“Cowl,” by Neal Asher (Tor, 320 pages, $14.95)
Neal Asher boldly reinvents time-travel adventure in “Cowl.” Organic time machines take their wearers on a one-way journey to the dawn of life.
In a grim 23rd century, Polly is a teenage prostitute interested only in drugs and survival. Nandru is a soldier who blames Polly for his sister’s death. He forces her into acting as the go-between with the government when he steals a new weapon. Tack is a programmed government killer in charge of retrieving the device. Nandru almost wins, but the real winner is the weapon, which sends Polly and the remnants of Nandru hurtling into the past.
Polly is on her own, but Tack, who is following her, is captured and reprogrammed to be part of the future war between the Heliothane and the Umbrathane. Nominally on the Umbrathane side is Cowl, a created monster living at the beginning of life on Earth – as far back as humans can travel. He sends out the tors so he can examine the future through the victims the time machines bring back to him.
World War II and Henry VIII are easy masquerades for Polly compared with battling ice ages and dinosaurs. Tack gets some explanation of what is going on from a Heliothane agent who rebuilds him as an assassin to send against Cowl.
“Cowl” realizes Max Stirner’s 19th-century ideal of the ego looking out only for itself. There is nothing of 19th-century philosophy in Asher’s writing, which is full of heart-pounding violence and larger-than-life, many-mouthed monsters. In this bizarre world, Asher makes us care for a pair of hard-boiled characters who find self-improvement in their parallel plunges through time.
“The House of Storms,” by Ian R. McLeod (Ace, 457 pages, $24.95)
MacLeod has a genius for showing societies in transition. He demonstrates it again in “The House of Storms,” a stand-
alone sequel to “The Light Ages.” It is set 100 years after that Victorian tale in a world of magic and technology mixed together. Things haven’t changed much: The guilds control the magic and the economy depends on slave labor in the sugar fields of The Fortunate Isles. Despite the great inventions of electricity, the guilds have used their monopolies to prevent much change.
Ralph Meynell is the son of a Greatgrandmistress of the Telegraphers Guild. A coastal home in Western England is his mother Alice’s last hope to cure his tuberculosis. Tending to her son doesn’t stop her from dominating her husband or killing those obstructing her social climb.
Marion Price is a shoregirl whom Alice takes into the house. Ralph’s health improves as he falls in love with Marion. Alice wrenches them so far apart they are on opposite sides when England has a civil war of East against West.
The estate at Invercombe is magical in many ways. It creates its own weather, although the Weatherman adds to the usual gloomy weather when needed to help the locals smuggle goods past the exciseman. Invercombe is rich in the aether needed for magic but seems haunted.
MacLeod writes the perfectly rounded fantasy novel encompassing character, setting and story. He doesn’t flinch from the inevitable destruction that goes with the passing of one age and the building of a new one.
“Gil’s All Fright Diner,” by A. Lee Martinez (Tor, 268 pages, $24.95)
The first novel from Texan Martinez is a fast-paced comic romp about a diner that attracts nothing but trouble.
Earl and Duke are driving their pickup through Texas when they stop at Gil’s diner. Gil is long gone and Loretta runs the place now. Their meal is interrupted by zombies breaking down the door and trying to eat them along with Loretta. The zombies didn’t count on a vampire (Earl) and a werewolf (Duke) being there. Loretta offers to pay them to stay around and help her against the constant supernatural attacks on the diner.
They don’t know they are being conjured by a teenage girl out to thwart her enemies, who happen to be the rest world. With the help of an abridged Necronomicon and a boyfriend who will go along with any kind of ritual if they do it naked, she is summoning creatures much nastier than zombies.
Earl is a whiner and slacker no one but Duke appreciates until Earl meets a ghost in the local cemetery. Earl wants to release her from her bondage to the graveyard and take her with them from this crazy town.
