This book rather confounded my expectations about what I could expect from Ken MacLeod. First of all, it seemed to be another excursion into the recent history of the British Left, this time looking at the Left's role in the closing years of the Cold War. You must understand, first, that to many on the Left, the former Soviet Union did not fit their definition of a socialist society. Rather, the state held all the assets and only re-distributed them as the state saw fit. Furthermore, the Eastern Bloc did not practice any form of direct workers' control. Production targets and the development of new products were determined centrally, rather than directly by workers in their factories. Thus, the Soviet Union was defined as a "state capitalist" model; and as self-determination movements sprang up in the USSR's satellite states, elements of the Left in the UK started to seek ways of engaging directly with, and supporting, workers in places like Poland and East Germany.

These movements came to the attention of state security organisations in both East and West. Confusion as to who exactly was who was the main result, as the agencies in the West (particularly the CIA) started creating workers' support schemes under a convenient red banner. I recollect that in the early 1980s, one such scheme got a lot of publicity within the British science fiction fan community: "Dupers for Poland". The aim was to get British fans to send their out-dated duplicators (Roneos or Gestetners) to "fans" in Poland who were denied the right to publish their own science fiction fanzines. In fact, this is now known to have been a CIA scheme to get printing equipment to anti-Communist samizdat publishers in Poland under the banner of mutual support from one group of science fiction fans to another.

Of course, those who the Left were supporting in those countries were not necessarily those with whom they would agree in the years following the fall of Communism. But that's what happens when you get involved in the murky world of politics. Things don't turn out the way you think they will.

Which is exactly what I found with this novel. About a quarter of the way in, it stopped being about the British Left being manipulated by all sorts of shadowy forces, and became more about the shadowy forces themselves, and how they affected lives. We find ourselves in the family history of one Lucy Stone, who was brought up in the Soviet Caucasian province of Krassnia. Krassnia is not to be found on any maps, but in the novel it is a sort of Stalinist Ruritania, far from Moscow and dominated by certain powerful local Communists.

We are pitched into Lucy's story, her family history, and the legends of the historical Krassnians and their mythology. Lucy works for a video games company, and has successfully pitched Krassnian myth as the setting for a game - lots of mightily-thewed barbarians battling diverse evil forces on a quest to discover the Krassnian Truth. But what is the Krassnian Truth? Lucy begins to find that, for an ancient myth, legends of Krassnia have attracted a lot of attention over the years, even into the era of Stalin and Beria; and something about the myth had those hard men of Soviet power genuinely scared. Eventually, Lucy finds herself being steered into her own quest to discover the Krassnian Truth for herself.

For about two-thirds of the novel, this seems to have very little science-fictional content. Rather, it seems we are reading a contemporary novel of the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on some of the more distant parts of their former empire. Only when Lucy finally reaches Krassnia and heads into the mountains do fantastic elements begin to manifest themselves. And the Krassnian Truth holds genuine fears for the men of power. Its manifestation is a delicious surprise; its implications are world-changing.

Some might have difficulty with a man writing a female p.o.v. character in the first person. Otherwise, this is another Ken Macleod novel which looks at our world from a different standpoint. Perhaps one of the most interesting things is that the standpoints the author gives us - a woman, the British Left, the Caucasus - are themselves, for some readers at least, almost as different as the world-picture we are left with when we, too, are told the Krassnian Truth. ( )

Plus half a star. Maybe I am being mean. I loved the game, the places, the characters, the physics - but there seemed a bit of a hole at the middle that wasn't filled in. Perhaps I have been reading too much physics and working as a programmer too long...? ( )

All in all, this is a fun read, although it seemed overly complex.

Lucy Stone works for a video game company, where she has helped to create a quest video game. Her mother, who used to be a spy for a small former Soviet republic called Krassnia, contacts her and asks her video game company to make a game based on Krassnian legends. From there, things start to get complex fast as a series of coincidences fall into place. Lucy is eventually sent into Krassnia, which is on the verge of war with Russia, to uncover whatever secret has been hidden in the mountains of Krassnia for generations.

The book gets really complex.... at one point, Lucy is given a series of documents, and the story is interrupted while she reads through the documents. I had a little trouble following the significance of some of the documents. There are a lot of names, and I kept getting them all confused. It seems like a lot of the complexity could have been cut without hurting the story.

Complexity aside, the book is a lot of fun. MacLeod writes with humor. It's a solid political thriller with some fun sci-fi elements.

[spoiler] The book avoids grappling with the major existential crisis at its core... what Lucy ultimately discovers is that her world is a simulation. Since she discovers this right at the end of the book, the book doesn't have to deal with how she deals with this information. In some ways, fully dealing with this existential crisis would have really changed the nature of the book, but it still felt like cheating that MacLeod avoided it. [/spoiler] ( )

Plus half a star. Maybe I am being mean. I loved the game, the places, the characters, the physics - but there seemed a bit of a hole at the middle that wasn't filled in. Perhaps I have been reading too much physics and working as a programmer too long...? ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2015/12/review-of-restoration-game-by-ken.html ( )