Shale is dying. A vast chaotic storm - the Roil - filled with monsters and leaving nothing but a wasteland of dead in it's wake, is expanding across the land. The last humans fight back hard with ever more bizarre new machines, but the Roil remains unstoppable. Of the twelve cities that make up Shale, eight have already been consumed and the final four have very little time. The future of Shale, indeed the future of mankind, lies with a drug-addicted boy, a four-thousand year old man and a young woman hell-bent on revenge.
Roil promises much but takes a long time to deliver. The first few chapters don't really hook you in and there's nothing appealing in any of the characters, a bugbear that unfortunately doesn't get resolved in the course of this book. The opening scenes play out reasonably well but comprise trope number one - a teenager, orphaned through violent means while escaping a similar fate sets out on the road to revenge - and it's pretty hackneyed fair, but it happens not once, but twice (to a boy then a girl) giving us trope number two, a boy from one background and a girl from another set out on separate adventures that will inevitably bring them together. So far so mediocre, but add to that a dystopian cityscape with wild west sensibilities and a steampunk aesthetic, a corrupt leader who will stop at nothing to retain power and a ruling council running an army of highly trained assassins out to 'get' the kids and anyone else they feel doesn't fit in, and frankly I was ready to close the (it has to be said, dreadful) cover and read something else. But this is Angry Robot, I thought, there has to be something more than this.. so I ploughed on.
In the end I'm glad I did. There are some interesting ideas at the heart of Roil and I'm looking forward to the next in the series but the real star of the show is the world that Jamieson has imagined and, specifically, the Roil itself. I imagine it to be something akin to the grey goo scenario of nanotech nightmares, moving inexorably across the world, consuming everything in its path and growing ever stronger from all that it feeds on. It cannot be bargained with, it cannot be reasoned with, it cannot be controlled or corralled, it's too big for that, and so the only option is to figure out how to kill it or die trying. It's a terrific premise and an incredibly cinematic vision, one that really opened the book up for me after the first few chapters and the thing that kept me reading to the end.
There are creatures too, packs of Quarg Hounds that will tear you to shreds, Witmoths that will infest a man and turn him into a living host for the Roil, and the sky contains flying beasts, Endyms and Vermatisaurs, while humans traverse them in Aerokins, living dirigibles that their pilots control as much through empathy as anything else. There is also a vast array of weaponry and transport and machinery, all painted with the steampunk brush, clearly Jamieson has given full vent to his imagination and there's a lot to like but at the end of the day it is so much window dressing.
It's fair to say that the two main characters, David and Margaret, get short shrift in this first book. Both are pretty one-note, Margaret because she has little to do and David because his every thought is punctuated by his craving for drugs but I'm hoping that enough was set up here that they will be given more to do in subsequent volumes and they will eventually grow into the story. The other main characters in corrupt Mayor, Stade, and four-thousand year old Cadell are by contrast way more interesting and I could happily have spent more time in their company. The same goes for the Verger, Mr. Tope, the assassin was definitely worth more page time than he got. There is also a vague subplot involving the wonderfully named 'Medicine Paul' leading a group of people to a safe haven and this story will definitely come to the fore in the next book.
In the end Roil is a decent read. The premise is great and there's a lot of imagination gone into the world building and into setting the stage for the next installment despite the somewhat abrupt ending. But Jamieson has still got it all to do to lift Roil above the morass of other science fiction work out there, I'm confident on this showing that he can do it, but a little less 'stuff' and a bit more character would be a decent place to start.
Roil is published by Angry Robot Books and is available with free delivery from The Book Depository and on the high street from Blackwell and all good book stores.
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