My first substantive post shall be a review of the book I am currently reading, a steam punk science fiction novel, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. I'm not much of a critic, if the book were not something I greatly enjoyed I simply wouldn't write about it. Fortunately, this, the first I've ever read from Felix Gilman has been thoroughly entertaining in ways I didn't expect.
The Half-Made World is set in a fictional landscape not too unfamiliar to any lay fan of American history. The land has a civilized and completely "Made" world of the East, home to scholars, merchants, lawyers, and all things generally understood. The West on the other hand is a frontier not fully explored and far from conquered, "Half-Made." It is a vast landscape where pioneers have ventured among its fringes to seek out their fortune. Along with the pioneers came all of their human frailties and errors. Where this novel escapes the known and sets the mind aloft is in the relationship to the land and its spirit.
The frontier is an unknown. Through out history, we know that superstition and tales of the supernatural have often accompanied a need to understand the unknown. In ancient Greece, our ancestors would see lightning strike and assume it was the wrath of Zeus. Romanians have historically danced to a goddess of Thracian lore to bring rains. Mayan's would commit human sacrifice to maintain the order of the planets and prevent the world from descending into abyss. In the Half-Made World, the unknown is explained by the supernatural, but in Gilman's world, the supernatural is not a bunch of fairy tales or ghost stories to entertain children, nor is it a matter of poorly understood events being explained away by overly simplistic rationalizations. In the Half-Made West, the supernatural is real and all those who venture the frontier eventually get caught up in the war of its opposing forces.
As people ventured west, their presence awoke various demons as the world began to depart the Unmade. The strongest of these demons found humans to carry forth their will. With man came iron and steel, structure and progress. Demons embodied the monstrous Engines that were birthed and the Line was born. The Engines of the Line compelled their followers to build ever onward in an attempt to force into submission all things natural and remake the world in its coldly bureaucratic and structured image.
Their enemies were also born of demons. Wild men and women of the West; the gravest gamblers, murderers, thieves, and drunkards would occasionally be courted by a demon of the Lodge. This courtship would be completed though the union of an Agent to their Gun. These converted sinners would now be linked in spirit and intention through their new bond. An Agent of the Gun was more than human. While far outnumbered by Servants of the Line, the Agents of the Gun could channel superhuman strength and reflexes to accomplish their sponsors will. The demons of the Lodge, were bitterly angry and anarchistic. They used their agents ruthlessly as their hands to reach out into the Half-Made West and relentlessly strike that which they hated most, the inhuman uniformity and inevitable nature of the Line.
The neutral pioneers that inhabit the West are a hapless audience to the will of these demonic forces. They struggle to survive and with hope find some measure of success among the toil but most often exist as either voyeur or victim to the battles around them.
Finally there also exists the wild men of the West, the Hillfolk. They are the West's aboriginal inhabitants, enslaved by progress but far from understood. For those with a modicum of understanding, they are immortal beings, rising out of the dirt after death, and possessing unspoken knowledge of the land and its spirits. It is in this knowledge that key player's of this novel learn of a secret that will bring them all together.
The Half-Made World is viewed through the eyes of four key players. First, the reader is introduced to General Enver. In the prologue we see this valiant leader of the Red Valley Republic make his last stand against the Line. His republic stood for democracy, freedom, and respectful social participation in the new West. Now after many losing battles he finally falls victim to one of the Lines most terrible weapons, a noise bomb. The terrible device falls among its prey emitting the unholy sounds of the Line's demonic Engines. The sound scrambles the mind of its victims leaving them a helpless and incurable shell of a person. As the General's mind unfolds he loosely recalls secrets he held dear. A secret learned of the Hillfolk that could finally put an end to the horrible war. A secret now lost.
The General ends up in the care of the House Dolorous. A house of healing built upon ancient catacombs of the Hillfolk where a healing spirit symbiotically feeds off the pain of its residents and relieves them from their suffering. Unfortunately, the spirit is unable to cure the ruined minds of those suffering from the horrors of the Line's noise bombs. In hopes to help these suffering simpletons, the master of the house reaches out to Liv Alverhuysen, a scholar of psychology from the academic shelters of the East. It is through her eyes that we see the West as foreign and remarkable. This heroin is charged to heal her patients, one of whom is the General Enver.
General Enver's lost secret becomes known by the wars two opposing forces as well. Both the Line and the Gun realize that Enver's scattered mind may hold the secrets that could mean final victory in the war, or in the wrong hands, the end of their existence.
The Line empowers Lowry, a cautiously vain bureaucrat who wants nothing more than to raise his stature through his service to the Line. Lowry climbs rank through his ruthless pursuit of the General, subjugating everything and everyone in his path. The will of the Line is, after all, progress.
The Agents of the Gun reactivate an old veteran of the war, Creedmoor. He is charming, cunning, and inhumanly strong. His goals are to infiltrate the House Dolorous and kidnap the General for his master's of the Lodge. He is a willful agent though, at times spiting his demon masters. He is an end to their means but to what degree do they truly control him.
Gilman's world is revealed through the common pursuit of the General's great secret. Nothing short of the worlds future is at stake and with a goal so unknown, it seems that only journeying more deeply into the Unmade can an answer be found.
The Half-Made World is a romantic novel written with clear and appreciably archetypal characters.
Gilman delicately presents the world and it's enigmas carefully, walking a fine line between description and ether. The monstrous power manifested in the Engines of the Line and the smoke hazed greedy ambitions of the Gun are felt strongly without ever reading a precise account. This tease of information allows the reader to ride the journey in this all too familiar West while still maintaining sense of mystery that keeps the pages turning as one yearns for more.
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