Chris Roberson // Solaris // Out Now
Set the Seas on Fire on Amazon
In a nutshell: Horatio Hornblower meets H. P. Lovecraft. Apparently. Trading standards would surely beg to differ…
Review: Hieronymous Bonaventure is a real hero. It’s his nickname, you see. Hieronymous ‘Hero’ Bonaventure. Got a ring to it, no? No? Oh well, that’s about all our Hero has got going for him really.
Bonaventure is, like his eager readers, a man seeking adventure, yet bored by the endless weeks of inaction one must suffer at sea; a feeling perfectly captured by this tedious tale. Dull and plodding, this is a book in which nothing happens. Some semblance of a story at last emerges 220 pages in, though quickly vanishes again in the hundred or so pages between this moment of faint hope and the book’s unsatisfactory conclusion.
Even then we aren’t blessed with the safety of the book’s back cover immediately, instead being treated to some rather unjustified author’s notes. Such insight as is offered here adds nothing to the whole woeful experience, only really serving to confirm that Roberson is a writer a little too much in love with his own creations and, most tellingly of all, the research from which they were born.
Reading this is a chore. Characters hint ridiculously at the meaning of their author’s ham-fisted symbolism. ‘“It was as though wind, rain and wave had come after us with intent, perhaps blaming us for some transgression of which we’re all unaware,”’ one astute chap suggests to our Hero. Still, the inanity at least makes for a change from the otherwise relentlessly pompous dialogue.
Quite unnecessary interludes cram the monotonous text, characters becoming little more than mouthpieces by which Roberson can clumsily impart whatever trivia takes his fancy – the botany of the South Pacific, Roman laws on age and entitlement, the Napoleonic-era contents of the Ashmolean Museum and the formal conditions of trade between Feudal Japan and the Dutch East India Company; feeble excuses are concocted to explore all these things in excruciating detail, never mind their complete and utter irrelevance. Set the Seas on Fire appeared in a print-on-demand edition in 2001. Tellingly, this incarnation, the author inform us in his closing notes, is 25% longer. It shows. It’s about as interesting as an Osprey book without the full-colour uniform porn in the middle.
Mention of ‘pre-publication interest from a major motion picture company’ in the publisher’s promotional blurb only confirms the suspicion that this is little more than a cash-in, an attempt to ride the crest of Pirates of the Caribbean’s current wave. In fairness, though, a version of Set the Seas on Fire can be downloaded for free from the author’s website – and it’s the 25% shorter version, too. Bonus.
