Ghost Rider

By Neil Peart

Nothing to do with the skull faced comic book character, not even the dodgy Nick Cage film. This Ghost Rider is the drummer and lyricist of the band Rush, a band I am rather fond of, and a man very nearly destroyed by a series of personal catastrophes.

Happily almost married for twenty years, first his daughter died in a car accident and while still realing from that, his common-law wife was diagnosed with cancer from which she died less than a year later.

Emotionally scarred, and feeling the dire need to do something, Peart set out on an epic motorcycle journey, across Canada, through Alaska, down the Rocky Mountains into Mexico and ultimately to Belize. Or Guatemala, whichever is further. I forget.

Along the journey, over 50,000 km by the end, Peart learns how to re-engage with the rest of humanity, gets his rather heavy BMW motorbike into several places it really shouldn't have gone, and how to love and create again. Sounds rather trite that, but thats biography for you.

The book is half travelogue, half tragedy porn, though porn is unfair. There's probably a better word for such works, but I can't think of it. I don't think, no matter how justified, I would have stuck with the self pity, if I hadn't already got some emotional attachment to the writer, but the travel writing is good and at times left me longing for one of those mad rambling journeys i used to do. At times the idea of motorbikes has had a small appeal, but I've never acted on it, and i suspect I'm too old to learn now. Cycling though lets me get the same kinds of travel Peart writes about, though inevitably on a rather smaller scale. No way can you get in tens of thousands of miles at fifteen miles an hour.

Perdido Street Station

By China Mieville
This is one of those books I should have read tags ago. Someone gave me a copy some years ago, and its hard to imagine that anyone at all aware of the British SF scene couldn't know about China Mieville, darling of the Clarke Awards and the socialist workers party.
But I haven't read it until now, and rather regret it.
One of the disadvantages of ebooks is that you don't really get a feel for the size of the book. Sure, you can see that this file is 200k and that one is 3 meg, but that's generally down to whether the cover art is scaled right or whether there are internal pictures. Perdido Street Station is a book with heft, even if the form I read it in was weightless.
The setting is a sprawling city, with a name I can't guarantee getting right, so won't try. Inhabited by humans and half a hundred other types of intelligent creature it's somewhat steampunk, somewhat like a D&D world that's grown up a bit.
It's a sprawling book as well, the closest thing it has to a hero is Issac, a freelance, and only slightly mad, scientist commissioned to help a crippled eagle-man return to the skies. In trying to understand all the forms of flight he unleashes a monstrous creature on the city, and, with the aid of unlikely allies, seeks to destroy it.
That's the quick summary. There's a lot else happening (and two more books in the same setting), too much to try and get into a quick commentary like this.
How to describe the writing? It's likely inevitable that big sprawling British fantasy should bring to mind Myrven Peake and Iain Banks, but a blend of the two is about as good as I can do. The sweep of Banks, the gothic scruttlings and grime of Peake.
Which is not to suggest that this is some kind of parody, it's voice is it's own. One that's well worth exploring.