Book Review: Grey by Jon Armstrong
Oct. 30th, 2008 10:30 amGrey, by Jon Armstrong, is a science-fiction love story set in some far future Earth-based dystopia. The hero, Michael Rivers, is the scion of Hiro Rivers, owner of the RiversGroup Security Service, supposedly one of the most powerful families among the citified. Michael is in love with Nora, daughter of the owner of the MKG Security Service, a competing company with which there was to be a merger until, at the end of chapter one, someone gets through RiversGroup Security, attacks Michael, and makes the value of RiversGroup plummet. The two companies accuse each other of the assault, and Michael and Nora embark on a Romeo and Juliet-like attempt to get together even as their world starts to come apart around them.
The real treat of this novel is Armstrong's extremely over-the-top übercultures. Hiro has a film team record his every moment for posterity, listens to heavy metal so powerful every concert leaves dead behind (and every band has ümlauts over every vowel, such as Alüminüm Anüs, Töxic Tësticle Färm and Hammørhëd), and curses like a potty-mouthed schoolboy while being interviewed on celebrity televsion. At one point, Michael is slated to marry Elle from another family; her überculture, Pentunia Tune, is the worst excesses of candy-raver visual kei, with eye-tearing colors strewn in liquid excesses throughout overly bright and empty lives.
Michael belongs to the grey subculture; he lives for black, white, charcoal, soot, raven, graphite, onyx, and cobalt. He loves plain, severe suits in calm, elegant cuts. He's even had one eye surgically altered so that it only sees in black and white. He wants to be calm, cool, almost still-life. He and Nora get their inspiration and subculture from Pure H fashion magazine, and when they're together they quote to each other from captions as they attempt to understand what the photographer was saying.
But the novel never adds up to very much. While Armstrong is very inventive in his creation of the ültra and petunia subcultures, he never really gives you any impression that his civilization actually works. How do these people get fed? What kind of economy is there? There's immense amounts of labor and industry shown in these chapters, from the thousands of people assembling Hiro's various rock concerts, to the ones rebuilding and then partying at Michael's PartyHaus, and yet you never get the sense that these people are anything more than mannequins Armstrong put there to dress the stage. Michael is a deeply passive character, as befits the subculture he has chosen, and makes very few meaningful decisions throughout the story.
I wanted more out of this book. Sure, it's a satire, it's meant to show how shallow and flat the world can be if we allow our personas to be created and modified by our attachment to a media subculture. The last chapter, where Michael finally begins to understand Hiro, is meant to show that deep understanding comes only from deviating the script which you've been fed, but ultimately the power of the novel is cut short by Armstrong's bombastic finale. But to succeed it must be more than just satirical, it must be plausible, and Grey falls down on the job there. To create his malignant, magniloquent world, Armstrong has created a world that cannot exist, a world with too many contradictions, a world of post-human technologies and beastly excesses, and that ultimately detracts from the power of his satirical eye.
The real treat of this novel is Armstrong's extremely over-the-top übercultures. Hiro has a film team record his every moment for posterity, listens to heavy metal so powerful every concert leaves dead behind (and every band has ümlauts over every vowel, such as Alüminüm Anüs, Töxic Tësticle Färm and Hammørhëd), and curses like a potty-mouthed schoolboy while being interviewed on celebrity televsion. At one point, Michael is slated to marry Elle from another family; her überculture, Pentunia Tune, is the worst excesses of candy-raver visual kei, with eye-tearing colors strewn in liquid excesses throughout overly bright and empty lives.
Michael belongs to the grey subculture; he lives for black, white, charcoal, soot, raven, graphite, onyx, and cobalt. He loves plain, severe suits in calm, elegant cuts. He's even had one eye surgically altered so that it only sees in black and white. He wants to be calm, cool, almost still-life. He and Nora get their inspiration and subculture from Pure H fashion magazine, and when they're together they quote to each other from captions as they attempt to understand what the photographer was saying.
But the novel never adds up to very much. While Armstrong is very inventive in his creation of the ültra and petunia subcultures, he never really gives you any impression that his civilization actually works. How do these people get fed? What kind of economy is there? There's immense amounts of labor and industry shown in these chapters, from the thousands of people assembling Hiro's various rock concerts, to the ones rebuilding and then partying at Michael's PartyHaus, and yet you never get the sense that these people are anything more than mannequins Armstrong put there to dress the stage. Michael is a deeply passive character, as befits the subculture he has chosen, and makes very few meaningful decisions throughout the story.
I wanted more out of this book. Sure, it's a satire, it's meant to show how shallow and flat the world can be if we allow our personas to be created and modified by our attachment to a media subculture. The last chapter, where Michael finally begins to understand Hiro, is meant to show that deep understanding comes only from deviating the script which you've been fed, but ultimately the power of the novel is cut short by Armstrong's bombastic finale. But to succeed it must be more than just satirical, it must be plausible, and Grey falls down on the job there. To create his malignant, magniloquent world, Armstrong has created a world that cannot exist, a world with too many contradictions, a world of post-human technologies and beastly excesses, and that ultimately detracts from the power of his satirical eye.
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