Provender Gleed James Lovegrove
Gollancz hardback, 352 pages, £18.99
Review by David Clark (2005)
Families own countries. Well, that’s Royalty for you. Ours own large chunks of London real estate, various odds and sods around the country and, IIRC, every inch of ground in Canada. Pests. Here on The Edge we nurture a wish to have them beheaded, preferably on Tower Green, then left for the ravens to pick at. I’m sure that’s what the ravens secretly want. The Corvidae may have some dubious dietary requirements but they are intelligent creatures, unlike those annoying beefeaters with their 'don't touch the jewels nonsense'.
Anyway, Provender Gleed is an alternate universe novel. History turned onto a different track back in the 1500s. The aristocracies build huge fortunes in business and take over whole countries. The Gleeds are our shower. Instead of the meagre sealed, guarded and make-the-other-passengers-wait Royal Train endured by ‛the firm’, as that nice Prince Philip so perspicaciously describes our much-loved Windsors, the Gleeds swan about in ornate trams, boasting their own exclusive network. There are also, naturally, airships. You just knew there would be, didn’t you, Reader? I did.
The plot involves Provender being kidnapped, perhaps by another firm. Some dire detectives are called in. Proceedings are all very wacky and off the wall. Some real horror intrudes, stuff to put Dario Argento, Ramsey Campbell and David Britton to shame. Yes, there’s a performance of Hamlet.* And there’s murder, and romance, and an Agatha Christie ending.
Despite a streak of satire, Provender Gleed is a bit too whimsical for me, too much of an SF/fantasy humour novel. Good world-building, but I want more. The War Lord of the Air it isn’t.
*I’m not anti-Shakespeare. I just don't like Hamlet. •