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Thunderer (Mass Market Paperback)

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3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
Price: $6.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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  Kindle Edition, December 26, 2007 $5.59 -- --
  Hardcover, December 25, 2007 -- $3.95 $1.33
  Mass Market Paperback, September 29, 2008 $6.99 $3.66 $3.31

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Scattershot plotting and puzzling theology notwithstanding, there's much to like in Gilman's first novel, fantasy set in the ever-shifting city of Ararat. Once a gifted composer in the distant city of Gad, Arjun has come to Ararat seeking the intangible Voice. Instead, he finds a city filled with other gods, streets that resist being mapped and citizens touched in varying ways by the passing of the mysterious Bird. Gilman's literary antecedents are intriguingly diverse. Ararat itself fuses elements of Renaissance Venice and Victor Hugo's Paris. Arjun's search leads at times into gaslight-era SF à la Jules Verne, at others into distinctly Poe-like horror, while a secondary plot transforms street youth Jack into a hybrid of Peter Pan and Dickens's Artful Dodger. Impressively, the whole remains essentially coherent, though just how and why Ararat's gods behave as they do is unclear, and parts of the convoluted climax rely too heavily on underexplained aspects of the city's nature. Nonetheless, strongly conveyed atmosphere and intriguing characters make this a distinctive debut. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


Review

"Gilman takes his readers on a journey through a world of deep and wondrous impossibilities where marvels lurk around every corner. His infinite city and the lives of its people quickly become an irresistible compulsion— I imagine an evening where Dickens, Miyazaki, and Jules Verne sat down to dream up a metropolis and its wrangling multitudes. Thunderer will leave you wide eyed, breathless and hoping for more."—David Keck, author of In the Eye of Heaven

“Memorably inventive, with intriguing characters ... impressive.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Gilman is far above average for a first novelist."—Booklist


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
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Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Spectra; Reprint edition (September 30, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 055359110X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553591101
  • Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.7 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #663,447 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Felix Gilman
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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (5)
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 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Highly promising first novel--with wonderful world-building, March 5, 2008
This review is from: Thunderer (Hardcover)
When the god he worships, Voice, vanishes from Gad, Arjun comes up with the idea of searching for Voice in the great city, Ararat. In Ararat, gods are abundant and it would be easy, he reasons, to for one more god to lose his way in that city. After traveling for months, he arrives in time to see evidence of those gods--a huge flame that continually lights the city, and a bird flying overhead that showers its powers down on the inhabitants of Ararat, temporarily gifting a few of them with the ability to fly.

Jack Sheppard has waited for the arrival of the bird and uses its passage to speed his own escape from a workhouse. Once free, he joins up with a group of other feral children and schemes to free more. Ararat teems with workhouses and prisons, and Jack embarks on a quest to free everyone. While the power the bird gave most of Ararat fades, in Jack, it seems to grow.

Scientist Holbach has predicted the return of the bird and convinced one of the city's nobles, the Countess Ilona, to invest in a balloon that will, Holbach believes, permanently capture a bit of the bird's power that would otherwise disperse into nothing. The experiment is a success, but at a cost, and the balloon, named Thunderer, becomes a part of the Countess's arsenal. While Holbach dreamed of using it to continue his vast survey and Atlas of the seemingly limitless city, the Countess plans it to be a weapon, allowing her to threaten her rivals without fear of retribution.

Author Felix Gilman shows huge promise in a fascinating and complex world where gods walk the streets, continually transforming the city behind them, where a few humans seem to have abilities that defy explanation, and where disease and corruption never lies far beneath the surface. The city of Ararat is really the primary character in this story, with Jack, Holbach, Arjun and the others serving mostly as opportunities to peer into other parts of the city, to see new sights and new dangers.

THUNDERER is Gilman's first novel and, despite its promise, it's not without flaws. The Thunderer itself never really plays an important role in the unfolding plot. The mysterious spider god shows incredible potential (and a number of pages are dedicated to this god) but soon fades and never really plays a role in the plot, either. As several people point out to Jack, his plan to spring workers and prisoners from their workshops and prisons is clearly doomed--if the escapes are successful, the newly freed prisoners have nothing to do, no money, no food--yet he seems incapable of doing anything else. Even Arjun seems to wander through the city rather. Only in the last fifty pages or so, when Gilman wraps things up, does Arjun develop goals and start to plan rather than react.

The best fantasy develops wonderful worlds that somehow reflect and shine lights into our own universe. But Gilman, in THUNDERER, seems to forget that it's necessary to have compelling characters and plot as well. There's a lot to like in this book and Gilman certainly shows huge promise. But that promise is only partially filled in this first novel.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Theological Urban Fantasy : a good story, well written, January 4, 2008
This review is from: Thunderer (Hardcover)
Yes, someone gave this book a bad review, but don't listen to him -- he's someone who apparently doesn't know the difference between "bazaar" and "bizarre". This book is a delight, and the author is both a good storyteller and a good writer.

I completely disagree with the previous reviewer's critique that the book has no character or plot development; I found the characters to have both depth and charm (and yes, they do learn and grow and change during the course of their travels), and the plot is creatively based upon what happens to the these characters as they seek to find, follow, trap, defy, profit from, or divine the patterns of the many gods within the seemingly infinite city of Ararat. This city is NOT, as the critical reviewer has written, "devoid of cause and effect and logic," but instead is vividly written and fascinating. The gods of Ararat regularly remake its streets in the wake of their passing, and the citizens who believe in these gods (and who among them would dare NOT believe, when their presence is so frequently seen and felt) range from the blasé to the devout to the fanatical.

The summaries of this book focus on the naive traveler Arjun and his search for the Voice, but there is also another main character, Jack (it's not too much of a spoiler to say that he's the one featured on the cover, is it?), a boy of the streets whose own search is equally engaging. Indeed, they are contending with forces greater than themselves, yet they have their own skills and wisdom to draw upon as they make their stand.

The secondary characters also have depth, and skills, and flaws of their own to wrestle with, and as you read you will be certain that even though not every detail has revealed to you, the author, at least, knows everything about both his gods and his mortals, making both the setting and the story of his novel very believable and wonderfully exciting.

I'll be saving my 5-star rating for when Gilman's second book goes to press.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Slow to build but satisfying, January 27, 2008
This review is from: Thunderer (Hardcover)
This novel took a little bit to get it's engine going, but I found it excellent. There are three main characters. The first two are Jack and Arjun and the plot follows the two of them in their separate stories until they intersect. The last is the city, an area that is as much theological as geographical. The city rearranges itself and is infested by gods that are unknowable but impossible to ignore. The book lags at the beginning because the author has to layer on plots and characters and background to let the readers ( and the characters) discover how the city really works.
A satisfying chew.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious first novel
After Samuel Delany's Bellona, China Mieville's New Crubuzon (and, now, Beszel-Ul Qoma), and Scott Lynch's Camoor, it's fair to say that, with the arrival of Felix Gilman's... Read more
Published 4 months ago by lb136

3.0 out of 5 stars solid but setting stronger than plot or character
A lot of books have come out where setting plays a large role as character: Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris, China Miéville's New Crobuzon, Gregory Frost's Shadowbridge, and Jay... Read more
Published 8 months ago by B. Capossere

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly complex and fun read
Thunderer is a book more about a person's discovery of what they can do, rather than what society tells them they should do. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Monkey

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and unique
I agree that this book is a slow read, something I usually don't put up with. However, this slow read happens to be a thoroughly interesting and refreshing one. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Laura Jean Moody

1.0 out of 5 stars ponderous
500-plus pages of overworked, stylized prose to cause smoke to billow out of your ears. story-telling getting in the way of the story. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Munson Wu

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite excellent
I honestly hope that Felix hadn't been working on his debut novel for 10 years, because I can't wait to read his next effort. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Paul D. Raines

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Debut
I cannot recommend this highly enough. Gilman creates a shifting fantasy city I imagined to be a cross between Constantinople and Dickens's London and populated it with capricious... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Markus Buhmann

5.0 out of 5 stars A Surreal Adventure
Thunderer is easily the best speculative fiction novel I've read this year. The story is fantastically surreal, with magic and science butting heads in an endless labyrinthine... Read more
Published 19 months ago by M. C. Buell

1.0 out of 5 stars A Random Compendium Of Bazaar Meaningless Events
Imagine a book were every plot thought of or could be thought of by Jorge Luis Borges took place in the same story and you have this book. Read more
Published 22 months ago by James Briggs

5.0 out of 5 stars A Maze of Gods
Horror fantasy is an close description, but it's not so much that as quixotic; all of Gilman's characters are attempting to contend with forces far beyond their control, their... Read more
Published 22 months ago by B. Thomas-Moore

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