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A review by kieralesley
Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi
4.0
Complex but more accessible than his previous work, Rajaniemi’s latest is a feast of spycraft, afterlives, Gods, moral quandaries and politics set in a magnificently original alternate history world.
Set in an alternate 1938, the Spanish Civil War is heating up and Britain has discovered a way to communicate with and preserve consciousness in the afterlife, called Summerland. The empire has colonised an abandoned alien city within Summerland, creating a haven for their recently deceased citizens who are able to access it through a vaguely meritocratic ‘ticket’ system. Britain maintains spy agencies in both the worlds of the living and the dead – the Winter and Summer Courts – enabling them to gather intelligence and influence events on the Spanish front from both sides.
Rachel White is a Winter Court (living) agent who has been constantly overlooked due to her gender but gets a lead on a Soviet mole in Summerland, only to be demoted when she reveals it. However, Rachel is not done with chasing down the mole, even if she has to revert to less than above board measures to achieve it.
Peter Bloom is the illegitimate son of the prime minister and a Russian double agent planted in Britain’s Summer Court (Summerland/afterlife) working for the Presence, a Russian-created God built from a hivemind of souls, but is aware that someone from the Winter Court is onto him.
This is not a James Bond spy novel, there’s a smidge of high society drinking and gun fights, but it’s much more about intelligence gathering, two major powers twisting for advantage, and high-stakes spycraft. It’s a slow, intellectual burn and I’m grateful for it. The action scenes are well done, but the key scenes are much more likely to be a group of characters in a room lying to each other which is just as great.
The highlight here, really, is Summerland itself. Rajaniemi has put a lot of love into thinking about and developing this world and it shows. From the ticket system, to the fourth compass directionality, to the weird alien structures that lose shape when not maintained, to the Fading phenomenon, and the elaborate ecto- and spiritualist mechanisms used to allow communication between Summerland and the land of the living. And this is without even going near the military elements! It all provides opportunities to consider what happens to power structures if people continue to live on and work from beyond the grave, and what value life has over death when, if you’ve got a Ticket, the existential threat is minimal.
This book requires you to pay attention: the world is detailed, the politics are tricky enough to almost be real, and the double-agent spy-on-spy narrative is layered on top of the lot of it. There’s a lot to keep track of, but I found if I dropped the thread it didn’t take me long to pick it up again. Rajaniemi isn’t going to hold your hand here, but the characters and world are presented consistently enough to give you something to hold onto while you reorient yourself to what the hell is going on.
The main characters are both flawed, but relatable – their present contest with one another is supported by extensive reflective passages showing their lives up to this point and giving the reader a better sense of who they are and why their cause matters to them. I didn’t know who I wanted to win. I still don’t, really. The argument is pretty compelling both ways.
Summerland is on the literary end of the sci-fi bell curve, but well worth the time. I think this novel is going to deepen on the re-read and there’s scope in it for subsequent books, too, which I would be quite interested in. This world’s certainly big enough for more stories!
An advance copy of this book was kindly provided by Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Gollancz and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Set in an alternate 1938, the Spanish Civil War is heating up and Britain has discovered a way to communicate with and preserve consciousness in the afterlife, called Summerland. The empire has colonised an abandoned alien city within Summerland, creating a haven for their recently deceased citizens who are able to access it through a vaguely meritocratic ‘ticket’ system. Britain maintains spy agencies in both the worlds of the living and the dead – the Winter and Summer Courts – enabling them to gather intelligence and influence events on the Spanish front from both sides.
Rachel White is a Winter Court (living) agent who has been constantly overlooked due to her gender but gets a lead on a Soviet mole in Summerland, only to be demoted when she reveals it. However, Rachel is not done with chasing down the mole, even if she has to revert to less than above board measures to achieve it.
Peter Bloom is the illegitimate son of the prime minister and a Russian double agent planted in Britain’s Summer Court (Summerland/afterlife) working for the Presence, a Russian-created God built from a hivemind of souls, but is aware that someone from the Winter Court is onto him.
This is not a James Bond spy novel, there’s a smidge of high society drinking and gun fights, but it’s much more about intelligence gathering, two major powers twisting for advantage, and high-stakes spycraft. It’s a slow, intellectual burn and I’m grateful for it. The action scenes are well done, but the key scenes are much more likely to be a group of characters in a room lying to each other which is just as great.
The highlight here, really, is Summerland itself. Rajaniemi has put a lot of love into thinking about and developing this world and it shows. From the ticket system, to the fourth compass directionality, to the weird alien structures that lose shape when not maintained, to the Fading phenomenon, and the elaborate ecto- and spiritualist mechanisms used to allow communication between Summerland and the land of the living. And this is without even going near the military elements! It all provides opportunities to consider what happens to power structures if people continue to live on and work from beyond the grave, and what value life has over death when, if you’ve got a Ticket, the existential threat is minimal.
This book requires you to pay attention: the world is detailed, the politics are tricky enough to almost be real, and the double-agent spy-on-spy narrative is layered on top of the lot of it. There’s a lot to keep track of, but I found if I dropped the thread it didn’t take me long to pick it up again. Rajaniemi isn’t going to hold your hand here, but the characters and world are presented consistently enough to give you something to hold onto while you reorient yourself to what the hell is going on.
The main characters are both flawed, but relatable – their present contest with one another is supported by extensive reflective passages showing their lives up to this point and giving the reader a better sense of who they are and why their cause matters to them. I didn’t know who I wanted to win. I still don’t, really. The argument is pretty compelling both ways.
Summerland is on the literary end of the sci-fi bell curve, but well worth the time. I think this novel is going to deepen on the re-read and there’s scope in it for subsequent books, too, which I would be quite interested in. This world’s certainly big enough for more stories!
An advance copy of this book was kindly provided by Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Gollancz and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.