Keeping it Real - Justina Robson

[Mark Robson]

I've been meaning to read one of Justina's books ever since I met her at a convention last year. Seeing her latest book, Keeping it Real, in my local Waterstones recently, I decided I'd give it a go. To my delight, I thoroughly enjoyed it - though I understand this is not her normal style of story.

This is a book which really blurs the line between Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here we have earth, subtly changed after a quantum bomb explodes. As a result of the bomb there are now open gateways and interaction with not one faerie realm, but five! Earth is now known as Otopia and strangely, no one remembers anything of what it was like before the bomb went off. Now, however, we have elves from Alfheim mixing with demons and faeries, elementals and ghosts, to say nothing of a host of other magical creatures (including a very spooky water dragon) in an action adventure with one of the sexiest heroine lead characters I've ever come across.

Lila Black is a special agent assigned as a bodyguard to Zal, the most un-elvish elf that has ventured forth from Alfheim. He is a rock star, and a damned good one, apparently. Unfortunately, someone in Alfheim is seriously hacked off with his chosen career (he's clearly giving elves a bad name) and is sending death threats - magical death threats. Protecting a rock star amongst the heaving throngs of hysterical fans is one thing, but when there is the added threat from elven assassins, armed with magical weapons, things rapidly spiral out of control.

Lila does have a few tricks up her sleeve that Zal's enemies are not quite prepared for, however. For one thing, she is not totally human herself. After a bad run in with elven assassins in the past, her body has been rebuilt with some very impressive add on extras. Never mind the six million dollar man - her metallic extras make his bionics look like the toys that come free with a McDonalds happy meal. Lila has built in guns, grenade launchers, self medication drugs, jet boots that allow her to fly - the whole nine yards.

To say this book has a complex plot would be a vast understatement, yet at the same time it is effectively an action/adventure that rips along at a fantastically readable pace. In short, it was my kind of story. I loved it.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Oooh this sounds most intriguing!! I'll have to keep an eye out for it when I pop into Waterstones!

 

[dwndrgn]

I've been meaning to read one of her books since you've been talking about her. Now I'm really intrigued. Sadly the library doesn't have any, I'll have to order from Amazon. Thanks for the review.

 

[Mark Robson]

Oooh this sounds most intriguing!! I'll have to keep an eye out for it when I pop into Waterstones!

The book is in trade paperback at the moment. The cover is really quite cool ... well it is if you're a guy who likes looking at girls in catsuits! The picture of Lila Black on the front with a coy, sexy smile on her face sold it to me in an instant. Good lord, I'm shallow!

 

[Coolhand]

Well, saw it in the library and remembered Mark’s review so I thought I’d give it a spin.

Short Version: Good library book. But I wouldn’t pay for it.

Long Version:

HERE BE SPOILERS! ENTER AT THINE OWN RISK

The concept behind the world of Keeping It Real is rather a tasty one. In 2015 the human race, destructive muppets that we are, detonate a quantum bomb that destroys the barriers between the various dimensions. So now the denizens of the Elvish, Demon, Undead and Fairy dimensions can access our world and vice versa. This leads to things like Elvish Rock bands with a human on the bass and Fairy backing vocals.

Funky stuff.

Anyhow the story centers on woman named Lila Black, an employee for a human covert ops and intel group, and now half-robot after an elvish secret agent kicked her ass with rather more force than was polite under the circumstances. She is assigned to protect an Elvish Rock star who’s been getting death threats. Though, obviously, there is more to it than that and soon our cyber-chick is embroiled in a nefarious plot to change the balance of power amongst the various dimensions.

I was somewhat apprehensive about the fact that the blurb on the back describes her as “Half-Robot. Half Human. All Attitude.” Eek. Unless it’s done well, characters who are “All Attitude” usually just come over as achingly witless, aggressive, mouthy idiots who are nowhere near as cool as the writer thinks they are. However, having read the book I can say that this appears to have been just a slap-on marketing tag rather than an accurate description.
Lila is not “All Attitude.”

And bizarrely, that’s part of the problem.

See, despite being a secret agent blown apart in the line of duty yet resurrected as a robo-babe, Lila comes across less as Sarah Conner or Ellen Ripley, and more like the girl next door. Nice, pleasant but…bland. She’s pretty forgettable to be honest, never once managing to raise a tear of sympathy, a chuckle of appreciation or a cheer of success. I mean, yeah she’s got enough hidden weapons and gizmos to make Inspector Gadget shuffle up to her in the playground and say “My mate fancies you,” but take away her cybernetics and there would be nothing of note about her whatsoever. Obviously, characters are subjective beasts so maybe others will warm to her, but I just couldn’t.

She’s not very good at her job either. Without spoiling things to much, she spends most her time getting outwitted, getting her ass kicked and walking into traps rather than becoming proactive or taking the fight to the enemy. But then, maybe I’m expecting too much from these black-ops people. I have the same problem with Torch-Wood. I want Jack Bauer. I get Jack Sparrow.

There are some rather more interesting characters to be found though. For example, there’s an elvish Necromancer named Tath, who’s disembodied spirit ends up getting trapped inside Lila to serve as a kind of parasite counterpoint whilst also plugging the “magical” gap in Lila’s skill set. I like him. He’s cool. More of him please.

Now to the plot. Whilst it kept me reading to the end, which was good, it could use some tightening up and there are some major issues which did jump out and whack me round the head.

Firstly, for a cyborg with metal arms and legs, described as “no longer pretty” and without any discernable charisma, Lila seems to do rather well on the love front, having not one but TWO super-cool elves fall for her, one of them a rock star. Neither attraction is that credible, especially since elves are supposed to view cyborgs as an abomination. One might have been plausible, but two? It feels very forced, even with the excuse of a magical “Attraction Game” being played between Elvish Rocker and Silicon Chick. And the other elf lover…well it gives a bit of plot away but the second lover is the guy who tortured her and ripped her apart in the first place. She goes from hate to sex in less than 50 pages. That’s pretty…forgiving of her.

Secondly, for a cyborg with enough weaponry to sink the Bismarck and a “Battle Mode” that reconfigures her entire body for hardcore ass-whipping, there is very little in the way of action. I know that makes me sound like a trigger happy explosion junkie. And I am. But imagine what Robocop would have been like if you’d seen him twirling that huge gun around on the practice range but never actually used it in the movie? Or if Bruce Lee walked into a room full of bad guys, cracked his knuckles in a menacing way, then simply asked for directions to a nunchuck shop and walked out. See what I mean?
Yes, there IS a motorbike chase between Elves and Cyborgs, but said chase is disappointingly far from the orgy of cool that it should be.

Thirdly the ending is very Deus Ex Machina, seemingly to get our incompetent heroine out of a mess she isn’t capable of dealing with on her own. I won’t spoil the details but here it my complaint in algebraic form:

If X had the ability to perform action Y all along, why didn’t X just perform Y twenty pages ago and solve the whole damn thing? Eh? Eh?

There’s actually a bit more wrong with the ending than that but I’d be giving too much away if I went into any great analysis. And some of it is to do with my tastes in endings rather than flaws in plot or technique.

So to summarize a book with a very well thought out world and some cool ideas, but a pretty dull and ineffective lead character going through some events that, whilst interesting enough to see me through to the end of the book, could have been a lot better. It’s the first in a series, so maybe book 2 will be where these promising threads (and they ARE promising) all come together.

Coolhand out