Aspects by John M. Ford

I used to review regularly for the science fiction magazine Interzone, but it has been a couple of years since I did anything for them. So I have decided to start writing occasional reviews of the books I have been reading. But I thought I would begin with a book I read last year, Aspects by John M. Ford (Tor Books, 2022):

I knew when I began reading this novel that it had been left unfinished at the time of John M. Ford’s death in 2006. What I hadn’t realized was just how unfinished! The published version consists of the first seven chapters plus a draft version of the first eight paragraphs of chapter 8. Judging by the number of sonnets he wrote as epigraphs for the book sections and assuming each section was to have been of roughly the same length, this amounts to perhaps a third of the novel he was planning. And Aspects was just the first in a projected series of novels about Lescouray, a nation in which magic coexists with a Victorian level of technology.

A third of a novel amounts to little more than the opening sequences. Ford introduces us to the major characters and their relationships. He hints at various issues that might become major plot lines, such as the struggle to introduce a new constitution for Lescouray and the possibility of war with a neighbouring nation. And, above all, he lovingly evokes the land of Lescouray and its capital Lystourel.

But death intervened, so I shall never know how the relationship between Varic and Longlight develops. Or whether Brook recovers sufficiently to continue heading up the work towards a new constitution and whether his illness was really a subtle assassination attempt. I shall never know how Varic plans to deal with the Justiciar. Or who is to be Strange’s successor as host of the magical guest-house that plays such an important part in these opening chapters. Or what becomes of Agate. Or how Birch settles into his new role as Archimage.

Why then would I recommend that anyone read it? Because although it is only a third of a novel, it is still easily the best novel I have read in the past year. The characters are archetypal without being stereotypical. The descriptions are so evocative that I could taste and smell the soot hanging in the air of Lystourel. And the language . . . suffice it to say that it is worthy of a man who thought nothing of writing a sequence of sonnets simply to act as epigraphs for the sections of his novel. If Aspects were a building, it would be a ruined abbey – all that we have is a tantalizing glimpse, but enough to enable us to imagine the scope of the builders’ vision and enough to move the heart as well as the intellect.

I regret that Aspects will never be complete. I regret that I will never know what becomes of Varic, Longlight, Strange, Agate, and all the others. But I do not regret having made their acquaintance or having walked the streets of Lystourel with them.