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Dummyland: Accomplice Book 3
by Steve Aylett
(Gollancz; £9.99, 119 pages, paperback, published 21 November
2002.)
It's business as usual in Accomplice,  Hell's
twin town, when a newly made doll escapes from the Church of Automata
and runs riot through the streets. Mayor Rudloe, who never has to think
up new ways to oppress the public since the public do it for him, tries
to pin the blame on the ingenu Barny Juno. The demon lord Sweeney, still
keen to eradicate Barny, supposedly his nemesis, sends another goon
upstairs to sort him out. Meanwhile Gregor, Barny's misshapen friend
with a lust for statues, is put on trial for indecently assaulting a
public monument, and Barny attempts to cope with a dramatisation of
a dream he's had.
More of the madness we've come to expect from Steve Aylett, but somehow
this latest series of escapades just doesn't seem to match up to Aylett's
past glories. I think it's the length of the work that's at fault here;
for me, Aylett's brand of satire has always worked best in small, concentrated
bursts, which episodic books like Bigot Hall and The Crime
Studio exhibited to good effect. He can quite happily sustain a
single story over a hundred or so pages, but with a continuous narrative
spread across four volumes -- and possibly more to follow -- I suspect
he's overreached himself. Worse, he's starting to tend towards soap
opera.
The thing is, we've seen the set-up, we know enough of how Accomplice
works and which way the characters will jump to be able to second guess
much of the text. In other words, we've heard the joke before. Steve
Aylett is capable of writing wonderfully perceptive, acerbic and witty
prose, but like all good comedy it depends on spontaneity, something
that is lacking in a book whose plot so strongly echoes those of its
two predecessors. Once again Barny Juno, the unwitting hero, defeats
the machinations of his nightmarish foes simply by muddling through
his mundane life. The mundane triumphs over the fantastic. How horribly
true.
Perhaps Book 4, Karloff's Circus, will tread fresh ground and
bring this tetralogy to a satisfying conclusion. Dummyland, disappointingly,
is the literary equivalent of drumming your fingers on the table and
boasting that it's got a good beat.
Review by John Toon.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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