The Somewhere Book

I'm a big fan of China Mieville, so it's a bit surprising that I first heard about his latest novel on The Colbert Report. It's an interesting book, co-written with the actor Keanu Reeves. Some years ago Reeves wrote a comic called BRZRKR, and more recently he and Mieville have collaborated on a novel "The Book of Elsewhere" that builds on the comic.

 

I haven't read BRZRKR, and I'm a little curious about the intended audience for TBoE, whether they assume that most readers are already familiar with the world and characters, or that they are not, or if they try to account for both. I honestly found the book a little hard to get into and struggled for the first hundred pages or so; I mildly suspect that, if I was already invested in the characters or familiar with their background, I might have gotten hooked earlier. I'm glad I stuck with it, as around the midpoint it started to click with me, and by the end I was really enjoying the ride.

MINI SPOILERS

One of the very few things I knew about BRZRKR heading into this novel is that it's a pretty gory comic. The main character, who variously goes by "B" or "Unute", is an ancient, immortal fighter. When he gets angry, he enters a sort of fugue state and becomes a whirling dervish of death. He's stronger than anyone on the planet and can take on entire squadrons of armed soldiers without serious injury; when he does get hurt, he rapidly heals; and even when he does die, as has happened many many times over tens of thousands of years, he is reborn again, with all his memories intact and ready to fight again.

The book mostly takes place in the present day, where B is the focus of a secretive special-ops agency of the US government: he's a one-man wrecking crew, but has an entire organization backing him up, giving him direction and support. A lot of the early book was referring back to previous events, including some deaths of soldiers attached to the unit, and I suspect but don't know that those are callbacks to the comics.

While the main plot unfolds in the present, there are a lot of chapters and sections that flash back to previous events in B's life, sometimes from his perspective and sometimes from the perspective of a mortal: a kid he encountered on a trans-oceanic voyage, or the woman he was married to for several decades, or an adversary. Mieville really unpacks and unspools the implications of B's life: how would someone's mind work if they had 60,000 years of memories to sift through? Would anything be able to surprise them? Would anything feel significant? Many of these flash-back events felt like one-off issues of a comic, where you take a break between big arcs and explore some backstory or a side character. In many cases, though, these end up directly tying into the main plot by the end.

By the end of the book, I concluded that Mieville was the perfect person to write this novel, in large part due to his mastery of the macabre. While this setting is very different from Bas-Lag, a lot of the description and imagery feels right out of Perdido Street Station: lots of blood that oozes and crusts and snags and snaps, eggs that are coated with slimy mucous membranes, bones that snap and tear into flesh. He'll tell the tale of a bullet as it passes through a body, the damage done within and the explosive mess it leaves as it exits. Fights are raw, brutal, physical, tolling. I've long thought of Mieville as a visceral author, in the sense of "filled with viscera," and this book is an exemplar of that aspect of him.

I should say that I don't, generally, enjoy those kind of books! I'm perfectly fine with glossing over the "gross bits" or leaving them out of the story entirely. That said, I think Mieville is extremely talented at that mode of writing.

Oh! And before I forget, I should say that I can't help but read B/Unute's lines in my head with Keanu Reeve's voice. It's pretty fun! Glancing at some art from the comic now, it seems clear that B is modeled after Keanu, so that's cool. (There's a character named "Keever" who I had also thought was based on him, just because of the name, but I think that's just me thinking that.)

MEGA SPOILERS

The plot takes a while to click in, and this ended up being one of those books where I got nervous near the end since it seemed like there was too much story left to go and too few pages. He does end up wrapping up everything in a satisfying way, though. I'll sum up my understanding of the overall story here, though most of the oldest stuff isn't made clear until near the very end of the book.

There are, broadly speaking, two primal forces in the universe, which B identifies as "Change" and "Entropy"; it feels a bit like a life/death or an order/chaos dichotomy, but is fundamentally different, as chaos and death can also be forms of change.

These forces have avatars, personalities, agendas. The "Change" force was likely responsible for the creation of life millennia ago. At some, rare points in the past, the "Change" force entered the body of females who had called upon it in times of great distress, and the women bear children: demigods, of whom B is one example. We know of a couple of humans, and one pig; there may be more. These beings all share immortality but otherwise are different.

The Entropy force wishes to end the Change force, and really all the dynamism of the universe. This will ultimately mean ending life, but one early step on the way is ending B.

Over the years B gets to know the big, as well as a half-sister, Vayn. B is identified with Death, while Vayn identifies with Life: she can make inanimate objects gain consciousness and move around, or bring back life to people who have died. Vayn tricks B into entering her church, binds him and tortures and kills him thousands upon thousands of times, before eventually realizing that they area actually the same: his ending of life is as essential as her creation of life. (Vayn tries to tell B this, but he refuses to let his raging fugue state lapse for long enough to listen.)

Many many years later, an agent of entropy, also known as Thowless, learns about B's activity in the Unit. Taking on the persona of Doctor Shur, a warm-hearted therapist, she becomes a trusted member of the Unit and builds bonds with the various soldiers, scientists and bureaucrats composing it. When one soldier dies at the hands of B, she subtly steers his lover into a supposed support group called the Life Project. While ostensibly a 12-step-style support group for grievers, it is actually a powerful cult run by Alam, a biological descendent of Vayn. Alam is guided by Shur, and grows to believe that by killing B, the avatar of Death, he can end Death itself and grant life to all people.

The infiltration into the Unit enables some funky things to happen, including what's basically a flesh golem going on a rampage, along with mysterious assassination attempts by super-fast invisible bugs. In the middle of this is Caldwell, a deep agent for what I think is yet another cult or secret society, who is turned by Alam and crew, and eventually traps B. Rather than fight, B agrees to surrender, and eventually reveals the situation to Alam. Shur is revealed, some people die, B emerges with a much better understanding of his place in the universe, and feeling much less alone.

I'm leaving out a whole bunch of plot there, but that's the main through-line as I understand it!

END SPOILERS

This did end up being a really enjoyable read. I'm still not really planning to pick up BRZRKR, but if I ever happen to run across the collection at the library or something I may check it out. It's one of those things that isn't really for me, but it is a very well-made example of what it is. I'm glad to have gotten to experience a slice of the genre, from one of my favorite authors no less!