#14
The Sword Of Forever
By Jim Mortimore
Oooookay then.
I’m tempted to say you never know what you’re getting with a Jim Mortimore book, but that wouldn’t be accurate. You know you’ll get something spectacular. There will be memorable, perhaps gut-wrenching set pieces and there will be world building. It will be eloquently written and, like certain really cool but slightly odd bands – Super Furry Animals come to mind – you’ll sense that, if they do something you don’t entirely get, hard luck, but they meant to do that.
I have no doubt that Jim Mortimore meant to do The Sword Of Forever, so to speak. I’m sure it was worked out within an inch of its life. But I’m nevertheless in the camp of people who put the book down only to gaze into space afterwards and go… you wha’?
A certain feeling of “normal service has been interrupted” occurs early on during a prequel chapter about a young Benny Summerfield. (Sidebar: that combination looks wrong, doesn’t it? Benny and Summerfield, both fine, but together: yuck. Still, it’s a useful way to tell us it’s a different version of the character.) Benny is on a dig with her current love, a man who will haunt her future: Daniel. And because this guy is brand new information, I immediately assumed something was deliberately and cleverly amiss. If Bernice had had a tragic love affair – or rather, had had another one – she’d have said, right? Not famously tight-lipped is our erstwhile archaeologist.
Something else seems to be up with the dates, which start us off with a 22-year-old Benny and then resume 30+ years later. Present day Bernice isn’t in her 50s, is she? Is this all a time-jump? Is it future Bernice? (Mind you, some of this might be editorial error. There’s one chapter that kills off Daniel 2 years before his arrival. On Terminus Reviews, Mortimore seems to suggest that an editor placed a gap here to suggest the time spent travelling with the Doctor, which of course we can’t speak of, and if so that’s got me thinking along the lines of bloody UNIT Dating. Sort of wish there were no dates, it might be neater.)
This feeling was compounded by the situation on Earth, where much of the action takes place. It’s riddled with radioactive fallout from a war (do we know which?) and all life is at constant risk of mutation. There are tree-people, mutant animals, you name it. Reading this I realised how few Benny books had actually visited Earth (wait, is it none?) and, to be fair, maybe Mortimore is just setting a new (horrid) status quo here since no one else has. But equally, what with the Daniel thing, and what with me being a softie who wants nicer things for Earth, on some level I was thinking: don’t worry, this isn’t really happening, wait for it, wait for iiiit. (I mean, I know it isn’t really happening, but… you know what I mean.)
Long story short, whether I’m right or wrong, I think the best way to enjoy The Sword Of Forever is to ignore that thought and just embrace the thing that it is, because if Bernice isn’t actively saying “This isn’t right” then no one is likely to. You might as well settle in. Then again, the book backs up that nagging Elseworlds feeling to an extent. (By which I mean, that’s literally the plot of the book, but… well you know, how much of it is this thing and how much is that thing?) The titular sword is a means to create time, and life, and hence reboot the world. And this happens, after Bernice is crucified. (Hold that thought.) So there’s a good chance this whole time we’ve been reading about an alternate Earth. But how much of it is supposed to be alternate, given the lack of an objective observer, I don’t know, so now I’m not sure all over again.
(Release that thought.) As in literally crucified. There’s a ton of biblical mythology in this, some of which could turn heads more sharply than The Da Vinci Code, and none of it, in my opinion, really makes it make sense to do this to Bernice. It’s… a lot, you know? The fact that she goes along with this, and her “friends” (Patience at least) help, and then in the Epilogue she has successfully been recreated and is satisfied that The Important Thing Has Been Done and then the book ends – is almost, but not quite as bizarre as doing it in the first place. Like I said, she is as enmeshed in the slightly off kilter atmosphere of this book as anyone else in it. For better or worse. (Which again makes me wonder how much of this is supposed to ring false.)
There is much violence and body horror in The Sword Of Forever, and to be fair, plenty of excitement and a couple of car chases as well. It is a RIDE. There is also the aforementioned eloquent prose, as the action chops between different times such as post-Crusades France, 80 million BC and then, right at the end, probably all of human history for the second (third?) time. I’m not sure the breadth of scope here really helped me follow along, though. At one point I was distracted from reading for more than a day and when I started the next chapter, I had no idea how we’d got there. There are basic pieces of information that I just felt too stupid to grasp, like why we discovered adult Bernice in media res, nearly frozen to death clutching the remains of a dinosaur. (The importance of the dinosaur is made clear soon after, but that still didn’t quite loop back and explain the original situation to me. I’ve probably missed a bit. Was she doing it all over again? Christ, I feel thick.)
Said dinosaur – Patience, a Utah raptor who reincarnates, meets Bernice and learns sign language – features in some of the book’s best bits, as she and other unnaturally intelligent dinosaurs deal with some nearby humans, probably on one of (?) humanity’s subsequent run-throughs but this time with dinos, and this time they’re smarter etc. The end of the book suggests she could return, which I’m all for. (I’m still not 100% sure the book justifies having an intelligent dinosaur in the cast, but be honest, it wouldn’t hurt most books, would it?)
It’s tough to review a book or even say anything useful about it when you’re struggling to get two and two to meet at a nice coffee shop. It’s really hot this week, maybe my brain just didn’t engage like it should have. To keep my critical hat affixed, then, I’m fairly certain that (time loops or ersatz Earths or no) introducing a brand new old heartbreak for Bernice is at best a risky move, and mining it for emotion is like drilling for oil in a crash mat. Also, the basic design of the book – already complex and reticent with answers even before you chop it up – worked against it, for me. Again, maybe it’s the heat. Something about the whole atmosphere of this book, though, just did not work for me.
I know others really enjoyed it, some of whom even with that sense of bafflement. The Sword Of Forever may well be your thing, just as previous Mortimores have been mine, and if so: brilliant! It contains thrills and wonders, but for me the lasting effect was of climbing out of an uncanny valley and feeling well out of there.
5/10
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