Oddjobs – Iain Grant and Heide Goody, Pigeon Park Press, 2016
Iain and Heide have done here what they always seem to do so brilliantly: created a world within the world we know, an utterly insane world with its own laws of physics and society and justice. In this case, the world we know is Birmingham, complete with its Jewellery Quarter and magnificent library and famous Balti Triangle. The world we don’t know is the world of the Venislarn.
The Venislarn are here. They have always been here. They will destroy us and condemn us to eternal torment. All we can do is make sure things run smoothly until then.
As with the extraordinary Clovenhoof series, the joy of the world-we-don’t-know is the figures who inhabit it, and here the writers have given us a host of truly memorable individuals, human, Venislarn, and (most enjoyable) part-human, part-Venislarn. From Morag and Nina, through the curiously-tentacled Kevin, to the Waters Crew, via a Venislarn god or two, they’re alternately fascinating, repulsive, terrifying and hilarious, in all their three (or more) dimensional glory.
On its own, this is a great book. As the beginning of a series, it’s even more, because what gives this whole idea legs (and its got more legs than an August Handmaiden of Prein) is the loving detail with which the Venislarn world has been drawn. There’s a language and a logic and a general feeling of the writers arguing amongst themselves as to whether Kaxeos would really react like that when being fed a severed finger, or how long it would take to wake The Nadirian and what would happen when you did. There’s a consistency that belongs to the best of fantasy or sci-fi, coupled with the humour of a Douglas Adams or a Jasper Fforde.
And all that in Birmingham.