Fiction Reviews
Lucid
(2025) Oraine Johnson, Gollancz, £20, hrdbk, 424pp, ISBN 978-1-399-61015-5
This is the debut novel by Oraine Johnson, an accomplished actor, composer, musician and writer, and is described in the publishers’ blurb as a ‘mind-bending mash-up of thriller, fantasy and science fiction’. However, although I’m very much a fan of books that cross genre boundaries, I felt that this particular ‘mash-up’ ended up as rather too mushy and overall, lacked balance between the various ingredients.
Certainly, the science fictional aspect appears to play very little role in driving the narrative forward. The setting is a near-future Birmingham, now the principal city of Mercia, following ‘The Great Divide’ during which, in order to avoid civil war, England has rather implausibly split into its ancient kingdoms (it’s left unclear what has happened to the other devolved nations). There are fleeting futuristic glimpses via mention of ‘hydro-trams’ for example, but honestly, I think this could all have been dropped without any loss to the overall plot...
That centres on Joseph Jacobs, a university student who is cast in the time-honoured role of ‘He Who Has Great Power But Doesn’t Know How To Use It’. This power has something to do with lucid dreaming but of course for much of the book Joseph doesn’t realise what he’s capable of, until he falls under the mentorship of a figure literally described as a Black Professor X. As for the source of that power, that too is unclear, having something to do with the Seven Rivers of the Realm of Dreams, which stands in opposition to the Realm of Nightmares, ruled by the Lord of Fallen Dreams who leads an army of demonic ‘Knight Terrors’ (!) capable of possessing human beings. As if that were not enough, both the good and the bad guys also have representatives on Earth - the former through a group with the less-than-uplifting name of The Waning Order, whose members have been responsible for all that is good and creative and innovative; whereas the latter appear in the form of the cult of Avalon, which includes a pair of ninja-like assassins, one Black and one White, marked by Aries and Sagittarius tattoos, respectively.
These two acrobatic murderers feature prominently in the third genre-related strand involving a series of murders that occur across the city. Suspecting that someone in the police force is tampering with the evidence, the internal investigations unit sends in Elizabeth Jacobs, a former ‘star’ officer who, of course, also happens to be Joseph’s adoptive mother. The fantastical and thriller threads are then entwined when a mysterious ‘Black Ghost’ figure descends on the local gangland (I say mysterious, but it’s pretty obvious who this is) and wreaks havoc, with city-wide chaos then ensuing as a result.
The overall style of the book is very much that of a graphic novel, with lots of cultural nods of the head thrown in, such as to the film The Crow and Toby McGuire’s Spider-Man, most notably, of course, when Joseph is interacting with his friends and peers. These are perhaps the more engaging passages in the novel, and from a non-teenage outsider’s perspective, the dialogue here seems smooth and natural. That’s not the case elsewhere, with long expository statements being declaimed amidst the frenetic action.
However, even more off-putting, for me anyway, is the use of the first-person present-tense throughout. No doubt this is an age-related hang up and those folk who are more used to texting and snapchatting or whatever will not be so bothered by it. Unfortunately, though, it does make it more difficult to determine who the narrator is when that first-person focus slides from Joseph to his mum to a gang member, sometimes in the same chapter and within the same urban context. Again, for me, that made for a disorienting and disengaging read. Now, perhaps that was the intention all along, but I’m afraid that with the Big Showdown at the end leaving things open, it left me very much not in the market for the sequel.
Steven French
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