Ian Macleod's The Light Ages had every sign of being a book that I would love: dark subject matter, a steady stream of grotesqueries, unusual use of magic, a very gifted writer. Only a few pages in, I was expecting another China Mieville, though perhaps less baroque.

Instead, I found myself slogging through a novel that consumed my entire month of June--and that I still gave up on well before the ending. I don't often write reviews on books I don't finish, but I tried so long and so hard with The Light Ages that I feel justified here.

In The Light Ages, the world has discovered aether, a mysterious substance that powers engines and supports impossible structures but whose radiation-like effects range from making people sick to converting them into "changelings"--essentially, monsters. Robert Borrows, the narrator of the story, grows up dirt poor in the middle of industrial England. The story follows him as he grows up in the ghetto, escapes to the big city, falls in love with a curious changeling, and eventually foments social rebellion as disturbing rumors circulate that aether is becoming harder and harder to find.

Let's get one thing out of the way: Ian Macleod is a gifted and highly imaginative writer. His prose style is wonderful--just ornate enough to feel foreign, but simple enough to be easily understood. Like Mieville, he has a way with names: take, for instance, the hideous dragonlice. And the world he has created is both gritty and realistic, with real depth behind the bare surface we encounter.

The central problem with the book, however, is that it is just so damned boring. It's boring, first, because it's confusing and just too weird, and it becomes hard to connect to a narrator who oftentimes feels like one of the fantasy creatures he attempts to avoid. But more importantly, it's boring because it's so aimless--so aimless that the book oftentimes takes on the air of unreality. At least up to two-thirds of the book, when I quit, Robert just seems to drift around from place to place, seeing a lot but doing very litle. This and that happens--his mother turns into a changeling; his father falls into alcoholism; a Guildsmaster takes a rather unhealthy interest in him; he runs away from home--but none of it seems to driven by anything. The consequence is that the narrative feels loose and disconnected. Sure, there's some sort of story there, but it does not have the compactness and rhythm that distinguishes good plots from mild reminiscences on a setting.

I won't deny that there's a lot of promise in The Light Ages. It just takes a reader with a great deal more patience than I to sit through it.

Copyright © 2004 Steven Wu