The Book Lovers by Steve Aylett (Snowbooks, 2024) is a steampunk noir masterpiece. It’s a detective story about rare, fantastic books, human relationships, and a kidnapping.
The story unfolds in a dystopian city where the populace barely notices a planned book-burning initiative. It’s like Fahrenheit 451, or Nazi Germany, or present-day Florida. People who still read are referred to derisively as “book eaters.” They meet in out-of-the-way arcane bookstores that require secret passwords to get in. Of special interest are “forked books,” which change plots halfway through depending on who reads them. Books become both mythological symbols and comic props. While intelligent rebel types rendezvous in a basement library, men of wealth and power control the city unscrupulously.
Unlawful politicians consorting with greedy industrialists is a durable trope in Aylett’s fiction. In The Book Lovers, the backroom banter advances the plot with hilarious hyperbolic machinations. Metaphors become dynamic machine parts. Fear and denial produce enough energy to illuminate a city.
“Take a look at these ordeal cylinders,” says Jay Brewster, showing off his factory to Detective Nightjar. “Fitted with diachronic-suppressive valves. Solid state, you could say.”
Diachronic refers to how language develops and evolves. Diachronic-suppressive would mean hindering the development of language. This, and the planned book burning, all to keep the populace from getting any ideas. He continues, “The mounting tension avoids these junctions and transpires through pipework to the ramification plate, which stops it dead.” The punishing ramifications of dissent make people afraid to protest. They swallow their voice and keep quiet. This result is a vat full of “denial so stale and baked-in it stinks to high heaven, though we don’t notice.”
In an interesting twist, the book purports to feature one or two sapiosexual characters. Because sapiosexuality is sexual attraction to another person’s mind, it was not easy to tell who was making out. All I know for sure is that I read the book twice and I loved it.
The Book Lovers
Steve Aylett
Snowbooks (2 Dec. 2024)
Paperback 336 pages
ISBN-10 1913525325
ISBN-13 978-1913525323
(Bill Ectric)
Sounds like this book is right up my street. Thanks.
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