New Age, Timeless Stories

[bibliogramma]

Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones

I’m not entirely sure how to talk about Bold as Love – I’m not even sure, exactly, how to categorise it. Somewhere near the crossroads of near-future dystopic science fiction and realistic urban fantasy, where the waters of Arthurian legend are rippling down a nearby stream and there’s a scent of post-apocalypse hanging in the air.

Britain is dissolving into its constituent nations, and England (and the rest of Europe, for that matter) is looking pretty bleak. The English government, under pressure from a growing counterculture of the discontented, disaffected and disenchanted, creates a countercultural think tank of rock stars, meant to be a political façade, a circus to keep the people occupied and make them happy. Then their chosen frontman pulls off a bloody coup and the country collapses into chaos.

Heroes emerge; a potent triumvir of countercultural musicians – Ax, Sage and Fiorinda – who are at first forced to work for, but eventually defeat, the tyrant – and must then take his place and shoulder the responsibilities of trying to keep their country from tearing itself, to hold back the dark, to build a new nation from the shattered pieces of what came before. A new Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere for a new age.

It’s a difficult book, perhaps more so for non-Britons, because so much of the detail is grounded in the land and its people. And it’s the first in a series that comprises five volumes (to date -–I don’t know if the most recent is the last), so much of this book is prologue, the establishing scenes, the overture. But it’s also bloody brilliant.