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I finally finished M John Harrison’s A Storm of Wings. I have mixed feelings about it.
I found the prose to be brilliantly virtuosic in its refinement of emotional and descriptive suggestion. The problem for me is that the plot—a quest— simply disappears under the prose. The characters are quite unlikeable and some seem actually mad. They don’t even seem to be convinced that the world they are in is real.
However there are many who feel that the novel is a masterpiece.
I looked into “The Encyclopedia of Fantasy” edited by John Clute and John Grant and found some interesting points concerning this novel.
The main article for Harrison described “A Storm of Wings” as “a kind of visual pun on the first book [“The Pastel City”] repeating the basic story but this time in CROSSHATCH [caps in original] terms . . .” This sent me to the “Crosshatch” article.
Crosshatching refers to the idea that a book can create a secondary world (or worlds) that occupy the same space. The editors cite the “ Borderland” sequence by Terri Windling. They then turn to “A Storm of Wings”. It is worth quoting a section of the article.
“ . . . The entire landscape is a crosshatch, quandaries of perception are rife, and anything at all may be a “trompe l’Oeil. In other words, when borderland conventions are absent, there is an inherent and threatening instability to regions of crosshatch; a sense of imminent metamorphosis. Crosshatches invite journeys: quests lead through them.”
If indeed the book is a crosshatch of its predecessor, then indeed things make more sense. I intend now to read “The Pastel City”. I suspect I will enjoy it (and possibly enjoy “A Storm of Wings” more as well.).
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