Faction Paradox Novels

[purplecat]

bunn asked about the Faction Paradox novels in a reply to my last post and my comment in return was too long so I'm putting it here as a new post



Given there are only five (six (seven)) of them I can give a brief run-down of all the Faction Paradox novels. They are all published by Mad Norwegian Press and I got them through Amazon - how easy that is now the line is wound up I'm not sure. In the past I've tried buying things direct from Mad Norwegion to get terribly nice emails from Lars Pearson (who runs it) suggesting cheaper places (on account of postage costs) where they can be obtained.

In order of preference:

Of the City of the Saved by pphinfinitarian (Philip Purser-Hallard) is easily my favourite. It's only flaw is that the ending is too abrupt and leaves too many loose ends (PPH has admitted this but said he thought it was obvious what was going to happen next). It's a major exercise in world-building and relies quite heavily on bits of the Faction Paradox and Dr Who series backgrounds. I suspect its not necessary to know this to enjoy it since all the new bits were provided in sufficient detail for me to follow and I suspect he is too good an author not to fill in the pre-existing bits sufficiently as well but he does expect the reader to keep up and to fill in the background from hints. It's a detective novel set in the "City of the Saved" where all humans who ever lived can be found, death is non-existent (or at least impermanent) but suddenly people are being murdered...

Warlords of Utopia is by Lance Parkin was mentioned in my last post and is Romans vs. Nazis fighting across multiple parallel universes. It's a first person narrative and relies upon the reader to form their own opinions about Roman society based on the patriotic ones expressed by the narrator.

This Town will Never Let us Go by Lawrence Miles (who edited the series and invented Faction Paradox, the War, and a host of other recurring ideas and characters) is my next favourite. It reflects most of Miles' strengths: multiple big, wild ideas, stunning imagery, passionate opinions and weaknesses: naive, sometimes preachy, political discussion. It is about the events of one night in a nameless town caught up in the War (which has the Time-Lords (sorry Great Houses) on one side and a nameless enemy on the other with Faction Paradox attempting to play both sides off against each other) and reflects Miles' usual obsessions with the impact of the media on society and behaviour, the nature and effect of ritual and almost any other random idea that caught his attention while writing. The War forms the backdrop to the events but the story is about the impact it has on the inhabitants of the town not the progress of the War in any way. I wouldn't want to put you off by saying that his political/sociological rants are often naive and preachy because he is an excellent writer with often provocative ideas he's not afraid to showcase but you have to accept the fact that when reading almost anything by him you will have to suppress the urge occasionally to go seek him out and bang some sense into him, but you know, at least you react...

Erasing Sherlock discussed in my last post probably comes next...

Then Warring States by Mags L. Halliday (moosifer_jones) which is a story of a Faction Paradox agent caught up in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. It's an interesting enough read but I felt it got a bit incoherent towards the end with lots of, well, paradoxes. It is probably the novel with the most to do with the faction and I would say probably the least successful in the line.

Hmmm... I've just noticed that list has the male authors at the top and the female authors at the bottom, I wonder if that says anything about my preferences in story-telling style. I certainly seem to be favouring the big idea stories over the more character focused ones...

Also of interest may be:

The Book of the War edited by Lawrence Miles and Simon Bucher-Jones is an encyclopedia style background work made up from contributions by numerous authors interested in the Faction Paradox ideas. It's probably not necessary to read but attempts to lay the ground rules for the Universe in particular rewriting those bits that had relied on Dr Who continuity (e.g., Time Lords become the Great Houses). It came out as a sort of launch for the Faction Paradox line and attempts to be more than just a dry background tome by seeding mini-stories through some of the entries.

Dead Romance by Lawrence Miles is a re-packaging of one of his Benny novels (only Benny is only tangentially mentioned) under the Faction Paradox branding. I always thought this was his best novel being a bit more restrained on the politics front and somehow feeling more self-contained and less reliant on the Dr Who Sandbox as a starting point. However, in retrospect, I'm not sure how much sense this story of universes in bottles inside universes in bottles would make without some context from the surrounding Benny novels (or more importantly the contempory Dr Who novels) - this forming in part Miles' answer to how the various novel lines fitted together. It's a first person narrative by Christine Summerfield who writes down her experience of the last two weeks before the destruction of the world. It is something of a detective novel in some ways I suppose as she gradually discovers how she came to be found, at the start of the novel, babbling in an abandoned building site.