Faction Paradox: Head of State

Faction Paradox #12

by Andrew Hickey

‘When the seventh head speaks, the War will end…’
In 11th century Arabia, Shahrazad tells her final story, on the thousand and second night.
In 19th century Britain, Sir Richard Burton is sent on the most important mission of his life.
In 21st century America, a serial killer is stalking a Presidential campaign.
And the hero has been written out of the novel.
‘”…and the true War will begin.’

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

About the author

I had a biography here but it was very out of date. Currently my main work is my podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The New Yorker compared that to the Bible, Oxford English Dictionary, and the works of Gibbon and Pepys, and said it "will eclipse every literary project in history". So that's nice.

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

Sir Richard Francis Burton prepares for another, riskier trip to the Arabian peninsula; Shahrazad's severed head tells the tale of the Thousand and Second Night; somewhere in the early 21st century, death follows a Presidential campaign. There are some Faction Paradox books which you can read without needing to know anything of the setting (eg Lance Parkin's Warlords of Utopia, one of my all-time favourite alternate history novels), but this isn't altogether one of them; I've read a fair few, but by no means all, and I needed Google to get the full significance of the finale. Yet I did still enjoy this nest of interwoven tales. The modern sections didn't feel wholly successful; the journalist-very-reminiscent-of-Laurie-Penny character comes off better here than in Kieron Gillen's Iron Man, but I remain resistant to the trope for reasons I can't wholly articulate. And Dave Larsen, the schmuck who becomes convinced he has to kill the candidate...it can be very hard for a smart guy, which Hickey obviously is, to convincingly write a sympathetic yet dangerous idiot. At times Larsen seems too nice (he may be part of the Republicans' lunatic fringe, but he's definitely "got nothing against the blacks or the gays or the Jews"), at others too bumbling (he's a little too ready to admit gaps in his knowledge of economics, whereas my experience is that the people who know the least about the subject are the ones with the firmest convictions - just look at George Osborne). Still, even Larsen comes alive once he starts reading secret messages, with newspapers and books telling him that only he personally can save the world. Generally a bad sign, of course, but this is a Faction Paradox book, so don't be surprised if you start having the same experience (it's only if you then find it happening in other reading matter that you need to worry). And these sections are some of my favourites. Faction Paradox began life in Doctor Who books, but for legal and creative reasons ended up a separate entity, which does beg the question - where did the Doctor go? Well, there's someone here who at times comes across very Doctorish. It's never quite definite enough to be explicit, let alone actionable, but it dances hilariously, maddeningly, close to the edge. And the Burton sections - both his memoir and his translation of that last, secret Night - may at times be a little too concentrated, but for the most part do a thrilling job of capturing the spirit of that intriguing, infuriating man, and the voice in which he translated one of world literature's foundational documents.

(Disclaimer: I know Andrew Hickey on here, and according to an aunt's researches may be descended (on the wrong side of the blanket, obviously) from Richard Francis Burton. I don't think this has led me to be too soft on either of them above, and I hope the former will forgive me my niggles regarding a book which on the whole was a very entertaining read)

[J. Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I want to say that this was a very good book. I'll probably spend a bunch of time below talking about some of the negatives (often they're easier to talk about - especially when you're trying to avoid spouting spoilers) but these in no way overshadow the book. Everything in the world has flaws, and this is no different.

But it's extremely good - perhaps just shy of excellent. Not quite at the same level as previous Obverse novels in this range ("Against Nature" and "The Brakespeare Voyage") but then it isn't trying to be quite that deep and epic either. It's telling kind of an action/mystery/adventure story (ish) in a twisty-turny way that is very satisfying.

The second thing I want to say is that I am not as well-versed in Faction lore as most of the people who will read this book will be. I've read a lot of the Faction Paradox books, but not all. Indeed, one of the more important ones is among those I have not read: "The Book of the War". So this entire "review" will be coming from a place of slight ignorance regarding some details. If I have not understood something correctly, or was not impacted in the right way, this could be the reason why. (I'm saying this now so you don't slap your foreheads in astonishment at something stupid I may say later without my realizing.)

So, the plot then. I can't say too much about it without giving important things away, but I will do what I can. There are four main points of view between which we switch. This in some ways echoes "Against Nature" but in actual fact it is quite different, and to a totally different effect. It is not copying that book - the idea of flipping between protagonists' points of view is a common one, after all. It is only the sheer diversity of them here that brings to mind that other Faction novel.

We have an excerpt from a previously unknown "One Thousand and Second Arabian Night" translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton. There's a present-day British journalist covering American politics. Sir Richard himself has his own segment in the Middle East investigating a report of the paranormal for the British government. And then there's an American guy (also present day) recording a video message explaining why he did the heinous thing that he believes he is about do after finishing the document.

One more character - probably the most important one - also gets a point of view, but I will leave that individual's identity for you to discover as you read.

It's a good story, then, and well-written. The threat in the main thrust of the plot (a serial killer stalking young women on the presidential campaign trail) moves along nicely, with a lot of misleads and interest. Behind that, though, is something much more important happening. Something that could have repercussions in the War. Or perhaps it already has had those repercussions. Perhaps things have already changed, and need to be changed back.

This larger picture story is very fascinating - although the most intriguing part of it is an element I don't wish to talk about here, because it will ruin the experience of finding it all out for yourselves. It also is conveyed in a way that makes sense to people like me whose knowledge of Faction stuff is not complete. (I'm not certain how it will play with those completely new to this world, but I imagine it could largely be picked up on.) Things like the caldera are explained perfectly well in a brief bit of exposition that easily allows the reader to draw parallels with other fictitious worlds they are aware of (for example, Doctor Who - which Faction Paradox ultimately spun off from in the first place) and fully comprehend what it is and why it is important.

I felt like the Sir Richard part of the story was treading water till over the halfway mark of the book, and actually started to annoy me a little by its presence for a while. I knew that it would become relevant soon - or, no, not even that. I knew that it would become interesting soon (nothing at all happens there for the longest time) but it became wearisome pretty quickly. (Largely because Burton is, purposefully, a bit of a dick. So spending time with him just being obnoxious and little else is something of a chore.)

Similarly, the parts translated by that character - the "Thousand and Second Night" segment - doesn't quite become relevant for ages. But it is constantly entertaining, and intriguing, throughout so one never feels that it is unwelcome. (Unlike Burton's obnoxious footnotes, which are all very effectively written by Hickey.) There's what appears to be a mistake where a prior translation is referred to when there cannot be one - but I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick on that one so won't insist it's an error.

Now that I come to think about it, all of the primary characters but one (the one I'm not discussing here) are obnoxious and annoying. Deliberately so, I mean. That I only just realized it now, as I write this down, means that it did not take away from the joy of experiencing the novel. (Some of my favorite books are narrated by jerks - like "Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle" by Vladimir Nabokov.) Rachel, the vehemently-left journalist in America covering an unlikely but successful presidential candidate, seems full of bile and ready to skewer anyone who disagrees with her on anything. She's smart, and funny, and very competent - but not someone I'd want to be friends with, that's for sure.

And David. David, David, David. What a numpty. This parody of a far-right nut starts to become insulting pretty quickly (especially paired with Rachel's anti-conservative rants) when I believe that a less exaggerated version of the character could have worked just as well. David is an idiot, extremely gullible, and full of rage about a socialist philosophy he doesn't understand - so it's all too easy for other forces to push him over the edge and make him do something he thinks is right but is really quite awful. He's well-meaning - so it's actually a little painful to see the way he's manipulated by everyone - but in the end, for many reasons, is probably the most unlikable character (again: deliberately) in the whole book.

Then there's the other one. The character I'm not mentioning. Very important to the whole plot - and essentially is the hero - and yet is utterly sidelined due to unforeseen circumstances. This other figure is the only likable one in the book, and is the one who contributes to the fourth-wall-breaking part of the plot. It starts as what looks like a mere analogy, or a metaphor, but essentially ends up making the book that you are reading into the actual reality for the character. Sort of. Look: just read it, you'll see what I mean.

The nature of the plot, and of the villain, is something that very much deserves to be discovered as you read. I hope I'm safe to say that while I figured out who or what was likely responsible at a certain point when Sir Richard Francis Burton was in the desert, I didn't make another important connection until a couple of chapters before the end. Very satisfying.

Look, I've gotta spend some time here talking about a couple of the negatives. These, by and large, are quibbles about spelling and formatting, so may not make a great impact on your reading of the book. And I may be wrong in my complaints. Still, I have to talk about them.

Sure, there's the usual smattering of typos. It's gonna happen - to every book, everywhere. But some other things were a great annoyance to me. Like how Hickey will close a quotation at the end of a paragraph, and open it again at the next, when it's the same speaker. Very confusing.

Mostly what bugged me was the Arabic. I get that it is all translation from the 19th century when translation (and transliteration) would be different from the accepted practices now. But why does Burton use completely different versions of a word in his "Thousand and Second Night" segment from his journal while in the desert? (Things like "Mahometan" versus "Mohammedan" for example.) It's consistently different in one segment from the other, so probably was purposeful on the author's part, but I'm not sure why.

And often it'll change even within a segment. The phrase "alayhis salam" becoming "alahis salaam" and the like. And there was at least one instance of the definite article appearing as "al" even before a sun letter (I think it was an "s"). But the most annoying to me was the consistent spelling of "Qur'an" as "Qu'ran". I don't know if this is a genuine error made in the past by historic translators, but it's difficult to imagine how that mistake could arise, when the apostrophe denotes a sukun over the "r" - a pause, basically - that has no reason to ever be placed after the "u".

Maybe all of the above was deliberate, but as Burton was (and is depicted as) a man who knew the language so well that he could pass as one of its native speakers, it seems unlikely.

Anyway, that's most of my niggling complaints out of the way! There are other "flaws" to my mind, as noted above, such as how long the Burton story takes to get anywhere at all, and some too-exaggerated caricaturing in places, but these also don't add up to much of significance.

Having not counted the pages, or words, I can't say for sure but this feels like a much shorter book than either of the previous Obverse novels in the range. It rattles along pretty quickly, too, being very engaging and fun. It doesn't reach for the heights that those other novels attained, but neither does it need to. It does what it set out to do very well, and is at its core a very Faction Paradox story.

I wish I could spend more time talking about the things I liked the most about the book - but sadly those things would spoil the events and experiences of it for all of you. So keep in mind that the things I've discussed here are only about a half of the enjoyable elements of the book.

If you like Faction Paradox at all, I can't imagine you disliking this novel. And if you've never tried the Faction before, I actually have a feeling that this would be a very successful entry point for you. The plot is basic enough (though plenty sophisticated once it gets going) to allow a new reader to understand the gist of it, while being introduced to more sophisticated ideas about the universe it takes place in along the way.

Were I to rate it out of 10 instead of 5, I think it would still be 8/10. That roughly places it around the middle of the pack for Faction novels in my estimation - which themselves are a much higher breed than the majority of other types of book, due to a collection of truly excellent authors having contributed along the way.

[Simon Bucher-Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faction Paradox - Head of State - Andrew Hickey

As a writer, it would be lovely if my work was reaching a wide audience - if it was part of some great popular series say, or I'd managed to make a name for myself (or a living!).

While that's not true (yet) I can take considerable solace in being one of the writers who's contributed to the Faction Paradox corpus, a line of books (audios and comics) which so far has produced work which has always been excellent. I know many of the writers, respect them as peers, and count some of them as friends as well as colleagues. I'll try not to let that biase the reviews.

HEAD OF STATE - Andrew Hickey

" 'When the seventh head speaks, the War will end…’
In 11th century Arabia, Shahrazad tells her final story, on the thousand and second night.
In 19th century Britain, Sir Richard Burton is sent on the most important mission of his life.
In 21st century America, a serial killer is stalking a Presidential campaign.
And the hero has been written out of the novel.
‘”…and the true War will begin.’ "


The thousand and second night story of the Arabian Nights, told by the severed head of Shahrarad - recounted in a translation by Sir Richard Burton, is the story of three Wazirs, each of who tells a tale, and the three tales they tell are set to exert a dreadful influence on the lives of the protagonists - for they are a kind of trap, woven across time.

In the present day (or perhaps slightly in the future) during a US presidential election, and after, a British female, left-wing journo-blogger, and an American right-winger who's receiving messages in the media that he's reluctantly concluded are probably from God, are circling about events they have no hope of understanding, while trapped within the fabric of the book - an entity who is no longer the hero of his own story (even though he considers it too meta to say so) desperately attempts to groom them to fill the gap he's left in the narrative.

Several strands weave, with sinuous grace towards an almost predetermined horror.

I really liked this, and while I've liked all the Faction Paradox books - I think there is a common problem to some of them that this avoids. (On the other hand I think it does have a problem of its own which I'll come to, but it's so minor that it would be churlish to mention it first.)

So strengths: it's light, it's breezy, it's utterly without some of the 'portentiousness' that sometimes threatens to bogs down the FP books. The cutting between the main narrators, and the nested stories, doesn't impede the flow, as it could have done in less skilled hands and the narrators themselves are ably voiced and individually human. All of them, even the odiously self-worshipping Sir Richard Burton are developed as real people and have desires and aims that ring true, even as they are manipulated by powers, both seen and unseen.

You may be of a political persuasion that makes it unlikely you think you'd be able to sympathise with a poorly educated neolibertarian, with few prospects, planning to shoot the President because of the writing on his milk cartons (even if by then the bill-boards are all trying to tell him he's got the wrong end of the stick) but he's trying to do his best in an increasingly maddening world.

You may be of a political persuasion that makes it unlikely you think you'll be able to sympathise with a less bright than she thinks she is UK blogger sticking her nose into US politics, but you will - even if the voice trying to speak through the narrative edits out her romance subplot - because she sees and understands her errors, and tries too to make the world better, as hard as a real person can. If that isn't going to be hard enough, that isn't her fault.

It's a joy to read, even if it's not a joy for those trapped within it!

The problem? It's a perhaps a shade too oblique on why exactly the eventual end should be so catastrophic - although in purely local political terms the speech involved does more than enough, it needs a wider grasp of the Faction Paradox lore to know exactly who is making it, and what an escalation this represents. Equally the identity of the shift despite there being no explicit statement, and an embedded fall-back in the text (well it could be Sh'vay), risks over-exciting some readers in a way that could draw the attention from what the novel is doing towards a discussion of other things which are strictly peripheral to Faction Paradox.

It demands (I think) if not a sequel - a continuation!

All in all, though this is an excellent novel - particularly when its both the author's first real extended narrative (though his short work has always been good), and has to stand against novels by Lawrence Miles, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale and others.

Let us welcome a new Cousin.

Simon Bucher-Jones

[Rachel Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

the four story lines twist around each other nicely, slowly building up and enhancing each other, at first they seem discordant, but soon connections are made between them and the interconnectedness is all really rather very clever. I won't reveal what really happens, read it yourselves, but it's rather big and epic. Alas reading this book now, post-truth US of Trump, it makes some of the political machinations of the book seem dated and yet there are some observations about the US political process that are absolutely biting in the books observations of candidate types.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

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