Justina Robson has a justifiable reputation as a crafter of worlds, a remarkable storyteller and one who is unafraid to delve into big issues: metaphysical propositions of death, rebirth, the Void, life, the undead, corporeal and incorporeal realities. And she continues this, of course, in book four of her “Quantum Gravity” series, CHASING THE DRAGON.
Unfortunately, this tendency to tell big stories and to have big changes happen to her characters can leave the neophyte reader awash in a confusing whirlpool of … happenings. First, something remarkable happens, then another 20 pages, and something else remarkable happens.
With the characters passing between different planes of existence — for instance, one turns from a ragdoll to a creature of shadow to something else entirely — it’s hard to nail down a narrative thread where you can feel comfortable understanding the possibilities of the story. Instead, it’s more likely that some truly outlandish happening will occur, such as the presence of a ghost fleet in the Void led by a demon who seeks to find the mantle of night to transform into … well, you get the idea. —Rod Lott
Our lead character, Lila Black, is a human/cyborg hybrid who apparently has traveled forward in time 50 years, all of which has presumably been chronicled in the first three books of the series. Her life is pretty complicated. As one of her friends asks her, “Don’t you ever get rattled, Black? You drag a lost love out of a ghost sea, your partner goes AWOL, your spouse under sentence, you murder a rogue agent, your sister comes back from the dead, and your clothes don’t even like you, what? Nothing?”
It’s true: She has an ongoing battle with her sentient — and deadly — clothing, and her spouse under sentence is a giant-scaled demon named Teazle who likes to visit Demonia to kill as many things as he can. Frankly, even these elements aren’t nearly as fantastical as others we encounter during the tale.
Robson has a smooth and polished style, so she does manage to bring you with her on this imaginative and otherworldly tale, but if you’re new to the series, it will definitely be best to start with the first book, KEEPING IT REAL, and working onward from there. —Mark Rose
