Empty Space - BookWyrm

Lucas reviewed Empty Space by M. John Harrison

Beautiful and bewildering and painful, Empty Space takes the ground out from under its more hopeful prequels without leaving it a void.

4 stars

There's nothing that hasn't been there since the beginning, but it's all made new and alien, while still resonant, disturbing, ephemeral and eternal—so hard to place.

"These are the safe parts… Back in the day, entire sections would go missing. They'd be one thing when you lost them, another when you found them again. In circumstances like that, you have to understand that your perception is what's fragmentary, not the space itself. At some level an organising principle exists, but you will never have any confirmation of it. It will always be unavailable to you. Then, just as everyone's stopped trusting themselves, someone finds their way through a trap, the expedition gets a little further in."

Eoghann Mill Irving reviewed Empty Space by M. John Harrison (Kefahuchi Tract)

Review of 'Empty Space' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Empty Space is a challenging and frustrating book to read.

Certainly it doesn't help that it's the third part of a trilogy so you are rather thrown in at the deep end here. But that's certainly not the only reason.

The text of the book is thick. You can't skim this stuff. It's laden with meanings and inferences Skip a page and you will end up completely lost. That also means of course that if you put it down to do something else, it can take a while to immerse yourself in it again.

It's also a book that quite deliberately engages in mindfuckery. Not only are stories being told in two different time frames, but several of the characters seem to have a rather loose grip on their own reality. So half the time you're not entirely sure what is "real" and what is not.

I don't say this …

Empty Space is a challenging and frustrating book to read.

Certainly it doesn't help that it's the third part of a trilogy so you are rather thrown in at the deep end here. But that's certainly not the only reason.

The text of the book is thick. You can't skim this stuff. It's laden with meanings and inferences Skip a page and you will end up completely lost. That also means of course that if you put it down to do something else, it can take a while to immerse yourself in it again.

It's also a book that quite deliberately engages in mindfuckery. Not only are stories being told in two different time frames, but several of the characters seem to have a rather loose grip on their own reality. So half the time you're not entirely sure what is "real" and what is not.

I don't say this as criticism, rather to try and give you a feeling for the sort of book this is. It's neither a light or quick read. And in truth I'm not sure I entirely grasped everything that was going on.

There's definitely a bleak tone to the story with many of the characters seeming trapped in their lives rather than enjoying them. And while the central mysteries of the story are essentially resolved by the end, I couldn't honestly tell you what the point of it all was exactly.

Unlike many science fiction authors Harrison doesn't seem very interested in explaining the science that makes the background of his universe. Not that there's a shortage of science. We have time, and weird physics and all sorts of things. But it's the background while the characters are the foreground.

Harrison's language and choice at times seem deliberately provocative. Not only is there disturbing violence, there's also sexual imagery and some of that will seem disturbing as well. At other points his characters language is abruptly frank, which stands out from the stylized prose. I don't think this is accidental.

There is a lot to recommend about this book. It will most likely take you out of your comfort zone. The universe the characters live in is rich and deep. This is definitely adult science fiction.

From a purely technical perspective the rating should probably be 4 stars. If you enjoy stories that push limits and don't sit inside genre cliches then I think you may really like this book. Though you're probably better starting with the first in the trilogy.

But I just couldn't quite warm to the story so my personal rating is 3.