At the time, however, it was a token framework for me, a checklist of events which the plot had gotten around to, rather than any real roadmap of structure. As Martin Lewis observed in his discussion of the novel last week, it synopsizes up to page 255 out of 472 pages. Nearly halfway through the book, I was barely halfway through the lavishly extensive blurb on the back of the book when I failed to keep reading. The SFX blurb promised me a take on The Count of Monte Cristo, a novel I remembered fondly and whose plot I’d happily revisit. I stopped reading.ĭespite that unpromising beginning, I always meant to go back to it. Doom, gloom, and stuckness overwhelmed the characters and I, seeing no hope for them and fearing what I knew was coming, went adrift. With that looming, somewhere, I read more and more episodically, which did nothing to help the volume’s flow.

It didn’t help that I knew there was a rape scene coming, somewhere in its expansive, multi-volumesque middle. I didn’t feel lost, but it wasn’t a universe to which I had any existing commitment. I hadn’t read any of Jones’ other Aleutian novels, had no greater context thus far into which to slot it. The plot was a Lego patchwork of interlinked episodes, and it didn’t seem to have enough momentum to take me much of anywhere plot-wise, even as it spanned a barely-known universe in its events.

I started Gwyneth Jones’ Spirit at the wrong time, or at least in the wrong headspace. The edited pair are available and, more specifically, available for free today on .uk! Divine Endurance was the first novel published under her own name, in 1984. Gwyneth Jones has revised her first sf novel, Divine Endurance, collating it with its companion novel Flowerdust. Equally, if a work worthy of nomination isn’t on that list, consider it your personal responsibility to nominate it so that it is. Don’t take for granted that if your favourite sf book, short story, work of non-fiction, or artwork is on that list that it will receive enough nominations to make the shortlists. BSFA members should nominate early and often! Works currently nominated are available to peruse here. The deadline for the BSFA Awards Nominations is January 13, 2013. Vector 272 should follow a month or two later, along with the BSFA Award Booklet. Thanks to the assistance of yet another layout volunteer, Vector 271, the last issue of 2012, will be coming out in January 2013, along with a guest-edited version of Focus.

Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones