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I have a confession to make. I kind of like fantasy-ish novels. Can't stand dragons, wizards and all that paradigm, but urban fantasy is all right in my book as long as there is an edge to it. Fear of the unknown is a powerful motor behind human behaviour and it's fun to imagine what lies beyond the looking glass. Adam Christopher's debut novel EMPIRE STATE offers a portrait of a parallel dimension New York that brims with strange, creative ideas. It's a novel that understands plotting and timing very well, yet that has its shortcomings. Any terrific adventure loses some of its appeal if you don't live it with the right people.
Empire State is what New York could've been, should've been, given different circumstances. It is stuck in time, yet it's a deeply anachronistic city where robots, scam artists, superheroes, and private eyes share the streets. Detective Rad Bradley is hired to find a missing woman in Empire State. Since he's good at his job, he picks up a trail quickly, that leads right into the underbelly of the strange world he lives in. On the other side of the looking glass, prohibition-era bootlegger Rex Bradbury witnesses something that will alter the course of his life while running away from an ill-intentioned competitor. These two, living on opposite sides of the law, are walking into something way bigger than themselves.
I do not know of many novels that offer a more intricate effort in plotting than EMPIRE STATE. Not only Adam Christopher's novel is long, tortuous, complex and ultimately riveting, it also have an uncanny sense of timing. You can never expect what is coming, because the elements of the storyline are so idiosyncratic, you would never expect them to function when put together. There is a storytelling paradigm for the prohibition era. There are ones for parallel universe science-fiction, steampunk and cyberpunk too *. Somehow, Adam Christopher makes it all work together.
The most popular Amazon ranking for EMPIRE STATE is three stars. It might seem surprising as authors usually get all their friends to review their book, yet I agree with that ranking. Characterization is EMPIRE STATE's one major flaw **. I understand Adam Christopher had to set priorities. His novel is overflowing with ideas and bold plotting maneuvers and it's quite a long book. But characters always takes precedence over storyline for me and I thought Rad Bradley was bland. He wasn't a bad character, but he never breaks free of the archetypal mold of the private eye and I must've read a hundred characters like him before. I would've loved somebody more special to live this special adventure that was EMPIRE STATE, with me.
It's not every novel that can remain fun for over 400 pages. EMPIRE STATE does that, so it is successful despite being flawed. It's a novel that operates from its own paradigm of urban fantasy. It doesn't try to fit any preset form, but instead it's fitting all sorts of preset ideas into its giant setting and creates something new. Only a fearless publisher like Angry Robot Books would've put such a wild project forward. Adam Christopher created a universe that rivals those of creative genuises such as Mamoru Oshii and Hayao Miyazaki. The world of EMPIRE STATE is a fascinating place, yet it just needed a hero to come alive and become greater than the sum of its parts.
* EMPIRE STATE is neither steampunk or cyberpunk. It just falls into a strange in-between. This entire novel is a strange in-between. Well played, Adam Christopher. Well played.
** It didn't pass the Josie-test. She tapped out after a hundred pages.