Philip Reeve: Starcross
As the second volume of Mr Philip Reeve’s outstanding steam-punk novels ("decorated throughout by Mr David Wyatt") was gifted to my second son this Christmas, I betook me to read it before he did, and accordingly write a report, advantageous in the extreme, as to its great worth and as to the hearty amusement found therein.
What a stunner, Mr Reeve!
I’ll drop the bad cod-Victoriana now, because I don’t do it half so well as these books: you are carried through on a delight of prose and sneaky witticism. Reeve has a good grounding in amusing names and references before now but the end papers of the book give us advertisements for “The Precocious Dane by Merrily Webb” and “Lembitt’s EnviroGlade - Combining the latest in Atmospheric Engineering”; and somewhere in the later chapters, as our heroes speed through the asteroid belt,
[they] let an unknown blue planetoid slide past, on whose surface small mouse-like beings were leaning out of lidded craters to shake their woolly fists at us, demanding to know if we were blind, and whether we thought we owned the aether. As their indignant whistlings and hootings faded astern….
All in all, it’s fantabulous rip-roaring aadventures in the Victorian space-age, with bewhiskered villains, adventuring youthful space-pirates, and our main protagonists Art(hur) and Myrtle Mumby. In the first volume - Larklight - there was danger and space spiders running amok in the Crystal Palace; and in this, parasitical creatures called Moobs who are spreading their mind-control of the human race by disguising themselves as highly desirable top hats. Control of the story is in Art’s hands mostly, although it occasionally passes to Myrtle, who though genteel, manages to discover a talent for putting the right mixtures in the alembic resulting in “the chemical wedding” which drives the space ship’s engine.
Of course the right wins through in the end. Art and Myrtle’s mother has her own mysterious part to play: she is an ancient being who created our Solar System, and is very much in the same lines as Mother Carey in Kingsley’s Water Babies (who says “I make things make themselves”. As JM mentions above, in the first book she explains she is a Shaper, who came into being at the dawn of the universe, to help usher forth life in the cosmos. The theology is slight, only a sentence or two, but interestingly included:
“If it is you Shapers who make everything,” Mr Munkulus asked, “what place is there for God?”
“Think, dear,” said Mother,” Who made the Universe and lit the suns? Who shaped the Shapers? For Shapers are not gods, just servants of that invisible universal will which set the stars in motion…”
Recommended: an absolutely fantastic and jolly amusing read for all ages - but especially those aged 9 and up.
****
What a stunner, Mr Reeve!
I’ll drop the bad cod-Victoriana now, because I don’t do it half so well as these books: you are carried through on a delight of prose and sneaky witticism. Reeve has a good grounding in amusing names and references before now but the end papers of the book give us advertisements for “The Precocious Dane by Merrily Webb” and “Lembitt’s EnviroGlade - Combining the latest in Atmospheric Engineering”; and somewhere in the later chapters, as our heroes speed through the asteroid belt,
[they] let an unknown blue planetoid slide past, on whose surface small mouse-like beings were leaning out of lidded craters to shake their woolly fists at us, demanding to know if we were blind, and whether we thought we owned the aether. As their indignant whistlings and hootings faded astern….
All in all, it’s fantabulous rip-roaring aadventures in the Victorian space-age, with bewhiskered villains, adventuring youthful space-pirates, and our main protagonists Art(hur) and Myrtle Mumby. In the first volume - Larklight - there was danger and space spiders running amok in the Crystal Palace; and in this, parasitical creatures called Moobs who are spreading their mind-control of the human race by disguising themselves as highly desirable top hats. Control of the story is in Art’s hands mostly, although it occasionally passes to Myrtle, who though genteel, manages to discover a talent for putting the right mixtures in the alembic resulting in “the chemical wedding” which drives the space ship’s engine.
Of course the right wins through in the end. Art and Myrtle’s mother has her own mysterious part to play: she is an ancient being who created our Solar System, and is very much in the same lines as Mother Carey in Kingsley’s Water Babies (who says “I make things make themselves”. As JM mentions above, in the first book she explains she is a Shaper, who came into being at the dawn of the universe, to help usher forth life in the cosmos. The theology is slight, only a sentence or two, but interestingly included:
“If it is you Shapers who make everything,” Mr Munkulus asked, “what place is there for God?”
“Think, dear,” said Mother,” Who made the Universe and lit the suns? Who shaped the Shapers? For Shapers are not gods, just servants of that invisible universal will which set the stars in motion…”
Recommended: an absolutely fantastic and jolly amusing read for all ages - but especially those aged 9 and up.
****