Wolves

Such a pretty cover.

Of the two January releases I mentioned in my New Years post, Wolves by Simon Ings was the one with the nicest cover, and the one which I expected to love most of all. (You can see the other review for Red Rising here.)

Wolves promotes itself as author Ings' return to science fiction: a dystopic world of Augmented Reality (AR), advertising, gaming and the end of the world. At its heart though, it is a story about two men. Everything else is merely background to their relationship, which develops in the reader's mind through use of occasional flashbacks to the main character, Conrad's traumatic youth.

The book itself is a little like Southland Tales meets Brave New World in terms of its construction and themes. A sense of dissatisfaction with the world permeates throughout. The ending of the book (and the world) is unsatisfying and confusing, and the characters' withdrawal from the doomed society is on par in depressing style with the suicide of John Savage.

Readers unfamiliar with Southland Tales should imagine a movie which places actors in roles we are not accustomed to seeing them in, adds time travel and characters who speak in riddles and are actually just too strange to be believable. Make that a cult hit along the lines of Donnie Darko and throw in some additional material to let hardcore fans actually understand the movie. Now how about we that and place it into a book setting where the narrator is not only set adrift in this confusing sea of weirdos, but he himself is discontented with (and dissociating from) society at large. What you would have is Wolves.

Baron Von Westphalen (Southland Tales, second from right)
is probably one of the weirder characters in this motley crew.

This could be reality...

The thing is, I am unsure whether it works. In fact, I am unsure about most things to do with this book. I keep thinking over what I have read to work out what point Ings is trying to make. I have discussed the book with others. Yet I cannot make sense of it. The best that I could come up with is that the book attempts to convey the narrator's sense of alienation by alienating its reader, showing the likely result of an Augmented Reality future. However, while it alienates the reader it simultaneously tries to draw us into its virtual world: whether the end of the world fantasy of Michel or the mind-altered reality which it invades. In the end, because reality is so subject to the whims of the AR's creator, I wasn't even sure if the flood 'end of the world' scenario was happening in reality. I hesitate to say the book has failed to make a point, because somebody smarter than me will inevitably find some meaning to it. I am, however, satisfied to say the book went over my head and will likely do so for the majority of casual readers.

In writing, it is gritty. Descriptions are uncertain or repetitive, emulating the manner in which their narrator experienced them. This serves to bring the reader into the mind of the narrator, but it also gets boring very quickly. The characters are the same unhappy, plain humans driven by the desire to fill their empty lives in whatever way they can. For most of them, that is connecting with others through sex, though for Conrad even a string of prostitutes is unfulfilling as they wear AR contact lenses during their encounters so that they can be anywhere but where they actually are. His need for human connection goes unsatisfied.

Speaking of sex, the book has quite a few surprising scenes. I say surprising because they come out of nowhere. Through the course of the book, Conrad has sex with every main character, with the exception of his co-worker and his family. This includes the villain (if he could be described thusly). For some this may add to the grittiness of the writing. For me it just seemed gratuitous.

Google Glass

I want to tell people to go and read this book, because Ings really delves into a potential future of Google Glass AR and its potential impacts on the world (particularly once they go beyond the glasses and to projected images, subvocalisations and other scarier things). Sadly, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book to anybody. It has some excellent themes and at its heart contains enough material to amount to a good short story. However, the padding (the murder mystery, the relationship between Connie and Hanna) seems to fill it uselessly. It feels like two stories trying their hardest to stick together, but kept separated by uncommon themes. Perhaps that is what Ings intended. I really don't know.

The Ups: Incredible cover. Good depiction of what the post-Google Glass world might look like. Some excellent writing amongst the filler.

The Downs: Confusing, empty characters and a murder mystery in the past that just does very little for the book. It feels too long, like a short story stretched too far, or two stories mashed together. 

The Verdict: 1.5 pointless blow-jobs out of 5

I wouldn't recommend it for casual consumption. This book is nothing like it was advertised as. But if you are studying Brave New World or other depressing science fiction literature this is a nice modern rendition of alienation in a dystopic/utopic world. I just felt a little depressed by the end of the book, like it was well-written but I wasted my time and money on it (which made me feel guilty that I hadn't enjoyed it more).

Even this pimp might consider suicide by the end.