The End of Everything

Don't, whatever you do, do what I did with my life, and let your cleverness turn you into an observer. This is the new novel by M. John Harrison, a writer who doesn't write stories for teenagers. I didn't even know he had a book out this year--I got this one as a birthday gift. The good and bad thing about working from home is that my avenues for slacking off extend far beyond reading book news all day. As a lore-hater, I'm on board with 200-page SFF novels, but I'm not sure Harrison writes them as a matter of principle. I mean, he does, he's also a lore-hater, but it's not only that. Every page is so dense with information that he doesn't need any more pages. What would be the point of another page stuck to the end of The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again? He's written series, but each book does its own thing and none are very long by current standards. They just don't need to be. Harrison's work is information-dense as far as meaning and implication, but maybe it's a mistake to…

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