The Restoration Game. Ken MacLeod [Paperback]

INTRODUCTION: I have heard of Ken MacLeod many years ago from his association with Iain M. Banks and I have always been eager to try his work, so when he published his Fall Revolution series starting in the mid-90's I got and read the books asap. While quite different from IM Banks work with its focus in the here and now more than in the far future, the Fall Revolution series became an instant favorite for its darkly ironical tone and it's-not-serious-but-it-is attitude, so I became a big time fan and read all his novels to date except for The Night Sessions which I avoided so far since The Execution Channel disappointed me and that one sounded similar.

But when "The Restoration Game" was announced with this irresistible blurb for me:

"There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know - she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing." ,

it automatically earned a pretty high spot on my 2010 Anticipated Novels list and after reading the book, I have to say that it quite surpassed my expectations.

FORMAT/CLASSIFICATION: "The Restoration Game" stands at bout 300 pages divided into two parts and 11 named and numbered chapters. There is a prologue that will give you a sense of what the book is really about sfnally and an epilogue narrated in the second person style as the prologue and continuing it, that closes the novel perfectly.

In-between, the novel is narrated by Lucy Stone, with some interludes containing various relevant documents like NKVD interrogations of the 40's as well as back story narrated by Ross Stewart and Amanda Stone.

Lucy is the daughter of academic and CIA - or maybe some other acronym - operative Amanda Stone, with several possible fathers of which current shady businessman and former left wing anticommunist activist Ross Stewart is the second main character. She was born and lived from 1985 until 1991 when it became too dangerous, in the obscure statelet of Krassnia which now stands at the contested border between Georgia and Russia.

With lots of Krassnians connections from the past also, Lucy has the typical red hair of the Vrai, former rulers of Krassnia and supposed guardians of a terrible secret that is rumored to have scared Beria and Stalin among others, though most remaining Vrai have been exterminated in the Great Terror of 1937.

In her "official" work in Krassnia, Amanda Stone "concocted" a national epic The Krassniad drawing from the local legends and the work of an ethnographer of Vrai origins who may have been her (illicit) grandfather and who was shot in 1937 and Lucy grew up with the local legends.

In the present day, Lucy's startup game company is hired - by Amanda's organization with whatever acronyms, though only Lucy knows it - to develop a fantasy game based on The Krassniad to be officially marketed as a niche game, while unofficially to be used by the Krassnians "revolutionaries" aka CIA spies to plot the next color revolution...

Of course things are more complicated than that as Lucy slowly discovers. A sfnal romp with the "same vibes" as last year's celebrated Yellow Blue Tibia, "The Restoration Game" is contemporary adventure sf at its best.

ANALYSIS: When I opened "The Restoration Game" and moved beyond the intriguing prologue which suggested several directions for the book based on "its reality", I found myself hooked by the narration of Lucy Stone and I *knew* this was the book I must read before anything else. I will give you a short example of the many lines that made me laugh out loud quite a few times and irrespective of the location where I was reading the book.

'The guilt wears off with practice.Didn't your mother ever tell you that?'
'No,' I said. 'I guess because she was too busy lying like a rug to me'
'Didn't you get it?', said Ross. 'She was teaching by example.'

As I mentioned in the introduction, the best way to look at "The Restoration Game" is as reflecting the it's-not-serious-but-it-is attitude that has allowed Mr. MacLeod to explore a lot of serious issues - how to organize society, why communism failed, the cultural heritage of the masses versus the elites, why the capitalists are nasty but tend to win - not to speak of introducing sfnal twists, in a fun and engaging way.

"The Restoration Game" sparkles with little gems that touch on the issues above and much more, while the darker stuff like the NKVD interrogation reports or the secret plots of today interweaves in the narration to remind us that "yes, it's serious"...

There is a lot of intrigue and enough action to keep satisfied everyone looking for that and "The Restoration Game" achieved the extremely fine balance I look for in sf romps of its type.

While the final twist is reasonably predictable from the prologue, once you decide on its right interpretation, there are quite a few surprises along the way, including a major one I did not see though it was if not quite obvious, at least likely in hindsight.

"The Restoration Game" (A+) and a personal favorite of 2010 is a good introduction to Ken Macleod's oeuvre and if you enjoy it as much as I did, try the Fall Revolution series or Newton's Wake which is a space opera with the same kind of irony and context as this one.

Note; This review has been originally published on Fantasy Book Critic for the UK edition in 2010 and all links and references are found there

I'm not sure The Restoration Game is science fiction. Sure, it's technically based on a speculative what-if, but does that make something a science fiction novel? Science fiction, I believe, is all about a discussion on humanity's relationship to technology. I feel a lot more comfortable thinking of it as a Dickian (Philip K.) novel that grapples with issues of human perception more than one looking at our relationship to technology. Or maybe it's just a thriller.

Other than a prologue and an epilogue, the events in Ken MacLeod's most recent novel take place in 2008, leading up to the South Ossetia War (or at least a fictional simulacrum there of). The narrative is recounted by Lucy Stone, an Edinburgh expat from the former Soviet controlled Krassnia. In that troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organizers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game? Lucy, who works for a start-up games company, has a project that almost seems made for the job: its original inspiration came from Krassnian folklore. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace, she finds her interest has not gone unnoticed.

The main narrative is endemic to spy fiction. Lucy's mother, and great grandmother both have some connection to the CIA and their machinations have compromised their progeny. Mystery's abound. Who is Lucy's father? What are the motivations for the revolution? Who stands to gain? This thriller mentality works well as MacLeod revists the how and the why of the fall of the Soviet Union. Through Lucy the reader is exposed to documents detailing KGB investigations, and commentary on Stalin's purges. Ultimately these commentaries become a demonstration of the prevailing power of capitalism and the inherent expression of it in the human spirit.

Early on, Restoration Game seems to be more about how the story gets told than the story itself. MacLeod layers Lucy's narration, starting near the end and backtracking. She reveals things about her life in her own time, often referencing things like 'The Worst Day of My Life' without describing the day until several chapters later. While this technique can be occasionally frustrating, MacLeod is mostly successful in using it to maintain a constant tension.

Additionally, the main plot is bracketed by an prologue and epilogue that set up and conclude the twist that makes the novel "speculative" and not simply an alternate look at Russian foreign policy. Much like the M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, once the twist becomes clear, the entire narrative changes - was I reading what I thought I was reading? Unfortunately, this is also one of the novel's weaker points as the 'twist' is fairly obvious from the prologue... wait maybe it is an M. Night Shyamalan movie! The problem isn't so much that MacLeod does a poor job of concealing it, rather it's a twist I've seen used a hundred times. I recognized it early on and kept hoping there would be more to it. Alas.

Telling a story in this manner takes an extremely capable writer. The jumps through time, and back again, into source documents, and then back into Lucy's head, are all done with a deft hand, highlighting MacLeod's command of his story and the language. But, I would be remiss if I didn't say that my opinion of Restoration Game would be loftier with the extraneous bits cut out, which, in this case, means all the science fiction stuff. Most of it comes off as tangential to the larger plot of Lucy and her family's history, making me wonder if the idea for the science came after the idea for the fiction.

Despite a frustratingly transparent and common twist, Ken MacLeod has written a wonderful story about Lucy Stone against the Russians. While it blends history and current events in compelling fashion, the science fiction framing doesn't wash. It's a thriller, that would stand out in the spy fiction market, dressed up as science fiction. All of that makes The Restoration Game a novel worth reading, although not necessarily one that demands to be read.

I've heard many good things about MacLeod, and so I was interested in this book before I really knew what it was about. When it arrived, it was put on the pile, and eventually I pulled it out to read. I can honestly say it was interesting, but not in the least what I was expecting. Marketed as a science fiction book, but for the 5% (and that's being generous) that is lite science fiction, I don't think it should be considered as such. It's more of a political thriller and focuses on the personal journey of the main character, Lucy. She is taken from her safe world working for a computer gaming company and thrown into the world of intrigue her mother and possible fathers are involved in. The possible fathers sub-plot is thrown in there, I think, to add some depth to the story, but mostly I found it confusing in a is he or isn't he kind of way.

I think this story would have held more interest for me if it had focused more on the science fiction points that are brought up towards the end. MacLeod delivers some serious ides to mull over in your head awhile and perhaps even to analyze over a cup of coffee with your more 'what if' analytical friends, but they are thrown in almost as an after thought. With a little more development of those ideas, and a little less political this and that, this story could have been a great story. As it is though, I find it hard to recommend it to anyone who is not already a fan of MacLeod. This will not stop me from trying another of his books, but until I read another, I don't want to possibly turn people from him if this is not a good example of his abilities.

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