A Different Kind of SF: EVENSONG by John Love – Review

Evensong by John Love
Genre: Adult science fiction
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Release date: January 2015
Source: eARC from publisher
Pages: 352

 

The nitty-gritty: An unexpectedly unique story with some very unusual relationships, and an emotional ending that completely took me by surprise.

He’d read somewhere that birds weren’t singing when daylight dimmed, they were screaming: screaming because they didn’t know the dark would ever end. Chaos seethed under every serene surface: the grassy slopes where small chitinous things ate or were eaten, the silver and white interiors of the New Anglicans, even the impeccable quiet control of Rafiq. He thought of the figure in Munch’s The Scream, clamping its hands to its head under a red streaky bacon-rasher sky while all the world screamed its underlying chaos.

You know when you start reading a book and you realize very quickly that this book is something different and special? Well, Evensong was one of those books for me. I should have known from the unusually beautiful book cover that my reading experience was going to turn out to be unique. It’s very hard to describe exactly why I felt this way, because my reactions to the characters and plot and writing weren’t always specific reasons that I can put in a book review. “I loved the characters.” And yet—I didn’t always love the characters. “I loved the setting.” And yet—the setting was foreign and made me feel off-kilter while I was reading. “I loved Love’s writing.” And yet. I did love it, but he also had some weird writing quirks that annoyed me a bit. But looking back on the book as a whole, I’m so glad I decided to read it, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Love’s next venture into fiction.

Here’s the gist of the story, although I am certainly doing it a disservice, because this synopsis barely scratches the surface. Anwar Abbas is one of the elite members of The Consultancy, or The Dead as they are also called.  Consultants are super enhanced humans whose bodies have been surgically altered to make them better, stronger, faster (Cue The Six Million Dollar Man theme!) Anwar and his fellow Consultants have been given physical and neurological enhancements that make them nearly indestructible and deadly killing machines (although their primary function is not to kill, but to disable). On the very first page of the story we’re given an example of this, as Anwar is systematically breaking his finger bones in order to practice suppressing his pain receptors and keeping all expression off his face. (I know, yikes! It might make you feel better to know that his bones immediately start to regenerate.)

Anwar’s boss has just asked him to take on a new assignment: acting as a bodyguard for the Archbishop of the New Anglican Church, an acerbic and dreadfully unappealing woman named Olivia del Sarto. Anwar takes the job, although he’s not too happy, since he feels it’s below his position. Soon he arrives in Brighton, England, the location of an upcoming UN resources summit, where Olivia will be speaking. It is at this summit that she believes someone will make an attempt on her life, which is why she’s requested a Consultant for protection.

But as Anwar tries to determine where the threat might be coming from, someone—or something—is killing Consultants. Are the two events tied together? As Anwar gets closer to Olivia, the mysteries keep piling up, as the summit looms ever closer. With the clock ticking down, Anwar must do everything he can to eliminate the threat to Olivia before the summit comes to an end.

Evensong is a dense and complex story, full of politics, religion, murder plots, sex and lots more. If you love thrillers and police procedurals, you’ll love this book. It’s not the sort of story you can breeze through, and you wouldn’t want to rush, because the language is the sort you’ll want to savor. He lovingly describes the architectural details of buildings (a Consultant named Levin is an architect in his “normal” life), as well as Olivia’s outlandish clothing (she wears velvet ball gowns as a general rule!) I did run across sections that seemed a bit too repetitive that could have benefited from a little more editing, but overall I enjoyed Love’s writing style.

One of the most interesting aspects of Evensong was the relationships between Anwar and Olivia. Olivia is a sex fiend with the most voracious sexual appetite I’ve ever seen on the printed page. She and Anwar are immediately attracted to each other, and within the first ten minutes of their first meeting, they’re going at it on the kitchen table. Both of them acknowledge that their “relationship” is purely physical, especially since Olivia really doesn’t like Anwar very much, and so these trysts become nothing more that feeding a hunger. Except. Later in the story, Olivia’s personality shifts slightly, and it becomes clear that she might be interested in more than just sex with Anwar. This dynamic was unexpected and created an emotional bond between the two that was very exciting.

I also loved the relationship between Anwar and Olivia’s bodyguard Gaetano. It’s another one of those “love hate” relationships, since Gaetano thinks Anwar is taking over his job. But the two are forced to work together and they eventually begin to (grudgingly) respect each other. Until they don’t, but that’s a part of the story I won’t go into, because of spoilers!

There are some truly scary bad guys in Evensong, the quiet and subtle type that you don’t see coming until it’s too late. These characters kept the tension high and my heart beating just a touch too quickly. Love is so good at creating suspense. From the moment Olivia and Anwar meet, to the summit itself, where you just know things are going to go bad, the author keeps you on your toes.

And then there’s the ending, in which something surprising is revealed—a twist, I guess—and the reader must go back and reevaluate everything she’s read up to that point. Not very many books make me cry at the end, but this was one of them. Love bludgeons the reader with some unexpected and raw emotions that make this story rise above your general science fiction fare. This was a remarkable reading experience, and I can’t wait to see what Love does next.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

Check out another cool Evensong cover (not sure if this is UK or not):

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