Nova Swing [Import] [Paperback]

M. John Harrison (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Gollancz; paperback / softback edition (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 057507969X
• ISBN-13: 978-0575079694
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Supply Your Own Questions and Answers, February 28, 2008

By 

Glen Dodge "Verbify!" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nova Swing (Paperback)

I think it's obvious that Harrison knows how to write. He's been at it a long time in both literary and journalistic concentrations. I think it's obvious that he's not interested in writing a "standard" novel. He will willingly weaken his work's plotline and continuum to let his art shine through.

That's where the reader has to decide what they're up for.

You want space opera? This isn't it. You want an alien Phillip Marlowe? Not really. Can you deal with ambiguity and page-long descriptions of odd events. This is for you!

Set in the same timeline as Harrison's earlier work, Light, Nova Swing follows an assortment of characters who are displaced. They live in a time where they can hop in a tank and be whoever or wherever they want to be, or go to a gene tailor and really become someone new. But the characters in Nova Swing aren't interested in that. They're interested in making a real connection to the people and places around them. Their quest is made more problematic by the Event Site, a place where part of the Kefahuchi Tract fell to ground and warped the way time and space behave. Several of the characters are drawn to it, some are ambivalent, but the Event Site rules what goes on is this novel. Will the characters go in? Will they ever come out? And what's the deal with the armpit-tattooing serial killer?

There are lots of beautiful passages in this book. There are parts and characters that I found pretty dull. Ultimately I don't want to look back at a novel and have to try and decode what it was I read. Not the meaning, but just the chain of events. And I don't mind working while I'm reading. I like a challenging read. This one just has too many threads that don't get resolved.

Short review: lots of literary sizzle, not enough plot-based steak.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Harrison's Best Work, January 24, 2010

By 

ScrawnyPunk (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nova Swing (Mass Market Paperback)

Whereas Light was involved and uplifting, Nova Swing is muddled and depressing. The story takes place in the same universe as Light, about a generation later. An anomaly of space-time has expanded and its edge has `fallen to earth' in the middle of Suadade city. The intersection of city and spatial anomaly has created the Suadade Event site, a zone of `impossible physics,' which attracts adventurous tourists, `artifact' smugglers, and a local police force watching them both. Of the eight main characters in the novel, three are destined to lose themselves in the Event, three are destined to move as far away from it as possible, and two learn to accept it as part of their lives.

As with Light and the Viriconium stories, Harrison's narrative style is extraordinarily immersive. He drops you into the action with the assumption you are familiar with the story's setting, history, culture, and linguistic vagaries. This makes for a bumpy start, but the approach is so thorough and unrelenting that you eventually develop a familiarity with the material. This style is particularly rewarding since he treats you like an insider instead of a child in need of narrative-halting explanation. As always, his writing is elaborately descriptive, densely layered, and technically impressive.

Unfortunately, the story itself does match the power of the prose. The mood moves back and forth from criminal noir to cyberpunk to hallucinatory travelogue to melancholy memoir and back again. Character motives and qualities seem to change rather suddenly midway through the novel. The story's climax occurs about 2/3 of the way in and subsequently yields to what appears to be a metaphysical climax followed by a lengthy coda to tie up loose ends. The final effect appears to be an author who changed his mind but was committed to finishing. I almost stopped reading this book out of frustration, but was likewise committed to finishing.

All in all, Nova Swing is a great disappointment in comparison to its predecessor. If I had to guess, the awards for Nova Swing (??,??,??) were probably make-up calls since they clearly should have been given to Light. This is not Harrison's strongest effort in my opinion.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange., January 19, 2009

By 

Barry Hawkey "Bootstrap Records" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nova Swing (Mass Market Paperback)

Every sentence in this book is strangely weighty, and weighted strangely; clauses that loop, hang, and leave you strangely waiting.