Faction Paradox: The Book of the Enemy

Faction Paradox #15

by Simon Bucher-Jones (Editor), Nate Bumber, Andrew Hickey

The Great Houses hold chains that bind time and space. They are the Namers and the Makers, of all that is. Their power is incalculable. And they are at War.
But the nature of their Enemy has always been shrouded, in mystery, in enigma, perceived through mirrored labyrinths seemingly constructed as much by the Great Houses as the Enemy. Why?
Perhaps now the secrets of the Enemy can be revealed. Or perhaps not.
Experience the ravaged memories of those who have met them in War.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Horror

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2018

About the author

Simon Bucher-Jones is a British author, poet, artist, and amateur actor, best known for his Doctor Who novels for Virgin and the BBC and as a contributor to the Faction Paradox spin-off series.

He is known for a hard SF approach. He has also written Cthulhu Mythos short stories. He also reviewed books for the Fortean Times, and for small press papers. He maintains a blog at http://www.simonbjones.blogspot.com where he is, among other projects, gradually turning all the Star Wars films into Shakespearean plays. He also markets a range of Cthulhu Mythos artwork t-shirts and mugs. He is also a major contributor of 'hidden cities' to the 'blind atlas' meme. His poetry has appeared in the Journal of the British Fantasy Society.

Reviews

[Rachel Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex, provocative, insightful, enthralling, disturbing, and even more superlatives. This collection of assorted tales, explores the idea of the Enemy, that greatly mysterious and most known of unknowns in Faction lore. By not facing head on the nature, disposition and ideologies of the Enemy this collection somehow serves to mythologize to a certain extent, making them more a concept than a tangible target for the Great Houses. Perhaps what this book is trying to say is that we don't need to know who and what the Enemy are, only that they exist. We've been told on more than one occasion that the Enemy isn't even the most important aspect of the Spiral Politic (or what remains of it after (REDACTED) has taken a couple of (REDACTED) out of it). If the Enemy isn't the main antagonistic grouping why are they still so popular? Maybe the enigma of their existence has afforded them a large enough mass in the franchise that they can simply be name checked to add extra credibility to event? After all it's not the white-hat hero who wins is it, it's the coolest character, and he may not even own a hat. One thing for certain though, I do like to reread certain books that are always enjoyable every time you read it, and I feel this one is one of those books...

[Philip Marsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any book that suggests it will answer the question that has been at the heart of a 20 year-old multi-media franchise is bound to come weighted down with expectation. The Question? Why, who are the Enemy - the mysterious entities at War (everything to do with them deserves a capital letter) with the old order of the Great Houses whose influence over time and space previously seemed unchallengeable. Obverse, editor Simon Bucher-Jones and the other writers deal with this question in the most Faction Paradox of ways - by skipping gleefully around it, offering glimpses of the solution through twisted mirrors which may distort more than they reveal. And, this being a series with 'Paradox' in the title, it is only fitting that there should be more than one answer to the question...

The book is made up of a series of short stories, most of which suggest the identity of the Enemy. Between each story is a piece of linking material written by the editor, often in the form of some kind of briefing or piece purporting to be a factual rather than fiction. These links range in tone considerably, sometimes adopting a tone of high sci-fi but often injecting humour into the book, such as the piece in which the narrator attempts to talk the reader into contributing to a scheme to cheat on the lottery via time-travel, which is written in head-spinning detail.

Bucher-Jones' stories are similarly varied - from The Annotated Autopsy Of Agent A in which the narrator has to kill the 1960s* while recalling Quatermass and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, to A House Of Choices which fuses The Blair Witch Project with the kind of property renovation TV shows that seem to fill up the schedules, or The Enemy - The Hole In Everything in which a leaflet-drop turns out to be The Enemy's weapon of choice.

Other stories are equally fun, such as Andrew Hickey's The Book Of The Enemy in which Sherlock Holmes finds himself confronting the more metaphysical side of the Enemy, or Jacob Black's A Bloody (and Public) Domain in which another famous fictional character gets his fangs into history itself...

Other stand-outs include Philip Purser-Hallard's T.memeticus: A Morphology which reads like a sci-fi mix of Calvino's 'The Castle Of Crossed Destinies' and Amicus' portmanteau horror films, and the longest piece in the collection, Jay Eales' The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Enemy which reimagines the lives of three famous writers - I'll not say which ones.

If the book has a weakness, it's that some of the pieces feel more like build-ups to the revelation of the identity of the Enemy than fully-fledged, satisfying short stories but that's a small criticism given the sheer number of ideas and the amount of imagination on show here.

*any interpretations of stories given in this review are entirely mine and, probably, entirely wrong.

[Allie Sharpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it.

[Leo H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories better than others but overall great