This Town Will Never Let Us Go by Lawrence Miles: the first proper Faction Paradox novel. Following up on The Book of the War, a vast, universe- and timeline-spanning encyclopedia filled to the brim with dives into Earth's history and a litany of confusing and creative sci-fi concepts, you'd expect a suitably large-scale and complex story to kick off the novel range proper. Instead, Miles chooses to gun for the small-scale. This is a book which focuses on the actions and thoughts of three people in a small town across the span of six hours. The way the book connects to Faction mythos becomes increasingly clear as the plot goes on, but the Faction itself always keeps its distance from the plot.
It's whiplash, but the small-scale vibe works great in and of itself. The three plot threads the book follows are all very interesting – my personal favorite was the character arc of Tiffany Korta, a surprisingly-sympathetic pop star on a quest to find herself. Her arc was oddly relatable – feels sorta trans-coded – and the idea of someone whose media self is becoming sentient was fascinating to me. The thread about Inangela's quest to perform a ritual was a little meandery, but the characters were fun enough, and if nothing else Inangela's journey worked because of the atmosphere alone – that of a lonely War-torn town, which is written impeccably. Like, the vibes of this book are great, and they carry each plot thread even at points when the plot itself is less than engaging. Which brings me to the terrorist paramedic Valentine, perhaps the least interesting of the three... his arc was the most straightforward, and there wasn't much personality to him. Still, sheer intrigue about what his plans were kept the momentum going there. Every plot thread had something going for it.
The narration style is something that folks seem to be divided on – either you love or hate Lawrence Miles's snarky commentary in the way he tells this story. Personally, I was a big fan, and found the style helped keep things engaging and approachable, in the character/plot-driven segments and otherwise. Miles often goes into asides where he waxes philosophical about society, culture, and the media, which for the most part worked, as they intertwined with the plot and added another layer to proceedings. And while I didn't agree with everything, some of his musings had me genuinely reframing the way I looked at the nature of the world.
God, though. The ending. As this book neared its end, Miles became increasingly blatant about his cynical views on society and its future that I just could not connect to in the slightest. I just found the words "okay, okay, we get it, shut up now" rolling around my head... perhaps it's a cultural divide, seeing as I was born in the early 2000s and thus wasn't around for the post-9/11 cultural landscape that this book was written in. Miles's perspective on society as having been shut down by good taste in the face of catastrophe seems in direct contrast with modern internet culture where if anything, people are too vocal. I simply didn't get to experience the era of pop culture that created this book, and that might well be its undoing for me – and in fact I'd pay money to see a version of This Town that takes into account modern cultural trends like social media and generative AI. Even if it had the same cynicism, the more modern perspective on culture might connect with me personally more. (or would that just make Miles's rambles more obnoxious...?)
The cynicism the book espouses bleeds into the plot, where everything seems to end in failure. Valentine doesn't make an impact, and the bombing of the buried TARDIS instead destroys culture and meaning forever, which also happens to sabotage Inangela's own goals. Tiffany is the only one to get people talking, but her core-self is nowhere to be seen and her media-self has become a self-aware villain gleefully advocating for murder. It's a total downer, where none of the characters you cared about get a good ending. I feel punished for caring about the characters. And, like... I don't even mind bad endings in service of strong messaging, but when said messaging feels more like blind cynicism than anything else, it loses me. At least it could've painted itself as a criticism only of contemporary society, in which case it would've been a lot more digestible – but no, our culture is doomed forever and ever, and whatever hope there was for change has been near-destroyed, and that's the book. It's just tiring.
I don't know what to rate this. On one hand there's so much of the book I liked, but I feel like even that's not faultless, because in retrospect it was leading towards this ending all along. Everything was in service of it. But looking at it as a whole, I'll go with a very tentative 3.5/5, because I was hooked for long enough to make reading this more than worth it. I'm a Tiffany Korta stan now, great job guys.
Some unorganized thoughts:
- The way this book depicts a TARDIS interior is wildly impressive, not to mention just plain cool. Miles's brand of conceptual sci-fi fuckery was on full display there and it was glorious.
- I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else mention that, evocative as his scenes were, the Black Man's depiction feels pretty sketchy from a representation standpoint. Miles is gunning for a heightened-reality kind of thing with the ethereal, more-than-human vibes he gives off, and I get that the name is because his skin is literally pitch-black and all, but still... especially when the book goes in-depth on the (notably fictional) African tribe he's from, the whole thing very much carries shades of "ooo scary african man!!"
- The ending kinda lost me with the apparitions of Horror and Tiffany in the Ship, and the version of Tiffany that murdered the reporter. Wouldn't mind an explanation, maybe it would shed some light on some parts of the book I was frustrated with.
EDIT: After a couple months spent idly pondering on this book's ending and discussing it with others, I've come around to it a lot. I'm still a bit disappointed by the cynicism, and the generally negative ending for the characters, but when you look at certain aspects of how society changed in the 21st century, Miles isn't all wrong. And even if his take on society differs from mine in some ways, I can't entirely fault him for saying something I disagree with. My score for this book will probably continue to jump around over time, because it still stands that I'm pretty conflicted about it, and personal enjoyment counts for a lot in my scores; this note is just to say that if I were to write this review over again, I would be a little more receptive to Miles's takes, and to the book as a whole.
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