This is one of the most unique works of fiction I’ve read in awhile. A summary doesn’t do it justice, but I’d recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in science fiction or fantasy.
Spoilers ahead. If you don’t want the good bits given away, go read the book, then come back.
On second thought, that would make reading this article pointless. Oh well. Do what you want. Free country and all.
Vague allusions suggest that the setting is America in an alternate 19th Century. The East is controlled by the forces of the Line, who represent progress and industrialization. The sentient engines of the Line drive relentlessly into the West, devouring and reshaping everything in their path. Those who serve them are sickly, pale, and suffer the infirmities of mind and spirit one might expect in people who serve under pollution riddled industrial conditions. They are represented in the story by Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry.
The Engines go thundering back and forth across the continent, on scar tissue of tracks raised over the plains, in hideous scarp-sided canyons cut and blasted through the hills. They drive through tunnels and their Song echoes in the darkness, drums beneath the earth, comes crashing out the tunnel mouth into the light in a booming, belling note. New tracks go down, opening new routes. Humboldt to Gloriana, over the wetlands; Antrim to Dryden, obliterating the hills and the villages there; Firth to Coffey. The mesh closes tighter. Lines converge. The tracks are like fences: no one dares cross them. Children come out from towns by the new tracks and stare in awe at those lines stretching into the distance, into the future that waits downline for them. On clear nights, the Engines’ Song beats and drones out over the prairies. Everyone hears it. Everyone, everywhere, knows what’s coming, unstoppable, implacable.
The West itself is wild and “uncreated.” Nobody knows what’s there except for the ancient Hillfolk, and the few who have not been sold into slavery have been driven into exile. There was once a democracy called the Red Republic, and it held out against the Line for 40 years, but it has since been crushed.
In opposition to the Line are the Agents of the Gun, represented by John Creedmoor. Like the Engines, the Guns have names. Each is animated by a demon, which invests its bearer with power in exchange for obedience. If the Line represents order, the Gun represents anarchy. Those who take the Gun are violent and often criminal, and neither the Agents or their masters are above inflicting collateral damage to achieve their aims.
In the middle of this is Liv Alverhuysen, a psychiatrist from the civilized North, who has been tasked with a unique patient. A former general of the Republic, driven mad by the “noise bombs” of the Line, is being kept in an asylum at the borders of the West. Rumor has it that he knows of a weapon that can stop the advance of the Line. The novel follows the course of Lowry, Creedmoor, and Alverhuysen as they converge on the asylum, each for their own aims.
If I had to categorize the book, I suppose I’d call it fantasy, though that would sell it short. Gilman easily sidesteps the expected genre cliches, and he creates his world with a clear eye and a light touch. The reader isn’t forced to sift through long paragraphs of exposition. Gilman gives enough detail to form a mental picture, while leaving enough ambiguity for the imagination to fill in the blanks. While the Gun is a vital instrument to Creedmoor, we’re given little actual description:
Would his weapon fire? He examined it thoughtfully. He’d certainly never bothered to load it at any point in the thirty years he’d carried it. He didn’t know how the Guns arranged for it to operate nor, until now, had he ever cared; but if the night-sight was leaving him, maybe next the weapon wouldn’t fire. He stretched out his arm, winced with anxiety, and tried but failed to find the will to pull the trigger. His hand shook and sweated, and he couldn’t face the thought that he might pull and learn the worst.
Gilman lays the framework of his world down effectively, but the main focus is on character and story, both of which are handled unusually well. In a typical fantasy novel, character development is handled something like this:
After the village of Honglurp is destroyed by the evil forces of Zorgar, young Yognurp sets out to avenge his father’s death. He learns to face his fears and finds confidence after defeating the Beast of Igmnnrpa. Then he gets laid. By a chick with three arms. Who just got introduced in the last paragraph. Then he becomes king, or if it’s a “progressive” book, prime minister or something. The End.
Gilman’s characters are far more complex. Nobody has any unexpected and jarring epiphanies, but they do change.
Lowry’s demeanor is a window into the world of the Engines. He’s a functionary and a status seeker. Things are ordered. Schedules are kept. Circumstances lead to him being given a commission far above what he’d normally be offered, and as his satisfaction soon diminishes as he finds himself losing touch with the Song of the Engines in pursuit of Creedmoor. Even when necessity turns to cruelty, it’s hard to blame him. He’s got orders, and that’s all he’s ever known, even as his men and equipment falter in the strange and hostile lands of the West. Men like Lowry are at their most dangerous when cornered.
If violence is expedient for Lowry, it is cathartic for Creedmoor. He might come across as a sociopath, but that sells him short. Not by much, but it does. He was once a rootless, petulant young man in search of a cause, and for better or worse, the Gun gave him one. He’s never comfortable with his choice, and he’s often insubordinate, but he still exults in the power it gives him. If he can express himself as a bloody Luddite carving chunks from the steel facade of the Line, that’s cause enough.
In the life he chose, it may be all he’s got. The Agents don’t have friends. They have associates, and those are being killed by the Line from day to day. The forces of the Gun are losing, but Creedmoor approaches life with a giddy, free-floating cynicism that never really changes, even when he’s freed of his bond to the Gun near the end.
He and Liv end up working together, but does Liv make him a better person? No. Nor is she stupid enough to trust him, but they have a common aim. In the end, that’s enough for each.
The nature of the weapon they get from the General is never made clear. In fact, it may only be a meme. Gilman only describes it through metaphor:
But there’s a new sound in the Song. Something off. A beat that stumbles. A tiny, brittle wrong note. Nothing any human ear can pin down–not in the brief moment of the Engine’s presence, as it comes howling out of the East and receding into the West–but something that’s always there. An impossible impurity. The Linesmen shift uneasily at their posts. They have sleepless nights–they look grayer even than usual. Their hands shake. Construction falters on the new towers of Harrow Cross and Archway. Wiring goes astray and papers are misfiled. Beatings are ordered but morale does not improve.
The Engines sing to each other: Lowry has failed. Lowry has failed. Months go by and no return. Lowry has failed. The trail is lost. What will come out of the West? What will come? The sick note is fear, is not-knowing when their end may come. The continent shudders with it.
This book is apparently the first of a two-part arc. I’ll be waiting very fervently for the sequel.