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White Devils by Paul McAuley check out website: www.simonsays.com
Streamlined and ultimately satisfying narrative...oh bugger! Now where's that gone? 'White Devils' starts with an explosion of action and information as we are introduced to the main character Nick, who is a man employed by a charity organisation to examine scenes of atrocity in a plague-devastated Africa. This is done principally to determine the identities of the victims. At the same time, agents of the sinister corporation who run the country he is staying in are doing all they can to suppress the story of the White Devils. From here on in, the story is largely based around Nick's attempts to discover the origins of the Devils and the nature of the company's involvement with them. On the positive side, this is not a dull book. Indeed, it is a book that displays the author's considerable talent for bringing together genuine science-possibilities with established SF themes, such as government conspiracy and good old-fashioned gibbering monstrosities. The characters are drawn well enough, although they could not be considered to be exemplary. The plot is full of twists and turns and you are often confronted with shivery, 'Oh-my-god-that could happen moments', the concepts of the 'Dead Zone' and the economics of 'gengineering' (genetically altering organisms) being cases in point. The Dead Zone is an area of devastation in the Congo caused by an horrific biological accident, the idea of which will lead any forward thinking person to have the occasional sleepless hour or two at night whilst contemplating it. So far, so good. The problem is most of us now, who have access to a million works of literature and only so much life provided to enjoy them in, demand more than just 'good'. We prefer to be using adjectives such as 'excellent' or 'outstanding' and these are terms that I can't apply to this novel. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, it is far too long. The basic quest for knowledge embarked upon by Nick is not enough to counter-balance the occasional monotony of his journey, Nick runs off. Nick gets captured. Nick runs off. Nick gets captured in a seemingly endless repetition of events designed primarily, it seems to me, to give the author a chance to change the setting and the supporting cast. A lot of this material is not valuable to the progression of the story and does not add very much to its shape either. My advice would be to run a hedge-trimmer down the middle and edit the two halves back together. Secondly, no matter what awful predicaments the characters found themselves in, I found it very difficult to care about them. There is something a little hollow about them and, despite all efforts of the author to hardwire them into the readers' hearts, my empathy battery was left decidedly flat. The exceptions to this would, as previously mentioned, be the very start of the piece and its final moments, which amp up the emotive energy to a perfect level which is only let down by the dull, unfulfilling conclusion. Thirdly, the bad guys are way more interesting than the heroes of the piece. Raphael is a repugnantly endearing figure (ie he is cool but crude) and the destructive appearances of the religious maniac Cody Corbin never fail to entertain in a disturbing kind of way. He is indeed a party dude. To be honest, right up until the end, I kind of wanted them to win. Perhaps I'm being a little bit hard on a book that is, after all, not half bad. That to me is the problem. Everything that should be there appears to be present, but the sum is unfortunately considerably greater than the whole. To be clear then, this is a good book. It's certainly worthy of rental from a library or maybe to buy, but only when it's in paperback. Personally, I'll be waiting for McAuley's next work, which will hopefully be a punchy 200-300 pages long and have as much attention paid to characterisation as it does to the admittedly fascinating and worrying subjects he addresses. Paul Skevington
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OTHER REVIEWS - April 2004
Other reviews: April 2004 Lucifer's Dragon by Jon Courtenay Grimwood The Companions by Sherri S. Tepper Beyond Infinity by Gregory Benford Sunshine Patriots by Bill Campbell The Skies Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton The Adam Strange Archives Volume 1 Wit'ch Gate: Immortal Magic - Infinite Vengence by James Clemens Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong Deep Space Nine: Rising Son by SD Perry Absolution Gap (The Inhibitors series book 3) by Alastair Reynolds Alchymist (The Well Of Echoes book 3) by Ian Irvine Hal Spacejock: Second Course by Simon Haynes Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris The Dancers At The End Of Time by Michael Moorcock The Crow: The Story Behind The Film by Bridget Baiss British Summertime by Paul Cornell The Year Of Our War by Steph Swainson April 2004: Hardback to Paperbacks The Chesley Awards: A Retrospective by John Grant and Elizabeth Humphrey with Pamela D. Scoville
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Author
with genuine and applicable scientific experience and knowledge,
check. Controversial and yet oh-so-topical subject matter, check.
Big-ass page count, likewise. 
He
is given his first chance to examine a 'fresh' scene and it is on
this trip that he first becomes acquainted with the White Devils,
who introduce themselves by ripping out the throats of his Brazilian
mercenary bodyguards. Whilst this is happening, Nick manages to
escape, rescuing a baby as he does so. This causes him to become
the focus of intense media attention. 
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