Majestrum: Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, Book One

Matthew Hughes is a real artist, with an old-fashioned devotion to the craft of writing. This is not science fiction, nor is it "realistic" in the way that people seem to expect of all fiction nowadays. The sentences are crafted, not just thrown on the page like a transcription of an overheard conversation at Starbuck's. It's like Trollope or Smollett...full of wit and clever language. But it's also exciting and thoroughly enjoyable. The only comparable living writer of "speculative fiction" I can think of is Jack Vance, and he's quit writing at age 93. So we are fortunate indeed to have Matthew Hughes, whose unique voice is a thoroughgoing delight. Highly recommended.

Regular readers of the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy know that a Matthew Hughes story is offers the promise of a great read, and Mr. Hughes does not disappoint in novel form. "Majestrum" is a well-written, gripping story, a mix of science fiction, fantasy and mystery. Comparisons to Sherlock Holmes work, but one can also detect a hint of Michael Moorcock's "Dancer's at the End of Time" sensability in "Majestrum". This novel is written with intelligence and wit. Hughes' use of whimsies as a form of interstellar travel is but one of many clever innovations in this novel. Hughes' writing is a sheer joy, and if I had one complaint, it's that this novel ends far too soon. Best enjoyed on a rainy night next to a raging fire.

Matt Hughes has offered up yet another richly imagined run of prose with Majestrum. Take a police procedural, dress it in what Victorian prose wanted to be when it grew up, send it into the vastness of colonized space, and there you go. If you like a leisurely plotted story (but not too leisurely, think brisk on an autumn morning), along with characters and dialogue both nuanced, textured, and oh so witty, then I suggest you take your I-don't-want-to-be-spoonfed reading self to the pages of this Henghis Hapthorn offing and any others by Mr. Hughes. As for those any others, refer to his webpage, www.archonate.com, for a thorough bibliography and some sample pages to whet your appetite. He's a deft hand at providing readers with conflict on virtually every page and long on irony and the well-placed twist or three or . . . well, you'll see. Majestrum is a thinking person's dose of science fiction. So, go out, put the napkin in your lap, ready the fork and knife, and dig in.

Consider this more a recommendation than a review. This book deserves to be read by anyone who has ever enjoyed Jack Vance, CA Smith, Thorne Smith, Wodehouse, or M John Harrison's (lighter) Viriconium stories. There is a sufficiently complex and oddball mystery to involve readers, but dialog and setting are the true delights of MAJESTRUM. Hengis Hapthorn is a PI, or discriminator, in a far future earth era based on science and reason, but into which magic (sympathetic association) has begun to assert an influence, as it apparently has in ages past. Hapthorn prides himself on his logic, sometimes justifiably, and is disconcerted that magic's influence has turned his hand-built AI, or integrator, into a living familiar, mostly still able to function in AI mode except when hampered by its newly acquired carnal needs (sleep, food, and a lot of each). In earlier short stories (collected in Nightshade's THE GIST HUNTER), the integrator was Hapthorn's foil, providing most of the humorous dialog. In the novel, this is complicated by the integrator's incarnation and also by a magical incident's separation of Hapthorn's personality into his normal, logical mode, and his intuitive sub-persona. Another delight is seeing Hughes venture offworld and dabble in building truly strange pocket cultures, a la Jack Vance. Quibble: Without going into detail, Nightshade, please edit more carefully in the future. I am looking forward to the next two Hapthorn novels, and hoping that there are more in the planning.