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Wolfhound Century #3
Radiant State
Peter Higgins's superb and original creation, a perfect melding of fantasy, myth, SF and political thriller, reaches its extraordinary conclusion.
The Vlast stands two hundred feet tall, four thousand tons of steel ready to be flung upwards on the fire of atom bombs. Ready to take the dream of President-Commander of the New Vlast General, Osip Rizhin, beyond the bounds of this world.
But not everyone shares this vision. Vissarion Lom and Maroussia Shaumian have not reached the end of their story, and in Mirgorod a woman in a shabby dress carefully unwraps a sniper rifle. And all the while the Pollandore dreams its own dreams.
The Vlast stands two hundred feet tall, four thousand tons of steel ready to be flung upwards on the fire of atom bombs. Ready to take the dream of President-Commander of the New Vlast General, Osip Rizhin, beyond the bounds of this world.
But not everyone shares this vision. Vissarion Lom and Maroussia Shaumian have not reached the end of their story, and in Mirgorod a woman in a shabby dress carefully unwraps a sniper rifle. And all the while the Pollandore dreams its own dreams.
320 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 2015
10 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
Peter Higgins
44 books65 followersPeter Higgins is a British author. Wolfhound Century and Truth and Fear are published by Gollancz in the UK and Orbit in the US.
Peter's short fiction has appeared in Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 and Best New Fantasy 2, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Zahir and Revelation, and in Russian translation in Esli.
Peter's short fiction has appeared in Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 and Best New Fantasy 2, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Zahir and Revelation, and in Russian translation in Esli.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 31, 2015
Reading this third installment of Peter Higgins' Vlast trilogy, I honestly face a problem of depleted superlatives. First things first, a novel is an artifact made of words. And the words here are achingly beautiful, superbly chosen, expertly deployed.
Especially in the novel's first quarter or so, as we are being reintroduced to the characters and the plot is not yet in full gear, Higgins displays a virtuosity in his language that I have not read in any other fantasy novel (that is not a claim I make lightly). There are sentences you will want to read aloud to actually hear how they sound. There are sentences you will need to share with friends. There are sentences that will shock you with their beauty so much you will lose the thread of the narrative and so find that in the oddest way they fail, because you find yourself delectating upon them like poetry rather than reading them for how they service a story.
"The path down to the lake passes between the sea-green rye and scented hummocks of dried manure. In the bottom land the sorrel bloom is over, the crop coming on heavy and dark. Thick green heavy vegetable blood. Yeva comes out onto the yellow grass of the lake margin..."
When mere nature is described this sumptuously, the supernatural takes on an added luminescence. From the end of the same paragraph:
"There is a sunken city under the mirror-calm lake. An underwater world. In the village they keep water from the lake in their houses, in bottles and basins, and in the winter people go sliding face down on their bellies across the frozen surface, staring down, trying to see what is there.
"The soul of the people is forever striving to behold the sunken city of Litvozh."
When such overwhelming craft is brought to bear in a fantasy narrative, the effect is electric. We do not take the supernatural elements for granted. Instead, we see, hear and smell them along with Higgins' characters keenly, agonizingly, painfully, rather than taking them for granted. Higgins' triumph is that he has written a fantasy novel where you feel the unreality of the things he describes, the wrongness of them against the register of our perceived experience, and thus shocks us back to an awareness of the violation of the laws that govern our understanding.
This is our third encounter with the Vlast, Higgins' remarkable allegory of Russia. Whereas Wolfhound Century explored the psychology of the revolutionary moment, and Truth and Fear portrayed the revolution's moment of extreme challenge in the face of foreign aggression corresponding to the Nazi invasion of 1941, Radiant State drops us into the moment external challenges have been overcome and the revolutionary state looks forward, either with giddy delusion or profound horror, to the limitless exercise of power by its rulers on its people, indefinitely into the future.
Higgins imbues this moment of Stalinist omnipotence with science fiction elements that, while not entirely new to his project, give Radiant State a flavor decidedly different from what came before. In doing so he draws deeply on Russian traditions of cosmism and transhumanism that in actual history coexisted uneasily with early Bolshevik socialism. Higgins alludes to this in chapter front-notes, but in truth the themes are so deeply woven into his actual story these overt references to actual Russian history seem unnecessary.
The situation with which the story opens is thus one in which our Stalin avatar (yes, Osip Rizhin/Josef Kantor is more complicated than that as a character, but not for these purposes) has decided to pursue a breakneck space program using his newly developed nuclear arsenal and technologies identified in our world with the United States' Project Orion. The human and environmental costs of such a project receive extensive and deeply terrifying treatment, exciting some of Higgins' most unsettingly Lovecraftian moments.
For of course this program occurs both for the purpose of Rizhin's mad project of self-deification and in the context of Rizhin's war against the wilderness that Higgins' lovingly describes as "The Forest," which we are told several times is both of the world and larger than the world. Here, the Forest is the repository of magic, and a beauty that is more than human in every possible way.
It expresses the magnitude of Higgins' talent that at the same time he presents a parable of nature and progress on this immense palate, sometimes apparently setting science fiction itself at war with fantasy, we get some of the most arresting human characters and stories I have ever seen in a fantasy novel. By this point, Higgins' central figures--Kantor, Vissarion and Maroussia--are well-established and known quantities, and if anything they are a bit underdeveloped when read here in isolation from their earlier stories.
But the novel's secondary cast, particularly as concerning a mother who has been separated from her daughters by war and the woman who has kept them safe and cared for them, manages to be deeply affecting without being mawkish. Several scenes involving them in fact brought me to tears. Similarly, Higgins' accounts of those characters enmeshed in the state from which his heroes flee and which they fight are powerful stuff. And a darkly comic subplot involving a colony of clueless dissident intellectuals has much to say, not just about totalitarianism but human self-deception.
One of the open questions I have had reading Higgins' trilogy has been about the project itself as allegory. What Higgins writes about, no matter the place's name, is Russia. But this is a Russia without the Greek Orthodox Church, without tsarist autocracy and the imperial family synonymous with it, without the specific personalities--Peter and Catherine and Tolstoy and Lenin--whose successes and failures are visible in the country they left behind like a sculptor's thumbprint in the clay. So how can it be Russia? Oddly enough, this third volume presents the clearest idea how Higgins' allegory works. The great scandal at the novel's heart is the amazing joke about the relationship of the insurrectionist terrorist to the patriarchal dictator. No spoilers, but as a statement about the dynamic of totalitarianism and the utopian dreams that inspire it, Higgins' exploration of Kantor/Rizhin offers searing insights. And these insights would be impossible if what Higgins wrote about was a Russia with all the familiar historical furniture. Instead, his allegorical Russia actually does help us better understand the real one.
Plainly, I love Radiant State. However it does suffer a serious misstep, all the more agonizing because of how central it is to the story. The treatment of its central problem, that of "Papa" Rizhin's rule, is too straightforward. A beautifully set up sequence involving a holiday at a seaside dacha seems squandered by the too-easy solutions to several problems. That issue persists as the story shifts back to the Vlast's capital of Mirgorod. Having gone to the trouble of establishing the dispiriting and horrifying environment of a totalitarian state, sometimes in scenes with breathtaking realism, Higgins needs to present a climactic conflict equal to the world he has created. And in that he fails. Perhaps there are limits to his talent--in these pages toward the end I found myself wishing for a writer more interested in, and adept at, presenting the play-by-play suspense of authoritarian political intrigue, like the Hilary Mantel of "A Place of Greater Safety."
This problem is made worse by a reliance in the pivotal moments on psychic warfare of a type that would not be out of place in an X-Men comic in which the mutants are dispatching a villain like Mister Sinister or Apocalypse. This kind of storytelling is fine in itself, but considered in the context of the soaring heights much of the foregoing novel has reached, it's a bit jarring. And in the context of a deeply subtle and insightful examination of totalitarianism and its place in human society, it actually seems somewhat cheap.
But all this means merely that though Radiant State is not a perfect novel, it is still a great one. And even the absence of a definitive ending is welcome. For Peter Higgins' three Vlast books thus far put together do not have the heft of a single Joe Abercrombie tome. Higgins has certainly not exhausted my interest in this place and people. I for one possess near limitless curiosity about how this world came to be what it is, and would love prequels delving deep into the various histories here only hinted at--the Archipelago, the Lazarye, the Reasonable Empire. I want more. So long as it's this good, thousands of pages more, even.
Especially in the novel's first quarter or so, as we are being reintroduced to the characters and the plot is not yet in full gear, Higgins displays a virtuosity in his language that I have not read in any other fantasy novel (that is not a claim I make lightly). There are sentences you will want to read aloud to actually hear how they sound. There are sentences you will need to share with friends. There are sentences that will shock you with their beauty so much you will lose the thread of the narrative and so find that in the oddest way they fail, because you find yourself delectating upon them like poetry rather than reading them for how they service a story.
"The path down to the lake passes between the sea-green rye and scented hummocks of dried manure. In the bottom land the sorrel bloom is over, the crop coming on heavy and dark. Thick green heavy vegetable blood. Yeva comes out onto the yellow grass of the lake margin..."
When mere nature is described this sumptuously, the supernatural takes on an added luminescence. From the end of the same paragraph:
"There is a sunken city under the mirror-calm lake. An underwater world. In the village they keep water from the lake in their houses, in bottles and basins, and in the winter people go sliding face down on their bellies across the frozen surface, staring down, trying to see what is there.
"The soul of the people is forever striving to behold the sunken city of Litvozh."
When such overwhelming craft is brought to bear in a fantasy narrative, the effect is electric. We do not take the supernatural elements for granted. Instead, we see, hear and smell them along with Higgins' characters keenly, agonizingly, painfully, rather than taking them for granted. Higgins' triumph is that he has written a fantasy novel where you feel the unreality of the things he describes, the wrongness of them against the register of our perceived experience, and thus shocks us back to an awareness of the violation of the laws that govern our understanding.
This is our third encounter with the Vlast, Higgins' remarkable allegory of Russia. Whereas Wolfhound Century explored the psychology of the revolutionary moment, and Truth and Fear portrayed the revolution's moment of extreme challenge in the face of foreign aggression corresponding to the Nazi invasion of 1941, Radiant State drops us into the moment external challenges have been overcome and the revolutionary state looks forward, either with giddy delusion or profound horror, to the limitless exercise of power by its rulers on its people, indefinitely into the future.
Higgins imbues this moment of Stalinist omnipotence with science fiction elements that, while not entirely new to his project, give Radiant State a flavor decidedly different from what came before. In doing so he draws deeply on Russian traditions of cosmism and transhumanism that in actual history coexisted uneasily with early Bolshevik socialism. Higgins alludes to this in chapter front-notes, but in truth the themes are so deeply woven into his actual story these overt references to actual Russian history seem unnecessary.
The situation with which the story opens is thus one in which our Stalin avatar (yes, Osip Rizhin/Josef Kantor is more complicated than that as a character, but not for these purposes) has decided to pursue a breakneck space program using his newly developed nuclear arsenal and technologies identified in our world with the United States' Project Orion. The human and environmental costs of such a project receive extensive and deeply terrifying treatment, exciting some of Higgins' most unsettingly Lovecraftian moments.
For of course this program occurs both for the purpose of Rizhin's mad project of self-deification and in the context of Rizhin's war against the wilderness that Higgins' lovingly describes as "The Forest," which we are told several times is both of the world and larger than the world. Here, the Forest is the repository of magic, and a beauty that is more than human in every possible way.
It expresses the magnitude of Higgins' talent that at the same time he presents a parable of nature and progress on this immense palate, sometimes apparently setting science fiction itself at war with fantasy, we get some of the most arresting human characters and stories I have ever seen in a fantasy novel. By this point, Higgins' central figures--Kantor, Vissarion and Maroussia--are well-established and known quantities, and if anything they are a bit underdeveloped when read here in isolation from their earlier stories.
But the novel's secondary cast, particularly as concerning a mother who has been separated from her daughters by war and the woman who has kept them safe and cared for them, manages to be deeply affecting without being mawkish. Several scenes involving them in fact brought me to tears. Similarly, Higgins' accounts of those characters enmeshed in the state from which his heroes flee and which they fight are powerful stuff. And a darkly comic subplot involving a colony of clueless dissident intellectuals has much to say, not just about totalitarianism but human self-deception.
One of the open questions I have had reading Higgins' trilogy has been about the project itself as allegory. What Higgins writes about, no matter the place's name, is Russia. But this is a Russia without the Greek Orthodox Church, without tsarist autocracy and the imperial family synonymous with it, without the specific personalities--Peter and Catherine and Tolstoy and Lenin--whose successes and failures are visible in the country they left behind like a sculptor's thumbprint in the clay. So how can it be Russia? Oddly enough, this third volume presents the clearest idea how Higgins' allegory works. The great scandal at the novel's heart is the amazing joke about the relationship of the insurrectionist terrorist to the patriarchal dictator. No spoilers, but as a statement about the dynamic of totalitarianism and the utopian dreams that inspire it, Higgins' exploration of Kantor/Rizhin offers searing insights. And these insights would be impossible if what Higgins wrote about was a Russia with all the familiar historical furniture. Instead, his allegorical Russia actually does help us better understand the real one.
Plainly, I love Radiant State. However it does suffer a serious misstep, all the more agonizing because of how central it is to the story. The treatment of its central problem, that of "Papa" Rizhin's rule, is too straightforward. A beautifully set up sequence involving a holiday at a seaside dacha seems squandered by the too-easy solutions to several problems. That issue persists as the story shifts back to the Vlast's capital of Mirgorod. Having gone to the trouble of establishing the dispiriting and horrifying environment of a totalitarian state, sometimes in scenes with breathtaking realism, Higgins needs to present a climactic conflict equal to the world he has created. And in that he fails. Perhaps there are limits to his talent--in these pages toward the end I found myself wishing for a writer more interested in, and adept at, presenting the play-by-play suspense of authoritarian political intrigue, like the Hilary Mantel of "A Place of Greater Safety."
This problem is made worse by a reliance in the pivotal moments on psychic warfare of a type that would not be out of place in an X-Men comic in which the mutants are dispatching a villain like Mister Sinister or Apocalypse. This kind of storytelling is fine in itself, but considered in the context of the soaring heights much of the foregoing novel has reached, it's a bit jarring. And in the context of a deeply subtle and insightful examination of totalitarianism and its place in human society, it actually seems somewhat cheap.
But all this means merely that though Radiant State is not a perfect novel, it is still a great one. And even the absence of a definitive ending is welcome. For Peter Higgins' three Vlast books thus far put together do not have the heft of a single Joe Abercrombie tome. Higgins has certainly not exhausted my interest in this place and people. I for one possess near limitless curiosity about how this world came to be what it is, and would love prequels delving deep into the various histories here only hinted at--the Archipelago, the Lazarye, the Reasonable Empire. I want more. So long as it's this good, thousands of pages more, even.
January 11, 2016
A great ending to a highly imaginative series. Never quite sitting in one genre its a mix of fantasy,scifi and political thriller moving from angels and magic to space travel and science with a dose of communist dictatorship and secret police , somehow finding a balance of all this and delivering a very good story full of strong characters.
July 25, 2015
Last and probably the best book in the Wolfhound Century trilogy set in a fantasy world based on Soviet Russia. Radiant State has a momentum from the very start that I think helps propel it past the sometimes frustrating ambiguities and unexplained mysteries of the previous two books. The only thing that hurts it is a fairly abrupt ending.
March 29, 2022
Direi che la trilogia si è conclusa degnamente. Personaggi ben delineati e accattivanti, storia complessa ma ben bilanciata in tutte le sue sfaccettature. Forse la storia meritava una quadrilogia, alcuni particolari solo accennati meritavano un maggior sviluppo. Nel complesso, soddisfacente 😊
March 10, 2016
c2015: FWFTB: Vlast, President, Pollandore, forest, time. The edition that I read was the paperback but the cover that GR has only seems to have as a Kindle edition. All a bit odd. So, the book. After the second book in the series, I thought I was getting somewhere but this last book put the kaibosh on that. Most of the time I had no idea of the plot other than the President was bound to get his come-uppance somewhere along the line. I still don't have a clue where the 'angel flesh' comes into it but it was rather a good idea, if insanely grim, to have it powering a rocket. Somehow, I felt that there were a few gaps. For example, I never definitively knew whether or not the astronauts knew they were not coming back. If they did, then their behaviour is just not credible, if they didn't - well, they just disappeared from the plot. So, why were they ever mentioned in the first place. I'm going to have to read the book again. I must have missed something somewhere along the line. However, the writing remains brilliant so there is no option but to continue reading the book no matter how bizarre or misfitting the plot is. Recommended to those members of the crew that have read the first 2. I don't think that this could be read as a stand alone. "The block where she lives is harsh and shabby; a cliff of blinding colourlessness under harsh blue sky in the middle of a blank square laid out with dimpled concrete sheet that are already cracked and slumped and prinked with grass tufts and dusty dandelions. Scraps of torn paper lift and turn in the warm breeze.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2017
Certainly my favorite fantasy discovery of 2016. Okay, so I thought it was a bit long, and maybe didn't need to be three books. I'm not a fan of a lot of reversals and suspense just to dilate a plot, when really maybe you could have had just one or two books. And some of the villains were a little cardboard, and almost all of the female characters were thin. The ending was slightly off-balance--just a bit anti-climactic. And finally, I was a confused as to where the forest was after Maroussia's sacrifice. I thought it was in another dimension, but it just seemed to be, well, in the forest. It had seemed to me that Kantor should not be able to find the archangel at all. So the whole Pollandore thread seemed undermined and pointless after all.
Still, the recovery of the mystical, nature-oriented side of the Russian character is so welcome. I really enjoyed the ride.
Still, the recovery of the mystical, nature-oriented side of the Russian character is so welcome. I really enjoyed the ride.
July 25, 2015
The conclusion to a good and fascinating trilogy.
I rate this book lower than the previous one because it lacks some of the fantasy elements of the previous two books that created such a great atmosphere.
The action takes place 6 years after the end of the previous book, in a much modern Vlast now ruled with an iron fist by General Ozyn ( The terrorist John Cantor from the first book). The Vlast is modernizing at a rapid space and Giants and other fantastic creatures have disappeared from the cities and they are in my view sorely missed.
Still a very good if a little short ending...
I rate this book lower than the previous one because it lacks some of the fantasy elements of the previous two books that created such a great atmosphere.
The action takes place 6 years after the end of the previous book, in a much modern Vlast now ruled with an iron fist by General Ozyn ( The terrorist John Cantor from the first book). The Vlast is modernizing at a rapid space and Giants and other fantastic creatures have disappeared from the cities and they are in my view sorely missed.
Still a very good if a little short ending...
June 7, 2015
I really, really enjoyed this series, but the ending of this book was so vague and abrupt I'm not totally sure if it was the last one or not
March 12, 2021
“For centuries the Vlast had wiped histories away. The stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen created unpersons out of lives and made ruined former people the unseen, unheard haunters of their own streets.”
Higgins’s Russian inspired Wolfhound Century trilogy is a commentary of sorts on the relatively recent history of that country. While adopting a mad whirlwind of a story arc of its own, a mix of realism and fantasy, it also has roots in Russian myth and folklore. The sentences quoted above could be a complete description of the setting if the fantasy elements were ignored but they are integral to Higgins’s vision. The three books are also unmistakably about Russia itself even if Higgins is writing about a Russia that never actually existed.
In the first part of Radiant State the Vlast Universal Vessel Proof of Concept is about to blast off for space. Literally – it is propelled by the detonation of atomic bombs beneath its pusher plate – though the actual propellant is the bombs’ casings of angel flesh pulverised to plasma by the explosions. The poor human occupants of Proof of Concept are however destined never to return to Earth. The ship, as its name suggests, is a prototype for a project to hurl the Vlast to the stars and domination of other planets.
Characters familiar from the previous two books reappear, Visarrion Lom, Maroussia Shauman, Elena Cornelius, Eligiya Kalimova. Josef Kantor - in the guise of Osip Rhizin which he had adopted in the previous book, Truth and Fear, where he saved the Vlast from defeat at the hands of its traditional foe The Archipelago - is now head of state, overseer of a vast apparatus of repression and control. “Rhizin had tens of thousands of security officers but trusted none of them because he knew what kind of thing they were and knew they must themselves be watched and kept in fear.” In the sidelines, lurking under a mountain, is the remnant of the supernatural creature Archangel, waiting to be loosed from its bonds. The main thrust of the plot, though, is Lom’s search for proof that Rhizin is Kantor and of the nature of the acts which brought him to power and keep him there.
If I found the fantastic portions overdone (I nearly always do) they are very well written, sometimes even understated, which is all to their good. In the realistic scenes Higgins is utterly convincing. His writing, while not straightforward, is almost without flaw. This is surely how it is to live in a totalitarian society. Even minor characters read as if they are real people, in all their complicity.
My only reservation is about how relatively easy it is in the end for Rhizin to be overthrown. But then again Lom has what is in effect supernatural help. Notwithstanding that, it is refreshing to find Rhizin’s removal from power taking place with no violence involved.
This trilogy just got better and better as it went on – not a usual comment on the form.
Higgins’s Russian inspired Wolfhound Century trilogy is a commentary of sorts on the relatively recent history of that country. While adopting a mad whirlwind of a story arc of its own, a mix of realism and fantasy, it also has roots in Russian myth and folklore. The sentences quoted above could be a complete description of the setting if the fantasy elements were ignored but they are integral to Higgins’s vision. The three books are also unmistakably about Russia itself even if Higgins is writing about a Russia that never actually existed.
In the first part of Radiant State the Vlast Universal Vessel Proof of Concept is about to blast off for space. Literally – it is propelled by the detonation of atomic bombs beneath its pusher plate – though the actual propellant is the bombs’ casings of angel flesh pulverised to plasma by the explosions. The poor human occupants of Proof of Concept are however destined never to return to Earth. The ship, as its name suggests, is a prototype for a project to hurl the Vlast to the stars and domination of other planets.
Characters familiar from the previous two books reappear, Visarrion Lom, Maroussia Shauman, Elena Cornelius, Eligiya Kalimova. Josef Kantor - in the guise of Osip Rhizin which he had adopted in the previous book, Truth and Fear, where he saved the Vlast from defeat at the hands of its traditional foe The Archipelago - is now head of state, overseer of a vast apparatus of repression and control. “Rhizin had tens of thousands of security officers but trusted none of them because he knew what kind of thing they were and knew they must themselves be watched and kept in fear.” In the sidelines, lurking under a mountain, is the remnant of the supernatural creature Archangel, waiting to be loosed from its bonds. The main thrust of the plot, though, is Lom’s search for proof that Rhizin is Kantor and of the nature of the acts which brought him to power and keep him there.
If I found the fantastic portions overdone (I nearly always do) they are very well written, sometimes even understated, which is all to their good. In the realistic scenes Higgins is utterly convincing. His writing, while not straightforward, is almost without flaw. This is surely how it is to live in a totalitarian society. Even minor characters read as if they are real people, in all their complicity.
My only reservation is about how relatively easy it is in the end for Rhizin to be overthrown. But then again Lom has what is in effect supernatural help. Notwithstanding that, it is refreshing to find Rhizin’s removal from power taking place with no violence involved.
This trilogy just got better and better as it went on – not a usual comment on the form.
March 10, 2018
This book struck me as the odd one out in its trilogy. Where the second followed directly on the first, this one skips six years ahead. It tones down the violence somewhat, which I consider an improvement, along with the thriller elements in general. That leaves more room for the forest - definitely my favorite part of the book and the series - and for the lyric/descriptive side of the writing style. The correspondence of the fictional world with ours gets closer, with Osip Rizhin as an undisguised super-Stalin. There is some kind of cold war going on in the distance with the Archipelago, but you don't hear much about it and I think you're supposed to assume it's not very relevant. Even though there might not be a space race there is a space program. Rizhin has developed it in five years out of sheer megalomania. Meanwhile, Vissarion Lom is looking for a way to bring down Rizhinism, on Maroussia Shaumian's instructions. Maroussia herself is not with him, which I think makes both of them more interesting, and has been transformed into something like a goddess. And the evil Archangel is still trapped in the forest. The main complaint I have is that the pacing seemed jerky, with the plot changing direction more than in the first two books put together, and closure coming very fast when it comes. I have the feeling this last volume would have worked out best if it had been expanded into two or three.
May 11, 2017
Reaction to the whole series, not just the last volume:
It's refreshing to see fantasy based on a different mythology and period of history than the still too pervasive Western/medieval; and this is a very well executed example. The Russian-inspired worldbuilding isn't just window-dressing, it feels essential. The mountainous fallen angels buried in the landscape are a very original and striking image as well. Generally speaking, there's a lot of beautiful imagery and great atmosphere in these books. Some glorious poetic language, too (though some of it may be a bit too closely inspired by the words of Russian writers, as Nina Allan suggests here). The parts of the book where the inexplicable intrudes into reality are invariably the most beautiful. Some stylistic mannerisms annoyed me a bit, occasionally - mostly in the crime/spy/political thriller bits where the language went a bit faux-hard-boiled, which didn't work well with the general tone of the book.
The way that this series is based on Soviet Russia, though, makes me slightly uncomfortable and leaves me asking myself questions like, is this cultural appropriation? And especially, what about fantasy that deals with real, historical mass death, is that a thing that's ok to do - in general, and in this particular case? I feel similarly uncomfortable about many genre treatments of the Holocaust. And, for that matter, about many non-genre treatments of it, too, especially from people of later generations. I don't think I'm ready to declare historical atrocity and genocide off limits for (genre) fiction; but I do think that anyone who makes use of these things in their fiction needs to work extra hard to say something significant about it. Which, to be fair, this series kind of does... or at least tries to do.
I think the problem for me here is that this series really feels like it was written for people with a much more detailed knowledge of Russian history than I have. I feel like there's a game being played here that I can't grasp without the necessary background knowledge; and I can't even understand the purpose of that game without that knowledge. I know just enough to be confused. Why, for example, is the name of the Western/Capitalist bloc analogue in the world of these books "the Archipelago", when probably the closest association that word has for most people in the West in the context of Russian history is the Gulag Achipelago? That seems like an extremely strange naming choice here, and I can't make any sense of it. Also, if the Novozhd is Stalin, then who or what is Josef Kantor? (Actually, Kantor is a better fit for Stalin but the Novozhd kind of also feels like Stalin? It's as if one side of Stalin is putsching against another side of him?) Etc. There are a bunch of questions like that, and a lot of things that I can't even ask questions about, but feel are probably meaningful in some way I can't properly understand. So, overall, I'm left somewhat confused and a little bit uneasy.
It's refreshing to see fantasy based on a different mythology and period of history than the still too pervasive Western/medieval; and this is a very well executed example. The Russian-inspired worldbuilding isn't just window-dressing, it feels essential. The mountainous fallen angels buried in the landscape are a very original and striking image as well. Generally speaking, there's a lot of beautiful imagery and great atmosphere in these books. Some glorious poetic language, too (though some of it may be a bit too closely inspired by the words of Russian writers, as Nina Allan suggests here). The parts of the book where the inexplicable intrudes into reality are invariably the most beautiful. Some stylistic mannerisms annoyed me a bit, occasionally - mostly in the crime/spy/political thriller bits where the language went a bit faux-hard-boiled, which didn't work well with the general tone of the book.
The way that this series is based on Soviet Russia, though, makes me slightly uncomfortable and leaves me asking myself questions like, is this cultural appropriation? And especially, what about fantasy that deals with real, historical mass death, is that a thing that's ok to do - in general, and in this particular case? I feel similarly uncomfortable about many genre treatments of the Holocaust. And, for that matter, about many non-genre treatments of it, too, especially from people of later generations. I don't think I'm ready to declare historical atrocity and genocide off limits for (genre) fiction; but I do think that anyone who makes use of these things in their fiction needs to work extra hard to say something significant about it. Which, to be fair, this series kind of does... or at least tries to do.
I think the problem for me here is that this series really feels like it was written for people with a much more detailed knowledge of Russian history than I have. I feel like there's a game being played here that I can't grasp without the necessary background knowledge; and I can't even understand the purpose of that game without that knowledge. I know just enough to be confused. Why, for example, is the name of the Western/Capitalist bloc analogue in the world of these books "the Archipelago", when probably the closest association that word has for most people in the West in the context of Russian history is the Gulag Achipelago? That seems like an extremely strange naming choice here, and I can't make any sense of it. Also, if the Novozhd is Stalin, then who or what is Josef Kantor? (Actually, Kantor is a better fit for Stalin but the Novozhd kind of also feels like Stalin? It's as if one side of Stalin is putsching against another side of him?) Etc. There are a bunch of questions like that, and a lot of things that I can't even ask questions about, but feel are probably meaningful in some way I can't properly understand. So, overall, I'm left somewhat confused and a little bit uneasy.
February 22, 2020
I think there can hardly be a more original fantasy book than this, with some of the most exquisitely beautiful and poetic prose............but the ending left me not really knowing if it had ended. ‘Is there another book?!’ I found myself wondering. To my mind, an odd and unsatisfying end to virtually every single one of the characters’ storylines, both protagonist and supporting cast. This has rather diminished my view on the entire series unfortunately
November 24, 2017
Falls prey to the classic science fiction problem, a mad dash to tie it all up and finish as quickly as possible. It's almost as if the author suddenly thought 'You know what, I really can't be bothered carrying on with this, let's wrap it up!". Very good up until that point though, although not as good as the first two in the series.
May 27, 2017
Leído en inglés. El final de la historia. Una historia compleja de la que este libro es la mejor parte. Lástima de no poder leer el inglés con la fluidez suficiente para disfrutar de la prosa del autor.
November 4, 2020
nice writing, deeply stupid politics in which a young Stalin analogue exists in late-Stalinist dystopia which is also responsible for a Holocaust analog. young Stalin has the politics of an Italian Futurist, too
February 27, 2017
So I guess it's over then?
July 29, 2017
Excellent.
Imaginative with fantastic imagery, memorable heroes and villains, and a unique world. Kept moving at a breakneck pace.
The third book lifted the trilogy as a whole to 5/5.
Imaginative with fantastic imagery, memorable heroes and villains, and a unique world. Kept moving at a breakneck pace.
The third book lifted the trilogy as a whole to 5/5.
November 10, 2023
A fitting end to the trilogy and I enjoyed this book just as much as the previous two. The cross genre story and the world Higgins created is brilliant.
February 13, 2024
One of the more original fantasies written in the last decade. And always good to read a story that ends, all wrapped up.
July 28, 2015
3.5/5
Radiant State, sorprendentemente para mí, empieza 6 años después de los acontecimientos de Truth and Fear. Tras la guerra contra el Archipélago, Josef Kantor, ahora conocido como Osip Rizhin, se ha hecho con el mando y control absoluto de New Vlast. Vissarion Lom, único en conocer el pasado del ahora Presidente-Comandante, intentará destruir la imagen y poder que ostenta Kantor.
Así, en Radiant State, nos encontramos con un libro donde el tema principal es el poder centralizado en un solo hombre y el culto a la persona. Para mí este libro se encuentra un pelín por detrás de los otros dos, ya que se pierde un poco el elemento fántastico que tanto me gustó en los libros anteriores. Aún así, un final más que satisfactorio que sin duda dejará con un buen sabor de boca a los que lleguéis hasta aquí.
Radiant State, sorprendentemente para mí, empieza 6 años después de los acontecimientos de Truth and Fear. Tras la guerra contra el Archipélago, Josef Kantor, ahora conocido como Osip Rizhin, se ha hecho con el mando y control absoluto de New Vlast. Vissarion Lom, único en conocer el pasado del ahora Presidente-Comandante, intentará destruir la imagen y poder que ostenta Kantor.
Así, en Radiant State, nos encontramos con un libro donde el tema principal es el poder centralizado en un solo hombre y el culto a la persona. Para mí este libro se encuentra un pelín por detrás de los otros dos, ya que se pierde un poco el elemento fántastico que tanto me gustó en los libros anteriores. Aún así, un final más que satisfactorio que sin duda dejará con un buen sabor de boca a los que lleguéis hasta aquí.
August 14, 2016
Good if a little bit understated conclusion to a series that grew on me as it progressed. The prose's complexity which I found a little daunting initially, hasn't really diminished per se, I feel that the overarching plot has become more clearly defined as the series has progressed. The character's identities as they became more defined allowed for an increased level of investment in how things play out in the end. It's not perfect, as previously noted I personally found the ending a little bit difficult to follow & pacing wise the climax could've gone on a little bit longer. Other than that, this is a very interesting book for anyone looking for a slightly more cerebral brand of SFF writing.
October 21, 2015
As every book in this trilogy, the start was a bit slow, the middle was absolutely fantastic and the ending was a bit rushed. I was actually plannimg to give it 5 stars, but in the end I felt the ending could have been a bit more conclusive with more explanation..it just wasnt up to the standards of the reat of the book. I do hope there will be more books set in this universe bcs it is an amazing mix :) 8.5/10
October 13, 2016
I thought this was perhaps the best book in the trilogy, but was rather disappointed by the ending. Felt a bit abrupt. On the plus side, the prose is beautiful. Perhaps even moreso than the preceding two books.
December 13, 2016
A great conclusion to the trilogy. I can't believe I've never heard of this writer. I recommend reading this, but I'm not sure who - it is science fiction, and political history, and some kind of fantasy, and a mystery, and a detective story.
September 13, 2015
A satisfactory conclusion to the trilogy, but I was a bit confused by what happened in the forest at the end. Would read more by this author, but he has so far only written this trilogy :-(
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