'Bleak Expecations' by Mark Evans

In keeping with the chaotic nature of the Radio Four show on which this book is based, Mark Evans has written a novel which is more a series of sketches than a typical parody and I suspect that the style used owes much to his work on That Mitchell and Webb Look.

The story follows the unfortunate childhood of Pip Bin, a young man ripped from his home by an insane mother and a malevolent guardian, Mr Gently Benevolent, a name which, as Evans frequently notes, is touched with more than a hint of irony.

Given that Pip is assisted by a gentle and generous man called Skinflint Parsimonious, you soon gain an impression of Mark Evans' thinking.

Pip is sent to a brutal school under the gaze of a headmaster known as Mr Hardthrasher - the first of many of the Hardthrasher clan to appear in the book. Under pain of imminent death and via a meeting with his sister, he soon escapes with a new found best friend Harry Biscuit.

Harry is, in common parlance, a few spoons short of a cutlery set and he is used as a device whenever Mark Evans is short of something to distract the characters. In fact, his lack of common sense is somewhat overused to get the characters back into their latest scrape with Gently Benevolent or one of the Hardthrasher family.

Not that the direction or plot of the book are overly important. It is more of a loose set of vaguely related Victorian scenes with a few deliberate anachronisms thrown in occasionally.

There is plenty of hilarity and I found myself laughing on quite a few occasions but the book lacks a consistent plot and sometimes has a slightly clever-clever feel.

Worth a look but a bit inconsistent in quality.

'Nexus' by Ramez Naam

I feel obliged to give this book a good write up given that Ramez Naam has been instrumental in the development of Internet Explorer. Indeed, I wonder whether this review will disappear from the web if proves to be too critical.

Censorship, in all its ignoble forms, is one of the central concerns of Nexus, a book which explores our increasing freedom of communication and the consequences thereof. The Nexus referred to in the title is a drug, which in the near future (this book is set in 2040) will allow users to gain complete mutual telepathy within a small group.

As with most new drugs, it is initially dismissed as a fringe interest. In time, Nexus comes to worry the authorities as the implications of allowing such open access to other people's minds catches up with them.

A free thinking academic named Kaden Lane (excellent strange near future sci fi name) is one of the main promoters of this drug in the name of free exchange of information. As a consequence, there is a government organisation which is on the hunt for him and his group.

The agent assigned with tracking Lane is a young woman by the name of Samantha Catarnares, who follows him with the ruthless efficiency of a technologically enhanced mind and body.

The book then spends a good two thirds of its length playing on the difference in philosophies of Kade (the hopeful idealist) and Sam (the cynical realist) as they wrestle with each other over how Nexus could be used. Their journey takes them to Thailand, via a complex series of political intrigues involving the Chinese government, where they spend much of their time either shooting people or talking to Buddhist monks.

Indeed, many of the chapters in Thailand mention Buddhism or Buddhist ideas so often that it starts to feel at times like reading a religious pamphlet. Nevertheless, this is interspersed with some violent and well written fight scenes and some interesting technological wars going on beneath the very human street fights.

The overarching narrative is the threat of a coming war between those who embrace the change that Nexus offers and those who believe it would fundamentally change the nature of humanity. Kade and Sam's friends essentially line up behind them and fight it out until nearly all of them die. Naam sends in the odd defection here and the occasional morally grey character there to keep the reader guessing.

In fact, whilst many of the minor characters are well thought out, almost none of them actually drive the drive the plot forward particularly. Usually, Naam relies on a big explosion or a long, deep conversation to hold the reader's interest.

It is a science fiction thriller which dares to pause and ask bigger questions about the ethics of technological progress. Yet, for all that, Nexus does read like an odd combination of an advert for Google and a Buddhist Monastery.

A diverting science fiction that provides plenty of entertainment if not much depth.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the image of the front cover used in this blog and will remove it at the request of the rights holder.