London Revenant (Paperback)

I think this is achieved because everything is so vivid. It's a cliche to say this about novels of this ilk, but London really is a character in this book as much as Adam, or any of the supporting cast. You always know exactly where Adam is in the city, every street and alleyway has a name, and every footstep comes alive with Williams' descriptions of the city's underbelly. If you know London you'll be able to follow him step for step. If you don't, you might just be glad you don't by the time you finish this book.

Every character is distinct and colourful, every situation skewed, dark and out of the ordinary. The plot has more twists and turns than the London Underground.

Fantastic stuff, in every sense of the word. On the strength of this, I've just ordered Williams' first book, Head Injuries. If it's half as good as this one it will be money well spent.

The writer seems to revel in leaving the reader to create and answer his own questions regarding the detail behind what is going on. I often got the feeling that I'd missed pages, as the plot seemed to have as many unanswered issues as it does twists and turns; though this seems to be intentional and really does add to the unique style of the writing as a whole.

The level of imagination and particularly the descriptive writing is superb, but I was left with the feeling that the actual end was premature so I guess that a much bigger climax to the story is being left to be told in the sequel - well I hope so anyway !

But it's a disappointment. Whenever things start to get interesting the prose cuts out and, like our narcoleptic hero, we find ourselves at the beginning of an unconnected paragraph, wondering what we missed. A clever convolution of form and content? Maybe at first, but it soon becomes a narrative tic and its effect is flattening rather than intriguing.

As for our hero, well, I don't want to sound like a studio executive, but this is not someone we can root for. He's undercharacterised - he has two identities but not enough texture for one. He's almost entirely reactive, his internal monologue is flat, and as a narrator he doesn't even have an interesting turn of phrase.

We are told about his desires and emotional upheavals, but are never made to feel them for ourselves. He's hung up on an ex-girlfriend; he craves company; he's occasionally witty. But we can't share the longing for Laura and can't really empathise with his loneliness - we wouldn't have noticed it if he didn't keep mentioning it, busy as the novel is with dozens of secondary characters. And he never makes us laugh.

When the content is mysterious but the writing not vivid enough in itself, there's an unspoken contract between writer and reader that a book will build towards some kind of revelation. Or a least a good, old-fashioned showdown. Neither of these come. The final confrontation with the Pusher keeps being deferred. Big events happen in London but without adding much to the plot's equations. And our hero has a Fight Club-style revelation of a delusional state that is fumbled by Williams so that it has neither impact nor implications. Even the relationship with the longed-for ex sustains little interest, despite the combination of frequent meditations on her in the early part of the book, her later jeopardy, and a reunion.

So I was disappointed. Not angry-disappointed. Not "I want my money back" disappointed. But deflated. Williams can probably write a better book (I've not read his others) but he needs to pay more attention to pacing, release of information and characterisation if he wants to grip his reader.

I'm not a big fantasy-head, so members of this book's natural constituency may feel differently about it. But I fear the genre-junkies may just have lower standards.