Six Degrees of Separation: Ghost Cities

Apologies for typing in the wrong date – and posting on Friday instead of the first Saturday of the month. However, it’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. The starter book this month is:

Ghost Cities by Siang Lu

This novel won the most recent Miles Franklin Award and is inspired by China’s empty megacities. It sounds excellent. I’m going to riff on the topic of cities for my six degrees this time, moving to another interesting city…

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling

This cli-fi novel is set in the near future in 2049. People who can are migrating to cooler climes. America’s uber-rich live in a floating city, currently moored off Boston. Rose has struck lucky to get a job there, and her boss Damien has promised to get her mum over to the city if Rose will undertake a mission to the North for him. She’ll go to the camp where she’ll join a small band of hostesses there for the managers building a new enclave at Dominion Lake in Canada; her job to look after Meyer, a famous architect, and report back on him. That’s the main strand in this interesting novel. Another floating city is in:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash is a novel of speculative fiction originally published in 1992 – and sadly, in these days, Neal Stephenson’s satiric vision of 21st century USA is appearing more prescient every day. The action revolves around the Black Sun, a metaverse nightclub where Hiro, YT, Juanita and Da5id. When Da5id tries a new drug called Snow Crash, it fries his brain, and the others have a quest to find out where it came from which takes them at one stage to the ‘Raft’ a floating city where they guys must rescue Juanita who was kidnapped. This is perhaps the maddest spec fiction novel I’ve read. Another ‘mad’ city novel is:

Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne

Gunaratne’s gritty 2018 debut still has, IMHO, the best character-fitting dialogue ever, (better even than Roddy Doyle’s). It blew me away when I read it. The novel follows three young men, second generation immigrants from different ethnic backgrounds; friends, hanging out to play football and listen to grime on the North London estate where they live. They’ll be moving on soon, school just about done, each hoping to take a different path that will take them away from the area. The boys’ experiences contrast with those of two first generation immigrants, Caroline a refugee from the Troubles in Belfast and Nelson from the Windrush generation. Long-suffering both, they’ve seen it all before and know to be scared. The tension mounts over an intense 48 hours after the killing of a British soldier nearby has sparked riots across the city. The five take turns to drive the narrative and the older characters’ stories flash back to their youth, when Caroline was leaving Belfast and Nelson setting sail from Monserrat for London. From the very real city to an alt-London that could be real…

Pagans by James Alistair Henry

Imagine that the Norman Conquest never happened in 1066. Great Britain continued to be an island divided by all the historic tribes you may have learnt about in your history lessons, dominated by the Saxons in the east and the Celts in the west, Scotland has gone its own way with a Nordic allicance. This is the case in this debut novel from seasoned screenwriter (Green Wing, Smack the Pony) James Alistair Henry, who weaves a police procedural into this world in which a Saxon princess who works in the police must form an alliance with a Celtic Detective from the Dumnonian Tribal Police when a Celtic terrorist is found nailed to a tree in Epping Forest. I can see this making a wonderfully entertaining and slightly dark TV series, it was easy to visualise as I read. Another Alt London can be found in:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

We have another contemporary police procedural set in London, but this version of London has a hidden undercurrent of magic crime which must be policed rather differently. They needs a Chief Inspector who is the last wizard in England who needs an apprentice. Enter rookie cop Peter Grant, who, having seen a ghost when sent to guard a body in Covent Garden, has the potential to become a wizard police officer. I was hooked before I had even read a page found it a brilliant and hilarious, wonderfully inventive read. Reminds me I must read more of this series, I’ve only managed two so far. Since we’ve turned from real cities to alt ones to magical ones, my final cjty is a mythical one.

Orphans of Eldorado by Milton Hatoum

This short novel in the Canongate Myths series was inspired by Amazonian fables of an enchanted city, and the search for Eldorado. The action centres around the Brazilian city of Manaus which, although situated way up the Amazon, is a major port. Arminto Cordovil is in love from afar with Dinaura, an orphan from up the river under the care of the Carmelites. Florita, his family housekeeper tells him stories about the Indian girls, that they want to walk into the river to seek the enchanted city. When Arminto’s father dieshe, now an orphan too, takes charge of the family shipping empire and plantations further up the Amazon. When the freighter, The Eldorado, crashes, Arminto sees it as an omen, and combined with his obsession for Dinaura, things start to get out of control, especially when he discovers the truth about his father’s business. Life up the Amazon at these faraway trading posts is vibrantly brought to life, for despite the remoteness, the river brings a diverse and rich mix of people to the steamy paradise, although the myth of Eldorado remains oblique. I would have loved to hear more about the mysterious indigenous people and their legends, but Arminto was a rather unreliable narrator, smitten as he was. Fans of Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez, will enjoy this little tale, and perhaps notice some parallels.

My links today have taken me from North America over to London, then back to South America for a mix of real, spec and mythical cities. Where will your six degrees take you?