The Half-Made World (edition 2010)

I'm not sure I enjoyed The Half-Made World. I was intrigued by it, which is something different. There's nothing here to hang your hopes on, to get emotionally attached to: the Linesmen are interchangeable, the Line unpleasant; the Agents of the Gun are as bad or worse, though at least they're individuals; the General is nothing but a tool for the plot; Liv is colourless... Even the Republic is hollow. The narration follows a Linesman, an Agent, and Liv, who is neutral. It really just emphasises that there is no right or wrong: it's a sea of moral ambiguity. I don't even know what moral goodness would look like, in this world.

Creedmore is, despite being despicable, at least an interesting character. His conflict, his relationship with Marmion, his unpredictability and irreverence... If I kept reading for any of the characters, it was for him. He's colourful, at least, even if it's the colours of hell!

The world itself is interesting -- the concept of it, the idea of the Line and the Guns, and the half-made nature of it as you go out West. I was intrigued by the steampunk and Western aspects (though, again, I'm not sure I'd use the word enjoyed). Some of the most interesting things, the Folk, drift around on the outside...

And it's all very inconclusive. Has anything changed, at the end? It doesn't feel like it's waiting for a sequel -- it just trails off.

Despite all of that, which sounds very critical, I was (here's that word again) intrigued: I kept reading, all four hundred and eighty pages of it, which is something. ( )

A slow burning fantastical wonder

Poised deliciously between wonderful world building and fantastic characterisation this 1st in a dulogy(?) slowly built but the by end left me quite breathless.

The world? Well it's a A wild west frontier torn between the logical, industriousness of the Line and their giant locomotives ripping through the landscape, consuming and twisting all to their needs. Their armies full of grey men, with their mind shattering bombs. Humanities last gasp, the Red Army was defeated long ago and The Guns, chaotic beings who love to possess outlaws cannot hold them back. No one thinks much about the natives who sulk on the edge of reality or are enslaved by the thundering progress of The Line. Into all this, looking for an adventurous new start is psychologist Liv. From the staid East to a home for the war broken. A home that contains an old general who in his broken mind may hold the secret to ending the war.

It’s a wonderful premise, that as you can tell is hard to summarise. The characters that form it grow to be delicious, the pitch perfect tone of the demonic gun, wheedling and cruel in equal measure or the terribly fragile humanity of Liv (one of my favourite characters period). Liv's journey West and the drawing together of all forces keeps you entertained whilst furiously building the story and then goes in unexpected places. Be warned I don't think it hits the wow factor for a while and it always refuses to fall into easy plot tropes of epic battles and glorious romance; passivity with chaos and sudden, very real bravery against familiar cowardice. It maybe a page turner but it’s not nonstop action.

It is the first book is in a series, but the ending is satisfying whilst leaving it wide open for the next. Yet I think whether this books really shines is going to rest on the next book.. I have much invested in this now. ( )

A good book, if a slow-starting. I don't know if it's philosophizing and portentousness is meaningful or not, but an interesting world created, and at the end, I wanted to follow the story further. ( )

Order and Chaos. The Line and the Gun. The battle between the two elemental forces of order and chaos has long been a favourite for fantasy literature and it has provided fallow fertile ground for many tales of human society as it gets caught in the middle of these two titanic ways of viewing the universe. What better stage for displaying this great and never-ending battle than the American West? What other time period more succinctly portrays the stark differences between these two great forces? Felix Gilman has taken this stage, albeit in an alternate world that only mirrors that of our own, in order to paint in the stark blacks and whites of this endless battle. Standing in for Order and Chaos we have, as has already been mentioned, the Line and the Gun. These two great unnatural (supernatural? abnatural?) forces are presided over by demonic spirits who drive on the humans in their service in an attempt to forever destroy their opposites. The Line are housed in great Engines that control and drive their human slaves in the name of industry and progress. Their tracks criss-cross the West and lay waste to all in their path, flattening the hills and mountains and filling in the valleys to turn all into orderly, flat wastelands populated only by their great Stations and factories. The Guns take a more personal approach, inhabiting their weapons of steel and wood and brimstone and riding their bearers, shaping them into superhuman gunslingers, able to move almost faster than the eye can follow and heal from grievous wounds in mere moments.

The alternate world that Gilman has created for this story has a great continent broadly divided into two great zones: the settled East, where things have been 'made' or 'shaped' into their final forms as we know them. Peace, order and (good?) government are the rule here and the countries of the East seem to combine elements of both the settled eastern states of the historical U.S. and the 'old world' of Europe. Science and Technology, law and order, are well-founded here, though not with the inflexible singleness of vision of the Line. Out beyond the borders of the map, however, lies the West. Beyond the great, and aptly named, World's End Mountains, lies a country that grows more lawless, and even physically unformed, the farther out you go. Only the Line has brought Order to parts of the West, but its order is a sterile thing, consuming all in its path and replacing it with factories and stations for its great engines, peopled by its hive-like minions who are driven to build and destroy in equal measure. The Agents of the Gun are themselves compelled by their masters to halt the Line wherever they are able, revelling in death and chaos no matter the price. Caught between these two forces are the small communities of 'normal' people who seem to simply sit back and hope that both the Line and the Gun will ignore their presence, at least in their own lifetime.

Amidst these great swathes of black and white, however, Gilman does manage to include many shades of grey in his story at both the macro and the micro level. At the macro level we have the Red Valley Republic, a gathering of many smaller nation-states of the unformed West under one banner and the leadership of the great General Orlan Enver. The Republic is another great power, able in its heyday to do the impossible: hold off both the Line and the Gun, and prosper in the unformed West. They are not, apparently, driven by any demons or supernatural forces, but only the human ideals and hopes of their founders...though these prove to be as dominating and heedless, in their own way, as the more metaphysical powers. At the micro level we have Gilman’s nuanced characterisation, especially as seen in his three main protagonists who move the plot forward: Liv Alverhuysen, a bored widow and professor of psychology at the Koenigswald Academy who dreams of the possibilities of adventure that await in the West, John Creedmoor an aging charmer who also happens to be an Agent of the Gun, and Sub Invigilator (Third) Lowry, a lowly cog in the great human machine of the Line.

As the story proper begins the Red Valley Republic is nothing more than a dream and a memory: a failed fable and cautionary tale of the price of opposing the two great Powers. Liv has received an enigmatic letter requesting assistance from the aptly named House Dolorous, a hospital and hospice on the very edge of the settled West designed to care for those broken by the endless war of the Powers. She jumps at the chance to leave her comfortable and staid life behind and go into the unknown. Creedmoor, a somewhat cowardly and lazy adventurer who has been laying low and avoiding the call of his harsh masters, is suddenly prodded back into service and set on a track that will lead him to cross paths with the other main players of the tale. Lastly, we have Lowry, the lowly, but ambitious, peon of the Line, destined to rise in the ranks of the great machine as he too is goaded on by his masters to find the prize that all three characters will eventually pursue: the great General Envers, thought lost, though now convalescing at the House Dolorous in a fit of madness brought on by one of the horrible weapons of the Line. Apparently the general holds a great secret of the First Folk (the somewhat elvish, somewhat aboriginal, somewhat otherworldly first inhabitants of the West who are enslaved by everyone else when they are not free to roam the unformed wilderness), that both Powers crave for their own, and fear may fall into the hands of their enemies.

I really enjoyed this book, and Gilman's prose is very fluid, so even though it is a sizable tome I found that the pages flew by fairly quickly. This is my first introduction to what has been labelled the ‘Weird West’ in genre circles, and which shades mildly into areas of steampunk, and if it’s an indication of what else is out there in this genre then I’m excited to continue in my discoveries. I thoroughly enjoyed this book both for the extensive worldbuilding that Gilman did, as well as his admirable work with characterisation. Each of the main protagonists is nuanced and interesting, and even Creedmoor and Lowry are able to rise above being simply placeholders for their respective Powers. For his part Creedmoor combines the nostalgic regret of an old gunslinger seeing something of the error of his ways, though held back from change by inertia and cowardice, while Lowry, despite being born and bred as simply a cog in a wheel, displays aspects of individual thinking and initiative that could just as likely get him killed by his Masters as promoted by allowing him to complete his goal. Liv stands in for the rest of us, those ‘normal’ people not beholden to any supernatural Power for their goals and abilities, and who must make her way in the world with only her own intellect and conscience to guide her. General Envers, even though insane and mostly silent for the majority of the book, is also a very interesting figure who, despite his affliction, looms large in the story and stands almost as a power unto himself.

Highly recommended.
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Brilliant

Spirits are housed in Guns and Engines which war against each other via their Agents in an imaginative retelling of the wild west. Gilman takes and re-forges the tropes of Gunslingers and railroads. The distilled noise of the Engines of the Line take your sanity so the Agents of the Line use Noisemaker as well as poison bombs when they attack. The Agents of the Gun are always losing but never defeated. The people of the East live in the well-made stable world. The people of the West live in the newly made world and to the far West is the shifting half-made world. The Red Valley Republic warred against both Line and Gun but eventually failed. Their most famous general is caught by a Noisemaker but is not killed and just may have a secret buried in his head which both sides seek. He is a patient at the House Dolorous which is protected by a powerful spirit. Dr Liv Alverhuysen has a troubled past but is a proponent of the new science of psychology and goes West to take up a post at the House Dolorous. John Creedmore is an Agent of the Gun tasked with infiltrating the House Dolorous to steal the secret in the General’s head and Lowry is a soldier of the Line tasked with getting the general, and through a series of field promotions finds himself in charge. Gilman has woven a gripping story which seamlessly imports some Western-“ness” without spoiling a vividly imagined world building. He has also taken three very mortal, very human protagonists to illustrate the fantastic story of that world. I loved the world and I loved the characters and how they interacted so I heartily recommend this book.

Overall – Well told tale in a fantastic and fantastically weird world ( )