Balzac's War (from the novel Veniss Underground) | |||||||
Jeff VanderMeer | |||||||
Tor, 303 pages | |||||||
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A review by Sean Wright
Balzac loves Jamie, and she loves him. They're on the run from the crèche, on the run from Balzac's elder brother, Jeffer, making
their way to the ruined city of Balthakazar, deep in the desert wastelands. Amongst the ruins, creatures lurk -- "anonymous
gray lizards waged war with coppery metal scorpions that pursued with mechanical implacability, their electric stingers singing
static to the wind. Con Ferman had shown them one cracked open: beneath the metal exterior lay the red meat of flesh and blood."
Such dynamic and poetic imagery is laced throughout the novella, a mix of beautiful prose and metaphor, wild inventive
imagination, and big emotional pulleys. You get winched, hauled and hung on high many a time with the twists and turns. The
plot is ingenious, and most certainly not based on any tired old formula that I know of. One is never sure what will happen
next in this story -- a great skill for any writer.
At the end of part one, we see Jamie and Balzac huddled over the dead flesh dog, with Jeffer staring down at them from "the lip
of the amphitheatre," and you think: trouble! But hold on a minute. VanderMeer has switched POV for the second part of the
story, now located in Jeffer's head, some 10 years into the future and 48 nights into the war for Balthakazar. Jeffer is the
leader of a depleted unit of soldiers which contains the badly injured Con Fegman, the menacing albino, Mindle, and Jeffer's
beloved brother, Balzac -- exhausted but still deeply in love with Jamie.
Here it comes. Wham! A Jamie who is now a flesh dog, a flesh dog that attacks the unit holed up in a booby-trapped building,
a flesh dog that they wound, and who Balzac ultimately has to kill.
Balzac and Jamie's conversation is frustratingly brilliant, with Balzac's flashbacks of their growing love, his thoughts and
emotions opened for all to see -- a painful but powerful device. And Jamie barely whispers her love, an impossible love now,
one which her husband is about to end with the gun in his trembling hand. Pathos or what?
Then wham! Change of POV. We are back with Jeffer, staring down at the stairwell, at Balzac's dead body, a hole in his back,
but a face fixed with a smile. Horror and sadness, as VanderMeer describes it in the closing page -- horror and sadness indeed.
Throughout Balzac's War, VanderMeer never compels exposition into scenes. Everything that should be clarified is clarified,
but only where such clarification works. He leaves plenty of mystery for the reader to be captivated and fascinated by his
character inventions, and provides enough explanation for satisfaction by story's end.
There are more subtle twists and turns, more subtle touches that are beautiful to read, to ponder. So go out and buy a copy
of Secret Life or Veniss Underground, which contain the novella. Balzac's War is very good, a must
read for any lover of weird, surreal, fantastic fiction. I know VanderMeer is spoken of in god-like tones by some in the
sci-fi, horror, fantasy community, a genius, a first class writer of the fantastic, and I can understand why readers and
writers alike may feel this, but for me Balzac's War has catapulted VanderMeer into something truly important, truly
monumental, truly magnificent: VanderMeer is a living literary flesh dog who contains within his imagination a visionary
heart, one which he lets free, to fly, to soar, looking down from on high at a vast panorama of possibilities, a borderless
vision that I for one shall be exploring more.
Sean Wright is three-time British Fantasy Award finalist, editor and publisher at Crowswing Books, and an outspoken voice at Lotus Lyceum, a multi-user open community of fantastic fiction. He's the author of books set in the mythic mindscape world called Jaarfindor. His vibrant blog is a port of call for many sff readers, writers and editors at www.seanwrightblog.blogspot.com |
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