Orbit Books, Urban Sci Fi, 390 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Fast, tech-rich, great protagonist
Cons: Trope-heavy, action swings between fast and bewildering.
In a line: Sarcastic scientist / ex-crim gets involved in post-apocalyptic mob feud.
“They’d grab her around the waist, lift her up to deny her the ground, maybe inject something through her pale-cast skin to knock the fight or flight from her, bundle her away, and it wouldn’t be his problem any more.”
Score: 6/10
Samuil Petrovitch is one of a long, accomplished line of heroic geniuses thrust into unusual situations. That he lives in a near-future London makes him interesting, but not unique. The plot Morden gives us is fast, fun, but hardly unique. So what makes Equations of Life worthy of attention?
Incredible authority
Morden speaks with more authority than Lewis Prothero and is twice as handsome. An actual rocket scientist, Morden loads up Equations of Life with the Goldilocks balance of action and science. He grabs us by the hand and throws us effortlessly into a sharkpit of a post-Apocalyptic London. Dropping locations and street names like loose change into a busker’s hat, Morden lays out an intriguing new London for us to explore.
There’s science, too. The Internet has gone faster and more mobile, and seems to be a ubiquitous technology. AI is more advanced, weapons have developed, and the world has moved on in ways we’re not entirely informed about. London has been smashed about twenty years ago, partly abandoned, and now has been reconstructed in an annoyingly vague way. For a city that’s been smashed with nukes during the Apocalypse, it seems to be running well enough.
Maturity imbalances
Petrovich is a maths whiz, hailing from Russia and swearing with enough of an accent that we’re constantly reminded of the fact. Coming straight at us with a dark past and prodigious skills – he boasts of a twenty second car-boosting record – Petrovich is clearly has a brain worth paying attention to. Despite his intelligence, he greets us at the start of Equations of Life living in a shit-hole, paranoid and pretty much broke.
Walking through the streets of the Metrozone – who the hell calls it that, by the way? – Petrovich comes across a kidnaping-in-progress. Some unexpected altruism switch kicks in, and a rescue attempt gets underway. And there we plunge from techno-thriller into a noir-style romp. Honestly, I’m surprised the phrase’ feisty dame’ didn’t appear in the first few chapters. We meet a kick-ass nun with a dirty habit for firearms (heh heh), a seemingly benevolent yakuza overlord, and a hands-off policeman who slaps bugs onto everyone’s shoulder but keeps out of the way of the powerful crimelords.
That’s not to say that the book is a low-brow read. Far from it. We get a good few scenes of Petrovich ‘in the lab’, spouting multi-dimensionality and Grand Ultimate Theories Of Everything as glibly as I order a Subway. There is techno-whizzery all the way through. At times, it feels a little like window dressing for a pretty basic plot, but the characterisation is as fun as it is rough. Petrovich labours under a heart condition that acts as a plot device through the book, giving us a ticking time bomb that runs alongside the exploding Mafia violence and the looming threat of the Machine Jihad.
A total smart-ass, Petrovich doesn’t take long to warm to, but it’s hard to tell if his vacillations and motivations are genuinely wavering in the face of the plots or simply shunted around by Morden to suit the needs of his structuring. His wisecracks are as endearing as his motivations are opaque. Morden drops heavy hints as to Petrovich’s past but, with two more novels coming from Orbit in the next few months, clearly didn’t feel obliged to give us much to go on in his first offering.
Fast and breathless
Equations of Life is fast. Really fast. Morden doesn’t want us to slow down, and so Petrovich gets a shot of adrenaline at the start of the book and doesn’t really get to take an untroubled breath for 400 pages. Even when he’s passed out or reeling, the guy keeps going. I know stoicism is a Russian trait, but Petrovich is a machine.
Unfortunately, Morden stomps his foot a little too heavily on the accelerator in the third half of the book. He lays out a full armoury of Chekov’s Guns and starts Commando‘ing his way through them in short order. Things spin out of control – which is great, nobody wants their hero to be in control all the time – but I felt the climax was more unwieldy than wild.
Good fun
Despite being a little predictable in places, Equations of Life is a good, solid read. Morden has crafted out an interesting world, and shown us a brief glimpse of it. The teaser for Theories of Flight, the second book in the trilogy, moves Petrovich forward in his career as a scientist, and I’m looking forward to see how Morden opens up his story to us.
Equations of Life gets 6 oversized pistols.
You can buy Equations of Life from Amazon here
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