuysen is the psychologist tasked with helping the General recover enough memory to spill a devastating secret given to him by The Hill People. But first she must journey to a hospital that is at the edge of the known world. For an adventurous psychologist Liv is a surprisingly lackluster character. It’s never entirely clear why she accepts a dubious position in what amounts to an asylum located on the other side of the world. She doesn’t seem at all emotionally connected to the war. Her desire to leave everything she knows is only vaguely referred to as some kind of wanderlust. Despite this, I had high hopes for her. I ended up disappointed though because I was never able to get a sense of her personality. She has a devotion to her sense of duty, which gives her some spine, but when things get stressful she adds a few drops of her “tonic” and all is well. Most of the middle of the book is spent on her journey to the hospital. The story bogs down quite a bit here as she spends more time reacting to things than actually precipitating events. It wasn’t until John Creedmore, agent of The Gun extraordinaire, entered the story that I started to care what happens. He’s selfish, pompous and has delusions of grandeur but ultimately likable. He knows he is not a good guy. The spirit-possessed gun that commands him to kill controls him and he likes the thrill of the hunt but deep down he wants to be a hero. He wants redemption. When he obeys his “master” it is with an irreverence that is endearing. However, I found it mildly annoying that the most important character to the story, the General, was absolutely boring. For the entire novel he has severely diminished mental capacity and seems little more than a prop. The last 50 pages or so are mildly exciting and the ending takes the story in a new direction but I’m not quite sure if I can recommend it. I thought this story suffered quite a bit in it's characterizations (with one exception) so it was a difficult read for me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Half-Made World by Felix GilmanIt has taken me almost two weeks to read this novel, a pace that is positively sluggish for me. Even now, having finished the book a couple of days ago, I still feel like I am slowly working my way through. I was totally excited when I received the book -- the external look and the feel of the physical book are excellent.Gilman's novel is, ostensibly, steampunk -- but that's not really what it is. It is a novel much concerned with both war and adventure -- but they aren't really the point. It is a book chock-full of rich detail and description -- but those are the very things that contribute to the sluggish pace and slow progress. It is a story populated by unique, well-rendered characters -- but none of those characters really speaks to the reader in that much-sought relatable fashion. Truth be told, I'm not really sure what to tell you about this book. I was fascinated by it, but perhaps frustrated in almost equal measure. It has an interesting premise and sets up an intriguing world. The characters and factions are heavy with allegorical (or perhaps simply symbolic) meaning; that meaning, or at least the reader's belief that it is present, directly contributes to the our slow progress through the text. I found myself, at various points of the novel, wondering about what I was missing rather than considering what was happening in the actual story. I did not, however, find myself mentally reviewing as I read, which is a sign of a decent book.Obviously, this book shakes out somewhere in the middle. I think it is well made and well-crafted, but the plot, like all of the book, takes its own sweet time. I appreciate that we are able to understand the characters fully as the novel progresses, but there are times when the pieces don't quite pull together, when the reader is left to figure things out. I hate puzzles, especially long ones, and that is what this novel quickly shapes up to be -- and then one realizes, toward the end, that Gilman has left space for a sequel. Bottom line: If you really love steampunk (at its roots -- not just the aesthetic) or the anti-hero, this is worth a read, but something is holding the book back from being a truly great experience. There is a great deal to admire here, but the novel isn't for everyone.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty decent overall, found the ending disappointing. Far and away the best thing about the book was the demonic cowboys. More demonic cowboys please.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Half-Made World is neither steampunk, nor alternate history, and is only a western in spirit. Instead it is a highly original and compelling fantasy story, which I can only hope breathes new life in an increasingly stulted genre. The closest comparisons I can think of are: The Dark Tower series, which it exceeds, and The Book of the New Sun, to which it aspires. As original as the setting is, the book's strength is its characters, who firmly anchor the story in reality. The world itself may frustrate some readers, though it is a landscape well painted, the author does not go into great detail of the how and why things are as they are. That is a good thing; instead of bogging down the story with convoluted rationalizations, we see the world as his characters do. Except for one passing reference to alternate universes, there is no connection to our world. Perhaps in a sequel he will delve deeper into those matters, but hopefully not to deeply. Things are not always best tied in a neat blue ribbon.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Half-Made World kept me interested throughout the whole novel. I didn't have one ho-hum moment while reading, not one moment when I was bored.Set in a world that resembles the wild west of America, but isn't quite there, there are aboriginal peoples, who contain a certain type of magic. There are at two main "god" factions who are at war. One of the factions is the Guns, and seems to consist of demon like entities that possess people through a gun. It rides them, telling them what to do, and causing havoc and mayhem, and rebellion. On the other hand, there is something called the Line - which is the other faction. This one has its own type of evil. It's all about machines, and progress and taking over towns like a bulldozer. There is absolutely NO mercy for those who stand in the way and they develop the most horrific weapons that can devastate people and places.This story is told from three points of view - Creedmoore is an agent of The Gun, Lowry is an agent of The Line and the third point of view is Liv - a doctor who is from a nuetrual territory. All three stories converge and throughout, it's clear that all three have some issues. However, I found myself really rooting for Creedmoor, even though he clearly is no saint. The two factions are both after the same thing and Liv kind of gets stuck in the middle.I don't want to say anymore - spoilers. But This is a damn good book - with some humor, some thrills, lots of mayhem and some damn good gadgets! As soon as I was finished reading it, I wanted more. Thankfully, Felix Gilman will be writing a sequel.
Book preview
The Half-Made World - Felix Gilman
PROLOGUE
HOW THE GENERAL DIED
~ 1878 ~
The General lay flat on his back, arms outflung, watching the stars.
A rock pressed into the base of his spine. He’d hit his head and turned his ankle when he fell, but the rock was the worst of his pain. Other sensations were leaving him, but the rock, obstinately, persisted; yet he was powerless to move. He was powerless to will himself to move. Between his will and his body, there was the noise.
A dark cloud passed before the stars, and their light was shadowed, then returned, cold as ever. He watched the night sky over the mountains burn and wheel, hiss and dance, shudder and fall.
The General was losing his mind.
There were no trees—no pines. He lay in a bare hollow, a high flat stony clearing. The General and his last most loyal twenty-two men had been caught in their desperate flight between the Line behind them and the cliff’s edge before them.
If the General could only have mustered the will to turn his head, he would have seen the mountain’s peak. It was dark, and forked like a gesture of benediction. It had been his destination, before this—this unfortunate interruption. It would have been better, he thought, to have died watching the mountain than the stars, which were meaningless.
In the end, no shots had been fired. No words exchanged or warnings given. The Linesmen’s awful weapon had simply come whistling out of the night sky, fallen like a stone at Lieutenant Deerfield’s feet, and poor young Deerfield had gone pale, eyes wide, turning to the General for last words; then the noise had begun, the mad awful noise, and Deerfield’s wide eyes had filled with fear and blood, and he’d toppled one way and the General had toppled the other, and now they both lay where they fell.
The weapon had quickly burned through its fuel and gone silent, but the terrible noise still echoed in the General’s mind. The noise split his mind in two, then in four, then into scattered pieces. The echoes ground him to finer and finer dust. The process was frightening and painful.
The General was a man of extraordinary character. He’d built the Red Valley Republic out of nothing—hadn’t he? He’d preserved it against all enemies and all odds, he’d taken the mere words of politicians and philosophers and he’d beaten the world into their mold. As the noise crashed rhythmlessly back and forth across his mind, he held tightly to his pride—which maybe slowed the process of disintegration but could not stop it.
For twenty years the Republic had flourished, and it had been the finest moment in the history of the West; indeed, the finest of all possible moments, for the Republic had been constructed in accordance with the best possible theories of political virtue. Gun and Line and their endless war had been banished—the Republic had been an island of peace and sanity. It was gone now, ten years gone, undermined by the spies and blackmailers of Gun, crushed by the wheels of the Line, never to return. But it had lasted long enough to raise a generation of young men and women in its mold, and it was for those young persons that the General wished he could somehow utter, and have recorded, some noble and inspiring last words; but all that now came to his shattered mind were fragments of old fairy tales, curse words, obscenities, babble. He thought he might be weeping. He couldn’t tell.
He was vaguely aware of the Linesmen going through the bodies around him. He could see them out of the corner of his eye. Squat little men in their grays and blacks stepping dismissively over the bodies of heroes! They stopped sometimes and knelt down to use their dull-bladed boot-knives to silence murmuring throats. They went like busy doctors from patient to patient. The General’s men lay helplessly. A bad way to end. A bad way for it all to end.
Would the Linesmen notice the General, still breathing? Maybe, maybe not. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
One more section of the architecture of his mind crumbled to dust, and for a moment he entirely forgot who he was, and he became preoccupied with his memories. He’d been a leader of some kind? He’d had some great final duty, which had brought him up into these damned cold ugly mountains; he forgot what it was. For some reason, he remembered instead a fairy tale his nursemaid had told him, many, many years ago back in green Glen Lily, in Ulver County: a tale regarding a prince who set out from his father’s red castle bearing nothing but a sword and, and, an owl, in search of the princess, who . . . no, bearing a message for the princess, who . . . the princess was a prisoner, chained in a tower, ebony-skinned, beautiful black hair to her waist, bare-naked . . .
A Linesman stepped over him—black boots momentarily blocked out the stars. The Linesman’s black trousers were worn and smeared gray with dust. The Linesman shouted something, something the General couldn’t understand, and moved on, not looking down.
The General clutched at the scattering dust of himself and recalled that this was not the first time he’d lain outside at night, under the stars, among the dead, bleeding and dying. Indeed, a night like this had been the making of him, once. As a young soldier he had been wounded in the shoulder by a lucky shot at the battle of A . . . at the battle of . . . at the field of gorse and briars, by the stone bridge. He had been left for dead in the first retreat and spent the night among the dead, too weak to walk, strong enough only to hold his jacket to his shoulder and pray for the slow bleed to stop, and to watch the cold stars. He’d been very young then. There he had learned to dedicate his soul and his strength to a bright distant purpose, to lay his course by a remote star. He had learned to be heroic and not to fear death. So he’d told too many generations of fresh young recruits.
The recruits hadn’t been so fresh or so young, or so many, in recent years—not since the horrors of Black Cap Valley. Not since all was lost. Not since the Line drove them into the hills and the woods and the back alleys like bandits, not since the army of the Republic, reduced to a desperate fierce remnant of its former glory, became a matter of secret meetings and disguises and dead-drops and midnight explosions and code words and signals. He remembered! No—he remembered only the codes, not why they were sent. Matters of great weight and significance hidden in the lines of humble everyday domestic correspondence—The children are growing tall and strong meant The weapons are ready to be retrieved—he struggled and grasped at codes and symbols. . . .
He remembered they sent messages encoded, among other things, in fairy tales, in letters that purported to be addressed to much-loved children safe at home. He remembered writing, Once upon a time, the Prince of Birds looked down from the Mountain over his kingdom and was unhappy. It meant something secret; it conveyed maybe good news, more likely bad, because all the news had been bad for ten years; he couldn’t remember what.
He tried to recall the names of some of his men—many of whom, perhaps all of whom, lay scattered on the mountainside around him, their own minds ruined and crumbling like his own. No names came to him. What came to him instead were the faces of three Presidents, three of his masters: Bellow, big-bearded, who was once only Mayor of Morgan, who drafted the Charter; Iredell, little wiry brilliant man, who was the first to sign it at Red Valley; stout but simpleminded Killbuck, who in retrospect was perhaps a sign of the Republic’s rapid decline.
But his memory of Bellow’s bearded face was perhaps confused with an illustrated king from the storybook his nursemaid read to him.
The noise kept sounding in his head, and he forgot Bellow forever. The noise ricocheted madly back and forth against the chamber of his skull like a bullet. The meaninglessness of the noise was its worst quality. He forgot his battle standards. He recalled, then forgot again, the stables at Glen Lily, where he first learned to ride and read and hold a sword. The stables were long since ground under by the Line. He recalled with sudden sickness that he had a daughter of his own, whom he had not seen for years, for all these years of hard campaigning, of hiding in the hills, of raiding and harrowing the Line. He wrote letters; she always waited for him to come home. Now he never would.
He’d sent her a last letter, from the foot of the mountains, just days ago: there was something very important in it, but he couldn’t recall what. Something about these mountains and these stones on which his mind now bled. He recalled that he signed and sealed it with a reckless wild abandon. He said things it was dangerous to say. He had set years of discretion and secrecy aside. He remembered thinking, Secrecy is behind us now. If we win through, the earth will shake. He forgot why.
He remembered, terribly vividly, the stink of Black Cap Valley, after the battle, its mud and vile flowers black and glistening, slick with red blood. One of his sons had died there. He forgot where the other one had died.
A Linesman stepped back over him, knocking his head sideways, so that he could no longer see the stars. He saw instead the shuffling legs of the Linesmen and the body of Lieutenant Deerfield. Deerfield! A good man. He wore trappers’ furs, not his old red uniform, because the days of splendid red uniforms were long gone. He was pale and dead.
Behind Deerfield, the General saw the body of Kan-Kuk, the stone-caster, the Hill-man, his Hill-man. His ally among the First Folk. There were a great many secrets about Kan-Kuk in his last letter. The General had forgotten them all.
Kan-Kuk’s naked bone-white body jerked and flopped like a landed fish. Kan-Kuk’s long skinny arms flailed like stripped branches in a storm. Kan-Kuk tore at his wild mane and ripped away greasy black fistfuls. That struck the General as strange; the General was fairly sure that he himself was still, very still. Perhaps the mind-bombs affected different species of person in different ways. Or perhaps the General himself, without knowing it, was also thrashing and flailing and screaming. Everything was very numb; he couldn’t be sure.
The General wondered if Kan-Kuk would rise again. It was said of the Folk, and perhaps it was only a fairy tale, like the story of the princess and the prince and the mountain . . . It was said of the Folk that when they died, and were buried, they rose again, in due season, immortal, like a song or a dream—or like the masters of Gun and Line. If Kan-Kuk were to be buried, and to rise again from the red earth, would his mind recover, or was Kan-Kuk ruined now, too? His fine, strange mad mind, now ruined.
It was at Kan-Kuk’s request that the General had gone on this last mad mission. Those were the terms of their deal. People had said for years that the General was mad to keep a Hill-man around like that, and maybe they were right. Now the General remembered what Kan-Kuk promised: that his people had a secret. A Song, Kan-Kuk had called it, though the General had thought: a weapon. A weapon to bring peace. An alliance between resolution and atonement for peace and goodwill, that oldest dream. The General would have tended his garden in his old age, grown roses perhaps. Kan-Kuk’s people had been ready to share it at last, to forgive, again, at last. There was a cave, there was a cave in the red navel of the world, there was drumming, there was the City of the First Folk, for they, too, were fallen from greatness. Down in the dark, fallen. There were, so Kan-Kuk whispered, to have been tests of courage and virtue and . . .
Now a song sounded in the General’s head, but it was a terrible one, not peaceful, not a cure for anything, but a gathering torrent of mad noise. Kan-Kuk! The General remembered Kan-Kuk and then forgot again, forever. Kan-Kuk and Deerfield. The names of Putnam and Holmes occurred to him as well. The echo in his mind grew and thundered rhythmically over and over like horses’ hooves. The names of Halley and Orange surfaced from the sinking ruin of his mind, and he remembered that Orange was once from the Twenty-third Regiment of the Third Army of the Republic, before the Third Army was lost at Black Cap. The echo of horses; it was tearing him apart, but for a moment it made him think of escape—he imagined that the horses were thundering an escape, thundering new hope. He could escape one more time; he could regroup. Regroup what? He forgot. The black boots of a Linesman stopped in front of him. The echo was not rhythmic—the horses that galloped across his mind were limping, falling, screaming. What shattered the soul, what set the brain’s delicate architecture bleeding and crumbling, was that horrid senseless arrhythmia. The General recalled and forgot the names of Holmes and Mason and Darke. A Linesman bent down and gripped Kan-Kuk’s beard and forced back the hinge of his long white neck and silenced him with a boot-knife. (Would he rise again?) The rhythm of the Linesmen’s noisemaker was not horses, of course, nothing so natural; it was the sound of Engines. The Linesmen, being already mad, were inured to it, but to the General it sounded out madness, worse than death. He recalled that the battle standard of his first regiment, which he made the standard of this desperate rump of the Republic, after Black Cap, bore two eagles. The eagle was a noble bird. He recalled a story regarding a prince who set out from his father’s castle of red rock into the mountains with nothing to accompany him but an eagle, no course to follow but the course the eagle’s black wings marked across the blue sky. He couldn’t recall why, and it frustrated him. Begin again: Once upon a time and it was the last time I went into the mountains to find . . .
That one.
Where?
There.
Right. I see him.
Private (Third Class) Porter, soldier of the Line in the First Army of the Gloriana Engine, stood over the body and poked it with his foot. An elderly fellow, weather-beaten, dark-skinned but with a startlingly silver-white beard. His eyes, which stared blankly up into Porter’s own, were a deep vibrant green, which Porter disliked. The pupils had collapsed almost to pinpricks. That often happened with the mind-bombs. The old man didn’t respond to a poke in the ribs or when Porter nudged his head from side to side with the blood-slick sole of his boot.
Still breathing, just about, but the mind was gone. Porter’s back ached after the long chase through the mountains, and he couldn’t be bothered to bend down to finish the old man off.
Already dead,
Porter lied.
Private (First Class) Copper looked around him. The hollow was strewn with bodies. Good. That’s all of them, then. All gone. Might as well do that savage, too, shut him up. Soap.
Private (Second Class) Soap drew his knife, yanked the jerking, shrieking Hillfolk fellow up by his mane, and took care of business.
Porter gave the old man another poke with his boot. Who do you think they were?
Copper shrugged. No one important. Who cares? They’re dead now.
Wonder what they were doing up here.
Trespassing,
Copper said. Where they didn’t belong.
Odd-looking bunch, though.
Shut up,
Copper said. Not our place to ask questions.
Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.
Been a long night,
Copper said. I want to get back to bed. Leave these idiots for the crows.
BOOK ONE
OUT TO THE EDGE OF THINGS
CHAPTER 1
THE DEPARTURE
~ 1889 ~
One fine spring afternoon, when the roses in the gardens of the Koenigswald Academy were in bloom, and the lawns were emerald green, and the river was sapphire blue, and the experimental greenhouses burst with weird life, the professors of the Faculty of Psychological Sciences met in the Faculty’s ancient August Hall, in a handsomely appointed upstairs library, where they stood in a little group drinking sherry and saying their good-byes to their colleague Dr. Lysvet Alverhuysen—Liv to her friends—who was, against all reasonable advice, determined to go west.
You’ll fall behind, Dr. Alverhyusen.
Dr. Seidel shook his head sorrowfully. Your work will suffer. There are no faculties of learning in the West, none at all. None worth the name, anyway. Can they even read? You won’t have access to any of the journals.
Yes,
Liv said. I believe they can read.
Seidel overstates his argument,
Dr. Naumann said. "Seidel is known for overstating his arguments. Eh, Seidel? But not always wrong. You will lose touch with science. You will rip yourself from the bosom of the scientific community."
He laughed to show what he thought of the scientific community. Handsome and dark of complexion, Dr. Naumann was the youngest of the Faculty’s professors and liked to think of himself as something of a radical. He was engaged in a study of the abnormal or misdirected sexual drive, which he regarded as fundamental to all human activity and belief.
Liv smiled politely. I hope you’ll write to me, gentlemen. There are mail coaches across the mountains, and the Line will carry mail across the West.
Hah!
Dr. Naumann rolled his eyes. I’ve seen the maps. You’re going to the edge of the world, Dr. Alverhuysen. Might as well hope to send mail to the moon, or the bottom of the sea. Are there mail coaches to the moon?
They’re at war out there,
Dr. Seidel said. It’s very dangerous.
He twisted his glass nervously in his hands.
Yes,
Liv agreed. So I’ve heard.
There are wild men in the hills, who are from what I hear only very debatably human. I saw a sketch of one once, and I don’t mind admitting it gave me nightmares. All hair and knuckles, it was, white as death, and painted in the most awful way.
I won’t be going into the hills, Doctor.
"The so-called civilized folk are only marginally better. Quite mad. I don’t make that diagnosis lightly. Four centuries of war is hardly the only evidence of it. Consider the principal factions in that war, which are from what I hear not so much political entities as religious enthusiasms, not so much religion as forms of shared mania. . . . Cathexis, that is, a psychotic transference of responsibility from themselves to objects that—"
Yes,
she said. Perhaps you should publish on the subject.
If she listened to another moment of Dr. Seidel’s shrill voice, she was in danger of having her resolve shaken.
Will you excuse me, Doctors?
She darted quickly away, neatly interposing Dr. Mistler between herself and Seidel.
It was stuffy and dusty in the library; she moved closer to the windows, where there was a breeze and the faint green smell of the gardens, and where Liv’s dear friend Agatha from the Faculty of Mathematics was making conversation with Dr. Dahlstrom from the Faculty of Metaphysics, who was terribly dull. As she approached, Agatha waved over Dahlstrom’s shoulder and her eyes said, Help! Liv hurried over, sidestepping Dr. Ley, but she was intercepted by Dr. Ekstein, the head of her own Faculty, who was like a looming stone castle topped with a wild beard, and who took both her hands in his powerful ink-stained hands and said: "Dr. Alverhuysen—may I abandon formality—Liv—will you be safe? Will you be safe out there? Your poor late husband, rest his soul, would never forgive me if I allowed . . ."
Dr. Ekstein was a little sherry-drunk and his eyes were moist. His life’s work had been a system of psychology that divided the mind into contending forces of thesis and antithesis, from the struggle of which a peaceful synthesis was derived, the process beginning again and again incessantly. Liv considered the theory mechanical and unrealistic.
I have made my decision, Doctor,
she reminded him. I shall be quite safe. The House Dolorous is in neutral territory, far from the fighting.
Poor Bernhardt,
Dr. Ekstein said. "He would haunt me if anything were to happen to you—not, of course, that I would expect that it would, but if anything were to happen—"
Dr. Naumann insinuated himself. "Hauntings? Here? Sounds like you’ll miss all the real excitement, Dr. Alverhuysen."
Ekstein frowned down on Naumann, who kept talking: "On the other hand, you won’t be bored—oh my no. No place out there is neutral for long. No matter how remote your new employer may be, soon enough you-know-what will come knocking."
"I’m afraid I don’t know, Dr. Naumann. I understand things are very turbulent out there. Excuse me, I must—"
"Turbulent! A good word. If you cut into the living brain of a murderer or sex criminal, you might say what you saw was turbulent. I mean the forces of the Line."
Oh.
She tried to look discreetly around Dr. Ekstein’s mass for sight of Agatha. Well, isn’t that for the best? Isn’t the Line on the side of science and order?
Dr. Naumann raised an eyebrow, which Liv found irritating. Is that right? Consider Logtown, which they burned to the ground because it harbored Agents of the Gun; consider the conquest of Mason, where . . .
He rattled off a long list of battles and massacres.
Dr. Alverhuysen looked at him in surprise. You know a lot about the subject.
He shrugged. I take an interest in their affairs. A professional interest, you might say.
I’m afraid I don’t follow their politics closely, Dr. Naumann.
You will. You will.
He leaned in close and whispered to her, "They’ll follow you, Liv."
She whispered back, Perhaps you should travel that way yourself, Philip.
Absolutely under no circumstances whatsoever.
He straightened again and consulted his watch. I shall be late for my afternoon Session!
He left his glass on a bookshelf and exited by the south stairs.
Unhealthy,
Ekstein said. Unhealthy interests.
He glanced down at Liv. Unhealthy.
Excuse me, Dr. Ekstein.
She stepped around him, exchanged a polite good luck, good luck to you, too, with a gray-haired woman whose name she forgot, passed through a cool breeze and shaft of dusty afternoon sunlight that entered through the oriel window, heard and for nearly the last time was delighted by the sound of the peacocks crying out on the lawns, and deftly linked arms with Agatha and rescued her from Professor Dahlstrom’s droning. Unfortunately, Agatha turned out to be a little too drunk and a little too maudlin, and did not share any of Liv’s nervous excitement. She blinked back tears and held Liv’s hand very tightly and damply and said, Liv—oh, Liv. You must promise you’ll come back.
Liv waved a hand vaguely. Oh, I’m sure I will, Agatha.
"You must come back soon."
In fact, she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to when she might return, and the demand rather annoyed her. She said, I shall write, of course.
To Liv’s relief then, Dr. Ekstein tapped on a glass for silence, and quickly got it, because everyone was by now quite keen to return to their interrupted afternoon’s work. He gave a short speech, which did not once mention where Liv was going or why, and rather made it sound as if she were retiring due to advanced senility, which was the Faculty’s usual procedure. Finally he presented her with a gift from the Faculty: a golden pocket watch, heavy and overly ornate, etched with sentimental scenes of Koenigswald’s mountains and pine forests and gardens and narrow high-peaked houses. The occasion was complete, and the guests dispersed by various doors and into the stacks of the library.
The Academy stood on a bend in the river a few miles north of the little town of Lodenstein, which was one of the prettiest and wealthiest towns of Koenigswald, which was itself one of the oldest and wealthiest and most stable and peaceful nations of the old and wealthy and stable and peaceful nations of the old East.
Six months ago, a letter had arrived at the Academy from out of the farthest West. It was battered and worn, and stained with red dust, sweat, and oil. It had been addressed to The Academy—Koenigswald—Of the Seven. Koenigswald’s efficient postal service had directed it to Lodenstein without too much difficulty. Of the Seven
was a strange affectation, initially confusing, until Dr. Naumann remembered that four hundred years ago, Koenigswald had—in an uncharacteristic fit of adventurism—been one of the Council of Seven Nations that had jointly sent the first expeditions West, over the World’s End Mountains, into what was then un-made territory. Perhaps that fact still meant something to the westerners; Koenigswald had largely forgotten it.
Strictly speaking, the letter was addressed not to Liv, but to a Mr. Dr. Bernhardt Alverhuysen, which was the name of her late husband, who was recently deceased; but her husband had been a Doctor of Natural History, and the letter sought the assistance of a Doctor of Abnormal Psychology, a title that more accurately described Liv herself. Therefore, Liv opened it.
Dear Dr. Alverhuysen,
I hope this letter finds you well. No doubt you are surprised to receive it. There is little commerce these days between the new world and the old. We do not know each other, and though I have heard great things of your Academy, I am not familiar with your work; my own House is in a very remote part of the world, and it is hard to keep up with the latest science; and therefore I write to you.
I am the Director of the House Dolorous. The House was founded by my late father, and now it has fallen into my care. We can be found on the very farthest western edge of the world, nestled in the rocky bosom of the Flint Hills, northwest of a town called Greenbank, of which you no doubt have not heard. West of us, the world is still not yet Made, and on clear days, the views from our highest windows over Uncreation are unsettled and quite extraordinary.
Are you an adventurous man, Dr. Alverhuysen?
We are a hospital for those who have been wounded in our world’s Great War. We take those who have been wounded in body, and we take those who have been wounded in mind. We do not discriminate. We are in neutral territory, and we ourselves are neutral. The Line does not reach out to the Flint Hills, and the agents of its wicked Adversary are not welcome among us. We take all who suffer, and we try to give them peace.
We have able field doctors and sawbones in residence, and we know how to treat burns and bullet wounds and lungs torn by poison gas. But the mind is something of a mystery to us. We are ignorant of the latest science. There are mad people in our care, and there is so little we can do for them.
Will you help us, Dr. Alverhuysen? Will you bring the benefit of your learning to our House? I understand that it is a long journey, rarely undertaken; but if you are not moved by the plight of our patients, then consider that we have all manner of mad folk here, wounded in ways that you will not find in the peaceful North—not least those who have been maddened by the terrible mind-shattering noise-bombs of the Line—and that your own studies may prosper in a House that provides such ample subject matter. If that does not move you, consider that our House is generously endowed. My father owned silver mines. I enclose a promissory note that will cover your travel by coach and by riverboat and by Engine of the Line; I enclose a map, and letters of introduction to all necessary guides and coachmen on this side of the World; and finally I enclose my very best wishes,
Yours in Brotherhood,
Director Howell, Jr., the House Dolorous.
She had shown the letter to her colleagues. They treated it as a joke. Out of little more than a spirit of perversity, she wrote back requesting further information. All winter she busied herself with teaching, with her studies, with the care of her own subjects. She received no reply; she didn’t expect to. On the first day of spring, rather to her own surprise, she wrote again, to announce that she had made her decision and that she would be traveling West at the first opportunity.
Now she couldn’t sleep. The golden watch ticked noisily at her bedside and she couldn’t sleep, and her head was full of thoughts of distance and speed. She’d never seen one of the Engines of the Line and could not picture what they looked like; but last year she had seen, in one of the galleries in town, an exhibition of paintings of the West’s immense vistas, its wide-open plains like skies or seas. Perhaps it was two years ago—Bernhardt had been alive. The paintings had been huge, wall-to-wall, mountains and rivers and tremendous skies, some blue and unclouded and others tempestuous. Forests and valleys. The panorama: that was what they painted in the West. Geography run wild and mad. There’d been several with bloody battles going on at the bottom of the frame: Fall of the Red Republic, or something like that, was especially horrible, with its storm clouds of doom clenched in the sky like sick hearts seizing, thousands of tiny men struggling in a black valley, battle standards falling in the mud. They always seemed to be fighting about something, out in the West. There’d been half a dozen depicting nature bisected by the Line; high arched rail bridges taming the mountains or railroads shaving the forests away; the black paint blots that were the Engines seeming to move, to drag the eye across the canvas. There were even a few visions of the very farthest West, where the world was still entirely uncreated and full of wild lights and lightning storms and land that surged like sea and strange beautiful demonic forms being born in the murk. . . . Liv remembered how Agatha had shuddered and held herself tight. She remembered, too, how Bernhardt had held her in his heavy tweed-clad arm, and droned about Faculty politics, and so she had not quite lost herself in the paintings’ wild depths.
Now those scenes rushed through her mind, blurred with speed and distance. The House was a world away. She could not picture traveling by Line, but she imagined herself leaving town by coach, and the wheels clattering into sudden unstoppable motion, and the horses rearing, and the coach lurching so that all her settled life spilled out behind her in a cascade of papers and old clothes and . . .
It was not an unpleasant sensation, she decided; it was as much exhilaration as terror. Nevertheless she needed to sleep, and so she took two serpent-green drops of her nerve tonic in a glass of water. As always, it numbed her very pleasantly.
Liv settled her affairs. Her rooms were the property of the Faculty—she ensured that they would be made available to poor students during her absence. She consulted a lawyer regarding her investments. She dined almost nightly with Agatha and her family. She canceled her subscriptions to the scholarly periodicals. The golden watch presented an unexpected problem, because of course her clothes had no pockets suitable for such a heavy ugly thing, nor was she sufficiently unsentimental to leave it behind; eventually she decided to have a chain made and wear it around her neck, where it beat against her heart.
She visited her subjects and made arrangements for their future. The Andresen girl she transferred into Dr. Ekstein’s care; the girl’s pale and fainting neurasthenic despair might, she hoped, respond well to Ekstein’s gruff cheerfulness. The Fussel boy she bequeathed to Dr. Naumann, who might find his frequent sexual rages interesting. With a satisfying stroke of her pen, she split the von Meer twins—who suffered from cobwebbed and romantic nightmares—sending one girl to Dr. Ekstein and the other to Dr. Lenkman. An excellent idea, as they only encouraged each other’s hysteria. She wondered why she hadn’t done it years ago! The Countess Romsdal had nothing at all wrong with her, in Liv’s opinion, other than being too rich and too idle and too self-obsessed; so she thought Dr. Seidel might as well humor her. She gave Wilhelm and the near-catatonic Olanden boy to Dr. Bergman. She sent sweet little Bernarda, who was scared of candles and shadows and windows and her husband, to a rest cure in the mountains. As for Maggfrid . . .
Maggfrid came crashing into her office, late in the afternoon. He never understood to knock. The shock made her spill ink on her writing desk. He was in tears. Doctor—you’re leaving?
She put down her pen and sighed. Maggfrid, I told you I was leaving last week. And the week before that.
They told me you were leaving.
"I told you I was leaving. Don’t you remember?"
He stood there dumbly for a moment, then hurried over and began to mop at her desk with his sleeve. She put her hand on his arm to stop him.
He was nearly a giant. His huge hands were scarred from a multitude of small accidents—he didn’t have the sense to look after himself properly. Someone who didn’t know him might have found him terrifying—in fact, he was gentle and as loyal as a dog. Maggfrid was her first subject and, in a manner of speaking, her oldest friend.
Maggfrid’s condition was congenital. His own blood had betrayed him. Sterile, he was the last of a line of imbeciles. Liv had found him sweeping the stone floors of the Institute in Tuborrhen, where she herself had spent some years in a high white-walled room, in a fragile state, after the death of her mother. He’d been kind to her then. Later, when she was stronger, he’d been happy to be her test subject; he was always simple and eager to please. He would answer questions for hours with his brow furrowed with effort. He bore even the more intrusive physical examinations without complaint. There were three ugly scars across his bald head, and a burn from a faulty electroplate, but he didn’t mind. She couldn’t heal him—she had quickly realized he was beyond mending—but he’d provided subject matter for a number of successful monographs, and in return she’d found him work sweeping the floors of August Hall.
Doctor—
You’ll be fine, Maggfrid. You hardly need me anymore.
He began mopping up the ink again. Maggfrid, no . . .
She couldn’t stop him. She watched him work. He scrubbed with intense determination. It occurred to her that she could get up, walk away, lock the office behind her, and he might remain standing there, implacably scrubbing in the darkness. It was a sad thought.
Besides, she might need a bodyguard; she would need someone to carry her bags. It was even possible that fresh air, adventure, new scenery would do him good. It was certainly what she needed.
She put a hand on his arm again. Maggfrid: Have you ever wanted to travel?
It took nearly a minute for his big pale face to break into a grin; and then he lifted her from behind her desk and spun her like a child, until the room was a blur and she laughed and told him to let her down.
She spent her very last day at the Faculty on the banks of the river. She sat next to Agatha on an outstretched blanket. They fed the swans and discussed the shapes of clouds. Their conversation was a little forced, and Liv wasn’t at all sorry when it drifted away, and for a while they sat in silence.
You’ll have to a buy a gun,
Agatha said quite suddenly.
Liv turned to her, rather shocked, to see that Agatha was smiling mischievously.
You’ll have to buy a gun, and learn to ride a horse.
Liv smiled. I shall come back quite battle-scarred.
With terrible stories.
I shall never speak of them.
Except when drunk, when you’ll tell us all stories of the time you fought off a dozen wild Hillfolk bandits.
Two dozen! Why not?
No student will ever dare defy you again.
I shall walk with a limp, like an old soldier.
You will—
Agatha fell silent.
She reached into her bag and took out a small red pocket-sized pamphlet, which she handed solemnly to Liv.
According to its cover, it was A Child’s History of the West, and it had been published in somewhere called Morgan Town, in the year 1856.
Its pages were yellow and crumbling—hardly surprising, given that it was several years older than Liv herself. Its frontispiece was a black-and-white etching of a severe-looking gentleman in military uniform, with dark features, a neat white beard, a nose that could chop wood, and eyes that were somehow at once fierce and sad. He was apparently General Orlan Enver, First Soldier of the Red Valley Republic and the author of the Child’s History. Liv had never heard of him.
I’m afraid it’s the only book I could find that says anything about where you’re going at all,
Agatha said.
This is from the library.
Agatha shrugged. Steal it.
Agatha!
Really, Liv, it’s hardly the time for you to worry about that sort of thing. Take it! It may be useful. Anyway, we can’t send you off with nothing but that horribly ugly watch.
Agatha stood. Be safe,
she said.
I will.
Agatha turned quickly and walked off.
Grunting, Maggfrid heaved up Liv’s heavy cases onto the back of the coach. The horses snorted in the cold morning air and stamped the gravel of August Hall’s yard. The Faculty was still sleeping——apart from the coach and the horses and a few curious peacocks, the grounds were empty. Liv and Agatha embraced as the coachman stood by, smoking. Liv hardly noticed herself boarding the vehicle—she’d taken four drops of her nerve tonic to ensure that fear would not sway her resolve, and she was therefore somewhat distant and numb.
The coachman cracked the whip and the horses were away. The die was cast. Liv’s heart pounded. Balanced on her lap were the Child’s History of the West, the ugly golden watch, and a copy of the most recent edition of the Royal Maessenburg Journal of Psychology. She found all three of them rather comforting. Maggfrid sat beside her with a frozen smile on his face. Gravel crunched, the lindens went rushing past, the Faculty’s tall iron gates loomed like a mountain. Agatha gathered up her skirts and ran a little way after the coach, and Liv waved and in doing so managed to drop her copy of the Journal, which fluttered away behind her down the path. The coachman offered to stop, but she told him keep going, keep going!
CHAPTER 2
A GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE
Riverboat, due south from Humboldt, through night and red rushes, through neutral territories. Long-legged herons stalked the banks. The riverboat came as a roaring invader into their silent muddy world: its vast dark weight and the golden light and swirling thumping piano music pouring from its windows sent the birds panicking into flight like shots had been fired. . . .
But it was only a gambling boat, a private enterprise chartered out of the Baronies of the Delta, three decks of music and drinking and whores and con men and business travelers and suckers. It carried no cannon. Its great paddle wheel clattered and splashed. (The Folk who turned it were discreetly locked away below.) It was painted scarlet and blue, rimmed with brass, flying a variety of flags; it was quite pretty in the torchlight. A young man in pinstripes vomited over the side while his girlfriend picked his pocket. Six blond and prosperous farmers staggered out of the bar arm in arm, singing a song about fighting. The floor of the bar was bright with spilt whiskey and broken glass, and the pitch and yaw of the boat sent a constant whirl of men and women around and around in drunken circles about the roulette wheel and the dice tables and the knots of men clutching tightly to their cards and their little heaps of coins and worn, sweaty banknotes.
Everyone was talking much too loudly about sex, about business, about crime, about war—and about plans for when the War was over, which always got a laugh. A man with a quick mind and sharp hearing could have picked up valuable intelligence—and Creedmoor had a passably quick mind and the ears of a fox. But he was retired, and happily so, and so he shut his ears and let the babble wash over him. He liked to be among people; he liked the noises and smells of crowds. This wasn’t peace. There was no peace and there never would be. But it was close