The Rise of the Iron Moon by Stephen Hunt
- Albedo One Reviews

The front cover quote from the Guardian for this book is “Compulsive reading”. The back cover quote from Tom Holt, SFX, is, “Hunt’s imagination is probably visible from space. This is Philip Pullman with a dose of benzedrine. Hold on to your hat and let yourself get carried away.”

Unfortunately, despite enjoying most of Philip Pullman’s novels, I was not carried away by Stephen Hunt’s third novel. Perhaps this is because I have not read his previous two novels? Perhaps the white water rafting imagery that popped into my head when I read Tom Holt’s awesome summary and selected this book was a little too adventurous?

Staying on the subject of first impressions, the cover artwork is simple yet compelling. The lack of an Acknowledgements section anywhere within the 460 pages is a tad disheartening. Conversely, the web site (www.SFcrowsnest.com) that the author is a founder of is intriguing, as is the fact that Mr Hunt is employed on an artificial intelligence project. Wow! All this appeals strongly, neh, excites that science fiction/science fact part of my personality.

Onto the actual prose. At first it felt like being in a Victorian setting (nothing wrong with that); then it felt like being in the original black and white Flash Gordon series with Buster Crabbe (great!); next it became mixture of the two (okay); then it was somewhere else, somewhere dark and sinister as the Slats invaded (hmm). This is obviously where the milk of the author’s prodigious imagination has been poured: scene setting. The plot premise is straight forward: how can one plucky orphan girl save the world from ultimate destruction?

As we follow lonely orphan Purity Drake on her voyage of self discovery, other characters, undoubtedly from Mr Hunt’s previous novels, take the limelight, mainly Molly Templar and Oliver Brooks. There are also a host of other characters who steal the viewpoint, which switches around within unbalanced chapters (the first chapter is a whopping 53 pages, the second chapter weighs in in at 32 pages, whereas the third chapter is only 5 pages). So, if you like pacing yourself at night, in those last minutes before lights out curfew, it is difficult to finish reading at a natural break. Moreover, although character names are mentioned early on in these inter chapter breaks, it was not always obvious that these viewpoints were distinct from other viewpoints. At times like these, it would have been nice to have had some of Coppertrack’s extensible mu bodies to help with the load (joking!).

For me, this is where the book breaks down: there are too many characters, too few pages, and a story that is too epic. All of these conspire to stop the reader from empathising with the characters that are central to the plot. There are too many broad brush strokes for my tastes and not enough fine strokes to make characters rounded, to buoy the story with credulity, to stop the page turning from becoming a means to an end.

I am sorry this appears as harsh critiquing, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. If you are willing to stick through a gruelling opening one hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty pages, things do slot into place. In a somewhat comical fashion, more character viewpoints appear, until they are akin to the extras in the classic sci-fi franchise Star Trek, where when you see a new face on an away mission you just know they are going to bite the bullet, I mean, Phaser.

Saying this, fear not, old favourites like the indomitable steam man Coppertracks (Here, again, I could not shake some more mental imagery about him being akin to Douglas Adam’s creation Marvin the Paranoid Android: “Brain the size of a planet and all you want me to do is...”)  and that stalwart Commodore Black and, of course, Molly Templar do make it to the last fifty pages where the climax is acceptable.