Review: Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

I flailed about for a while trying to decide what it was I was reading as I read Summerland, but in the end, I realized I was reading a thriller in science fiction garb.  That’s not to downplay the SF element, it’s essential to the plot, and it’s unusual in that it treats the afterlife, or at least what is known of the afterlife in this society, as something that’s just slightly to the left of real life.  The dead can still communicate with the living, they go about their lives pretty much as they always have, creating the forms of that life with their thoughts. There’s a spiritual price for such creation, though, and if you spend too much of your force on such things, you begin to fade.  Once you fade, well, no one is quite sure what happens to your soul, or your spark, or whatever it is that was persisting in what is known as the Summerland.  Most people work hard to afford “vim” which prevents fading.

Predictably, the Summerland has been nationalized, and the forces at work in the real world during the WWII era, are also at work in the afterlife. Networks of spies work in the ether to protect the interests of England which is still ruled by Queen Victoria from the Summer Court. Rachel White is a spy in the Winter Court, the real world, and when an assignment goes badly wrong and she loses an asset, she’s demoted to office work. Between that and her failing marriage, she is desperate to feel as if she’s doing something useful, and also to follow up on some information the asset gave her before he died. She believes there’s a mole in the Summer Court, and she wants to expose him.

The book is a pretty classic thriller once you get past the science fiction elements.  It’s fast-paced with intrigues and double crosses, changing allegiances, double agents, and lots and lots of secrets, the greatest of which could spell disaster for all of Summerland.  It moves quickly and doesn’t waste a lot of time on setting a tone, which is fine.  That’s not really why we’re reading this kind of thing after all.  But if I do have one objection, it’s that the action sequences involving the dead can be confusing because of the terminology such as soul spark, ether tendrils (one of the easier ones) and luth (apologies if I got that wrong. I was listening to the audiobook and can’t find a reference to it online.)

Bottom line is that it’s a fun book, it’s got some ideas which are worth considering, and it’s entertaining as all get out.