Friday, June 20, 2014

Book Review: The Islanders

Christopher Priest
2011

Awards: Campbell

Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –



The Islanders has a clever and unique set up: it is written in the form of a travel guidebook. It is a guide to the Dream Archipelago, a vast and diverse collection of fictional islands ringing the equator of a fictional planet.



It should be explained that, in addition to the Dream Archipelago, the planet has two continental land masses—one at each pole. The primary powers on the northern polar continent (Faiandland and the Glaund Republic) have been at war with each other for the past three hundred years, and, by mutual consent, they have been fighting that war almost entirely on the southern polar continent, so as not to destroy too much of their homelands.



Sitting as they do between the two polar continents, the islands of the Archipelago are necessarily affected to varying degrees by the continental wars. But they try to stay as uninvolved and independent as they can, relying on a long-standing Covenant of Neutrality.



No one knows exactly how many islands there are, or where they all are, or what all of their real names are, or if they even all have names. Part of this is because of (sometimes purposefully) imperfect record-keeping on the part of the inhabitants, and part of this is because of planetary temporal and locational distortions that make accurate mapping impossible.



The best one can do, then, if one wants to create a guide to the Archipelago, is to write a selective, anecdotal directory like this book. It gives a sampling of some of the islands, one chapter per island, in alphabetical order.



The guidebook treats each island differently. Some islands have very short chapters, with their history, geography, and governance described in a relatively straightforward gazetteer way. Other islands are described less traditionally, in the form of a letter or memoir about a particular time or incident by a resident or visitor.



What this means is that the book ends up being a series of sketches, vignettes, and short stories, rather than a single narrative tale. Some islands’ stories stand completely alone, and some have weaker or stronger connections to others.



On the plus side, this format gives Priest an opportunity to demonstrate his undeniable creativity. Each island allows him to explore a new plot line or setting or character, in as much or as little detail as he wants. Each island is also a chance to momentarily freeze the timeline at whatever point he wants.



Because the islands' chapters are organized alphabetically, the stories have a sort of dreamlike temporal disjointedness. And it means that the connections between different islands pop up somewhat randomly, adding unexpected richness to earlier stories.



Some of my particular favorite themes and stories:

  • The thrymes of Aubrac: the thryme is an unassuming-appearing insect whose lethal venom at first makes its home island uninhabitable to any other form of life. It is eventually supposedly eradicated and its island is turned into the Archipelago’s silicon hub, but the tenacious thrymes keep finding ways of popping back up.

  • The towers of Seevl: The island is dotted with mysterious ancient towers that seem to exude powers of evil mental suggestion. The towers are investigated by a scientific team in a story that has strong Lovecraftian echoes.

  • Dryd Bathurst, painter of epics: Bathurst is not only a great artist but also a notorious rogue. As we progress from island to island, we seem to keep just missing him as he is forced by jealous husbands and irate fathers to flee to somewhere else.

The down side of the semi-connected short-story format is that it ends up making the book as a whole feel disjointed and unresolved.

                                                                                              

As a rule, I prefer novels to short stories. I like a plot I can really sink my teeth into. I am disappointed when a good story ends just when I’m getting into it and I have to switch to another. The guidebook format of The Islanders necessarily makes it a collection of short, scattered sketches, with no time to get into the specificity or character development that would bring more depth to them. I was often left with frustrating unanswered questions: What was in those paintings? What was that character’s job? What were that famous novelist’s books all about, anyway?



The short chapters made me feel negatively buffeted by the vicissitudes of Priest’s whims. The islands I liked the most seemed like they were left behind too soon, and the characters I found the least interesting—like a mime who is murdered in a small-town theater—were the ones that seemed to crop up the most often. And so many of the stories were centered around artists—novelists, theater performers, and installation artists in particular—that it actually got tiresome, and I was wishing for a couple more stories about scientists or politicians.



One more minor thing that bothered me was the way the largest cities on the islands were often just the name of the island plus “City” or “Town.” The largest city on Sentier is Sentier City; the largest city on Siff is Siff Town; and so on and on with Emmeret Town, Muriseay Town, Derril City, etc. If we did that at the same rate in real life, we’d have Hawaii Town, Cuba Town, Ireland City, and Japan City.

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