Customer Reviews

Necropath: Book One of the Bengal Station Trilogy (Bengal Station Novels)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After the wonderfully original surprise that was Kéthani, reading this book was a disappointment.

Let's begin with the setting and a little rant by yours truly. The novel is set in Bengal Station, which the back cover describes as "an exotic spaceport that dominates the ocean between India and Burma". Now, is it just me, or is this trend of ethnic sci-fi starting to seem a little bit over the top? Don't get me wrong, having a non-western culture at the center of a futuristic novel can be the basis of a great book, as Ian McDonald's Evolution's Shore (UK: Chaga) clearly demonstrated. But even McDonalnd's latest Brasyl relies way too much on the amalgamation of cultural clichés (favela, futebul, ayahuasca...) without delivering any really original imaginative ideas.

Thankfully, Brown refrains from throwing in too much Hindi and Thai jargon, and somehow even manages to avoid Burmese culture wholesale. The fact that the only cultural references are stereotypes is quite telling and you don't really get any new insight into an unknown culture. All of the Thai scenes happen in a Bangkok brothel and all South Indian cultural scenes involve either the burning ghat or mutilated kid baggers. Again, not much insight there. Compared to Kéthani, where he managed to skillfully portray regular people's lives as they are affected by momentous world events, it is almost as if he did not even try to turn on his sensitivity.

And don't get me started about the plot. The book starts in a real promising way, with the characters developed very well, but somewhere around page 150 it becomes rushed and full of regular detective sci-fi shticks.

I am going to read his previous Helix, and I may even give the next one in the Bengal series a shot. But I really hope that he gets his act together and delivers on the level of Kéthani and more.

Necropath is Eric Brown's new SF novel from Solaris Books, billed as his triumphant return to hard SF. I'm not sure how to take that, but regardless of the sub-genre of his last book (Kethani), Necropath is certainly triumphant and well worth investing your time in!

Jeff Vaughan is a telepath working for a security company in Bengal Station, an interstellar port based near India and Thailand. A man with a dark and disturbing past, he thinks very little of his fellow humans due to his ability to read minds.

His work on the station has lead him to suspect his boss, Weiss, of importing something that he wants nobody to know of. Being transferred when certain ships land have raised his suspicions about this, and with the help of a contact in the station police force, Chandra, he puts an investigation into action that will reveal some terrible things.

Tiger, one of Vaughan's only friends - if you could even call her that - has overdosed on a new and mysterious drug: Rhapsody. Looking further into the source of this he stumbles upon a larger, more sinister plan by the Church of the Adoration of the Chosen One, a cult originating from another world and slowly planning their conversion of Earth with promises of paradise and euphoria.

With connections deepening and time running out, Vaughan and Chandra travel off planet in the hope of solving the increasing questions that are coming up wherever they turn. But this is not the only problem facing Vaughan - a figure from the past he tries to ignore is tracking him and won't be giving up easily. With all the events coming to a head, will Vaughan discover the secrets that are being kept from him? And will we discover his?

As I said earlier on, Necropath is a magnificent novel, one that keeps you turning pages and guessing right until the last page. Eric Brown has certainly delivered a thrilling ride in a very realistic and interesting setting. With the station set where it is there is a strong flavour of both Thai and Indian cultures coming through which adds another layer of depth to the novel, giving that extra sense of realism and an environment that I don't often find myself reading about.

As far as the characters go, I found Vaughan to be a particularly intriguing and very interesting. His life has centred on his telepathic ability, and although we only find out his whole story towards the end the insights we get in the meantime are very realistic. His ability to see the innermost details of a persons mind have turned him sour to humanity, a position that I can sympathise with throughout. Even the attempts by Chandra, a close colleague, to get closer are mostly met with a stone wall. Necropath may have many other elements, but it is Vaughan's story and path that are the highlight.

I also enjoyed the sections where we follow Sukura, Tiger's sister, as she struggles through her life as a working girl in the hope that she will one day be able to be reunited with Tiger. We follow her life as a working girl in Thailand where she can only get custom from aliens because of a horrific scar running down her face. It's through these encounters that we meet some of the aliens that populate the Necropath universe and discover more about them. I'd particularly like to see some more on the aliens, after all, Bengal station does receive craft from all over explored space.

Overall the story flowed at a nice pace and there wasn't any unnecessary diversions which helped keep the story all the more interesting. It was clear from the first couple of chapters that it was going to be an enjoyable read and all the plot thread were tied up quite nicely at the end (which didn't feel rushed at all). I'll be looking forward to the upcoming sequels due over the next couple of years and can't wait to get back with some of these characters and see where the story takes them next.

Very highly recommended.

Vaughn is a dark character... but he has a reason to be cynical, and you can see through his initial "stand-offishness" to the good man underneath.
I don't want to give any spoliers, but the plot moves along nicely.... Everything fits in together, and you care about the characters. Quite a difficult feat to achieve in a science-fiction novel.
Eric Brown CANNOT write a bad book. He is too good an author.
You will care about Tiger, Sukara and Vaughn by the end of the novel AND you will be pleasantly surprised by the religion of the New World ORder. It will make you think about your own mortality.
When I look at some of the bad reviews Mr. Brown is getting, I am shocked.
These books are tremendously well written, and deserve awards and kudos not 2 and 3 star ratings.

Adventurous, hard boiled police procedural set in a science-fiction ambience, this novel captured me instantly. I loved the plot, the athmosphere, and the strange mix of ethnicity and techno-futurism. This is the promosing beginning of the Bengal Station series, and next novels won't disappoint you. A great read!And, yeah, it's not Iain Banks. So what? It's Eric Brown, and it's very good!

The setting for Necropath (mostly) is Bengal Station, a starport in the Indian Ocean between Burma and India. The time frame is sometime in the future. Faster than Light travel is a fact of life, as are aliens, and human colonies on other worlds. Bengal Station is a contact point for voidships, the ships that travel between these other planets. It's a large, labyrinthine construct that reminds one a little bit of a planetbound Babylon 5. The rich, the poor, the desperate, the greedy all come to live and work here.

Jeff Vaughn is a telepath. Augmentations have given him the ability, and the curse, to hear other people's thoughts. One can make a living scanning for a living, and Vaughn makes a living doing so. He is not so comfortable, though, that he isn't intimately familiar with the darker sides of Bengal Station. And when a crippled beggar girl turns up dead, Vaughn's life will not be the same, and his journey to unravel the mystery of her death puts him face to face with a sinister, stars-spanning cult...

It's a great premise and setting, anyway. Telepaths, aliens, interstellar travel, Thai and Indian culture front and forward, a plot that plausibly could last several novels. The ingredients are all here for something really to enjoy. And yet, for me, it just didn't work. I wanted to like this novel, and I couldn't.

First, I didn't like the main character that much. He's not a d*ck but I found it difficult to sympathize with him, even given his haunted,dark past. Worse, the characterizations of other characters, major and minor, didn't work for me either. I couldn't fathom the relationship between Osborne and Sukara. It felt false to me and seemed to be only a way to get the both of them to Bengal Station.

And the novel completely broke for me when, giving evidence of the problem to the police, Vaughn is at first completely blown off by Commander Sinton as being unreliable and untrustworthy (and naturally not believed)...and then nearly in the same breath, the same officer tries to offer Vaughn a job! It made absolutely no sense and I nearly threw the book against the wall. I can understand for plot reasons (cliches) why the officer would not believe Vaughn, but the sudden whiplash of trying to hook Vaughn into a job in the same debriefing made absolutely no sense.

I think that its more me than the novel and while others might enjoy the book more, I did not. I have no plans on continuing to read the author or of Vaughn's adventures.

There are things about this book which are enjoyable: the mix of Thai culture and outer space, the relationship between the main character and the beggar girl he befriends, the journey of her sister as she struggles to make her way in life. However, the mystery at the center of the story never really engaged me. I found myself skipping whole sections and not really missing anything. Also, the hero is a little remote. I found it hard to empathise with him which made it hard to care what happened. I cared far more about the girls and the secondary story line.

Necropath is a moderately intriguing read which makes it about 4/5ths of the way. The last acts, however, left me disappointed.

The premise is described in the summary and I want to avoid spoilers.
Without giving away any plot elements the reader soon discovers the protagonist Vaughn is a begrudging detective with a dark past that he wishes he could forget. That said, his motivation for "diving in" to the story is a bit unclear, particularly as an admitted misantrhope.

Unfortunately, the story depends on some plot "twists" that any seasoned mystery reader will see a mile away. Does this make the book bad? No. However, these twists and an ending which came across rushed left me wishing that Brown took a different path.

Would I recommend it? Consider it a qualified yes. Am I willing to give the others in the series a chance? Yes. But I hope they build from Necropath.

Sometimes I yearn for good old fashioned Science Fiction like you could get from the Masters of the Golden Age back in the late 1950s and 1960s. These were just good stories, without a lot of underlying meaning.

Necropath reminds me of those in many ways. This is a good story, taking place in Bengal Station -- a port facility hanging far above the ocean between India and Burma. There is the primary story about a man, Vaughn, who is a telepathic port inspector. We are given hints about a mysterious past. He has suspicions about a cargo delivery and that leads him to a strange cult that may or may not have an actual god, and may or may not be involved in some strange drugs.

Meanwhile, we have a parallel story of a "Working Girl" in a bar in Bangkok. She is scarred, but to aliens, she is the most beautiful girl available. Her soul, which they sense, is exceptional.

How this all comes together, as it turns out, is both lots of fun and rather touching.

I recommend this without hesitation and look forward to reading more in the series.