Matthew Hughes's Majestrum is part of a linked series of novels and stories set in a distant future in which the rational rules of logic and science governing our universe are beginning to weaken and give way toa new age goverened by "sympathetic association," better known as magic. He's been writing these for a while, and they've been bouncing around from one publisher to another, trying to find a home. He may well have found a niche at Night Shade Books, one of the high-quality small presses that have sprung up in recent years. It's not clear that what Hughes is doing will appeal to a large audience, but people who are inclined to like it will like it very much indeed, and that kind of audience is Night Shade's bread and butter.
Majestrum is "a tale of Henghis Hapthorn," a "freelance discriminator," who has fallen on odd times. He's been trained as a sort of scientific private investigator, but a mishap on an earlier case has put him somewhat ahead of the curve being followed by the rest of the universe. His personal electronic integrator has been transformed into a small, hungry, furry familiar, and worse yet, his subconscious has spilt off into a completely separate "other self," who thrives on magic and illogic, and occasionally struggles to take control of his body. This is not the best set of circumstances in which to start taking on new cases, but a man has to make a living, even in the far distant future.
The real joy of this book is in the narrative voice, and the interplay between Hapthorn and his familiar, as when he has been asked to translate an ancient manuscript that his other self intuitively knows is important to the case, and finds himself balked:
"We still require a starting point," I said, instructing the integrator to remove the screen. "A mapmaker must have at least one landmark from which to begin."
"Your other self will not be happy to hear that."
"If he is like me, he will know how to bear life's inevitable disappointmenrs with dignity and grace."
"I recall," said my assistant, "that when you were unable to come to a satisfactory resolution of the Eisenfeld Affair--"
"We do not," I said, with dignity and grace, "refer to the Eisenfeld Affair."
The plot is too convoluted to really summarize, and anyway, that would spoil the fun. If you like that exchange, though, you'll like the book. There are a few slow patches here and there, where he gets into long existential conversations with his other self, but there's enough inventiveness and wit in the rest of it to make up for those.
It's a fun read, and I recommend it. Night Shade has published a sequel, which I'll be getting, and I may also hunt around a bit to see if I can turn up the earlier books in the same universe.
Comments
# 1 | Kate Nepveu | March 27, 2008 9:41 AM
A novella in this universe has been nominated for a Nebula and is available free at Fictionwise.
# 2 | Dan Blum | March 27, 2008 11:14 AM
The second Hapthorn book (The Spiral Labyrinth) is also good. The Gist Hunter has earlier stories about Hapthorn, including the one where his integrator gets turned into an animal.
The Gist Hunter also has a bunch of stories about Guth Bandar, a scholar of the collective unconscious - the Nebula-nominated novella is also about him, and that and the aforementioned stories have been turned into a fix-up novel, The Commons. I like Bandar, but the novel as a novel is a little weaker than Hughes' other work since much of it parallels an earlier novel, Black Brillion. Still worth reading, but I would definitely read Black Brillion first.
The first two books in this world, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, are more in the picaresque mode. They are good but not quite up to the level of the later books.
I blither on about these at even greater length here.