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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Some good ideas, but overall weak execution, 8 Jun 2007
Keeping It Real is the first novel in the Quantum Gravity series by British SF author Justina Robson. Robson is a noted author of hard SF novels such as Silver Screen and Mappa Mundi, but for her latest project she has ventured into Science Fantasy, giving us a world where cyborgs and elves coexist with fairies and advanced AIs.
In 2015 the Quantum Bomb exploded. An accident at an atom-smasher has fractured reality and opened Earth - now called Otopia - to waves of immigration from other dimensions, home to demons, fairies, elves and elementals. It is now 2021 and Lila Black, a special operative condemned to live as a cyborg after losing her limbs on a dangerous mission, has been assigned as bodyguard to Zal, a charismatic elven rock star. Zal's decision to live among humans and do unelven things such as eat meat and exist as a celebrity has made him many enemies among his own people in Alfheim, some of whom have made threats against him. Black has to protect Zal from death or capture whilst uncovering secrets that threaten the relationships between the realms.
Keeping It Real is a book with a lot of excellent ideas. The combination of SF ideas and fantasy tropes works pretty well for the most part and the plot fairly clips along, as it has to in a relatively short (270-page) book. However, there is no denying that the central idea is pretty zany, and the reader is probably expecting a zany, funny book to explore it. This isn't what you get with Keeping It Real. This is a serious book which treats the central daftness of its concept with grim severity. There is some humour in the book - the demon bouncers at a party for example - but overall this is a mostly laughter-free zone.
This wouldn't matter if the characters are likable and interesting. They are not. When she's not dwelling on her horrific injuries, being cut off from her parents and her somewhat tedious 'Game' relationship with Zal, Lila Black is an intriguing character. Unfortunately this is in only about a quarter of the book. The rest of the time her character is engaged in moody introspection about how awful it is to be welded into a metal body with enough firepower to level a small city secreted about your person. Zal is completely unlikeable from the second you meet him to the very last page of the book: a selfish hedonistic egotist with no redeemable features at all. Some of the other characters were much more intriguing - Black being forced to work alongside a rival intelligence agent who was responsible for her injuries is an interesting plotline - but with the two central characters being rather unsympathetic, this made engaging with the novel very hard work.
Luckily, the story kicks into gear towards the end, after the action moves from Otopia to Alfheim. The last 50 pages or so are much faster-paced and you do find yourself drawn more into the narrative. However, for most readers I fear this improvement will come too late in the day to keep them interested.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Science fiction readers deserve better than this, 25 Aug 2006
I came to this book after reading the author's previous novel, Living Next Door to the God of Love, which if not entirely successful was ambitious and innovative. Keeping it Real, unfortunately, is not even of that calibre. The ideas are interesting (I have no objection to combining elements of sf and high fantasy), but the novel appears to have been written very quickly and only lightly edited (if at all) before publication.
The premise is that a quantum bomb created openings between our world (since renamed Otopia, for reasons never explained) and numerous other worlds (ie Alfheim, Faery, Thanatopia). These worlds are little more than cardboard backdrops. Otopia is skimpily described, with few material differences from the world we know. A sojourn in Alfheim feels like a hike through generic woodland, with no telling details to bring it into focus. The closest we come to the fantastical is being told that "everything is more itself there -- like ultra-authentic".
Before the novel opens the protagonist, Lila Black, suffered life-threatening injuries during a diplomatic mission. She was (implausibly) given a choice between dying or being rebuilt -- complete with restored limbs, nuclear core, and various armament -- on the condition that she cut off contact with her family and friends, who are told that she is dead. (Why? The author doesn't say.) The names of her loved ones appear on the page a few times, like tokens of a backstory rather than people for whom the protagonist feels a real sense of loss.
The behaviour of principal characters is inconsistent, often scarcely credible. Lila Black, who is supposed to be a ruthless spy, comes across as a troubled teenager. She flirts clumsily with Zal, the high elf rock star she's been assigned to protect, who himself behaves like a rebellious, surly adolescent. Lila is insecure about her new (half machine) body, but as soon as it becomes convenient for the plot she abruptly loses all self-consciousness.
Lila's relationship with Dar, the elf responsible for torturing her almost to the point of death, is one of the most implausible aspects of the book. She loathes him for about 5 minutes, then her anger dissipates because "it made her feel like a total jerk". After a few half-hearted attempts at hostile dialogue, any pretense of animosity is abandoned. As they are obliged to travel together for several days, their relationship quickly moves to friendship and then sexual attraction.
Secondary characters rarely rise above stereotype -- such as the demon who talks like a black chick from the hood and a psychologist who advises Lila to "take time for yourself".
The novel suffers from numerous basic writing errors: said bookisms, excessive adverbs, inconsistent levels of diction, incorrect punctuation. In a few places the quality of the writing is cringe-inducing ("This is so incredibly -- well, she hated to say it, being a top spy with a mission, but -- it was so cool!").
Some may excuse this book's failings on the grounds that it is intended as light entertainment. But it does not succeed either as entertainment (not being very entertaining) nor as satisfying fiction with memorable characters and settings. For science fiction to be meaningful, we must at a minimum be able to believe in the characters. To paraphrase an eminent science fiction writer, they are the real toads in the imaginary garden.
Writers in this genre have a responsibility to set high standards for themselves -- because there are few critics with high expectations, while the mediocre and the excellent alike are devoured by fans. It's worrisome that this novel is the first in a projected series. It marks a major step-down for a talented writer who seemed previously to aspire to work of greater scope and ambition.
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