Yatterings

Ken Macleod’s previous oeuvre won’t prepare you for the Execution Channel.

The UK is sitting on the political fence between the superpowers and is drawn into the “war on terror” when it is attacked anonymously. The Travis family becomes intimately bound into the larger global narrative. Jack Travis finds himself torn between who to give his secrets to - Europe or America. His daughter, Roisin is ideologically driven but has to come to terms with the truth of her position - does she do something about the actualities of the spy game she is brought into or not?

Set in the near future, the novel makes the reader think about the realities of where we are in terms of the new media and the current “war”. In contrast to his space operas, this book feels dirty and near the coal face, it doesn’t have the squeaky clean feel of many near future thrillers. That is perhaps what makes this book.

Ultimately the individual gets lost in this version of Europe; the larger society has other, somewhat sfnal plans, for the world. It works neatly as a thriller and also as slightly off beat sf novel (although I’m not 100% convinced about the ending).

The book isn’t a mere entertainment but neither is it pure political rant. It would be easy to write an angry book, trying to somehow save the world via rectification of balance but that would be a fantasy. I found myself engaging with the politics and the world far more in this book and thinking far more deeply about what they personally mean as an individual.