Anna SmaillCritiques

SO close to being a 5-star!
I thought the first 2/3rds was excellent, the idea behind it (experiencing so much of the world, and memory, through sound and music), but the end was too stereotypical/normal for the brilliance of the rest of the book.

Started really slow and showed evidence of heavy rewrites that changed the narrative, world and tone. Feels a bit like an assemblage of writing but quite successful. Could have used some foreshadowing to develop characters.

This is a rather original work revolving around music, the magical effect of music on memories, and how it takes this idea and runs full-hilt into total worldbuilding with it.

Huh?

I mean that certain music retains memories and others, including the Chimes, takes it away. Most of the world, or at least this oppressive, poverty-stricken future London, has forgotten itself. The Chimes are played to keep all the memories lost.

I love most of this. I really do. You can tell the author is very deep into her music. The main character and the group he runs with plays beautiful music, combatting the effects of the Chimes, surviving like street urchins, and finding love among all the questions and developing the tale into a quest to stop the Chimes.

I really enjoyed that.

What I didn't particularly enjoy was the slow, almost impersonal way the characterizations developed. It took a long time for me to wind my way through the musical riffs before some juicy handles presented themselves.

And then there was the way normal words were changed in spelling, for worldbuilding effect, that didn't really seem to have a reason. I didn't get the impression that this was a journal written by someone who had lost his ties with our standard language. I understood that Simon was a farmboy with some rather awesome musical talent and a side-talent for saving and storing memories. Writing, except for musical notation, seemed to be quite secondary.

*shrug*

That being said, I did enjoy the oppressiveness and the rather jazz-like discoveries and movements in plot and setting. :)

I don't read many YA dystopias. I appreciate the consistency and aesthetics of the world-building here. It's an original idea. The author also follows the process of memory recovery in a fresh and intriguing way. The political and philosophical ideas behind this dystopia are interesting, but unsophisticated. A lot of YA dystopias seem to be anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist, which is great, but not at all a hot or new take. And the origins of this dystopia are implausible, not rooted in our current reality. I think a really good dystopia says something about current state of the world. This one seems to be built more around an aesthetic than a political agenda.

''In the quiet days of power,
Seven ravens in the tower.
When you clip the raven's wing,
Then the bird begins to sing."

What is Memory? Let us think on its importance for a moment. Can we even begin to imagine a life without it? Our mind a blank sheet and unable to store and retrieve the moments of our lives.Where would we be without Memory? When we don't remember we lack the means to be reminded of our mistakes.When we don't remember our mistakes,we end up repeating them. Now,I think we agree our world is quite bad as it is. Imagine it in the context of History, Politics, Society in general. If we had no memory of Nazism, of the Holocaust,of the Soviet occupations and all the horrors of the past,where would we be? How infinitely worse would our planet suffer?

The regime in Orwell's 1984 aimed in changing the language and rewriting History according to weekly -or even daily- whims. In Smaill's novel,the regime enters the people's minds and erases the memories. So, automatically, they know no family, no friends and loved ones.They don't have a complex job.They just drift. And thus, they are fully controlled by the Order.The time they acquired control is called the Allbreaking.

In this outstanding novel, our point of view is Simon, a young man who arrives in London after his mother's death.There he meets Lucien and Clare, young people who live in hiding and struggle to lead the resistance against the Order. As we witness Simon's life moving back and forth in time,we realise that he has the ability to keep his memories alive in the form of objects and has the gift to actually "see" the memories of others. And this is as far in the plot as I will take you.

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair Lady."

Remember the legend? The kingdom will fall, all peace will be lost once the ravens abandon the Tower.This is why their wings are clipped, to keep them forever and retain the stability of the land. Here, we have a different version...

"Before Chimes, the ravens flew all over the world together. Free to fly and haunt and free to look and understand what they saw. But however far they travelled, they would always return home. Muninn often the last of all, they say, because memory has the furthest distance to travel.Then one day they didn't come back. Muninn was lost."

What do we see now? Muninn and Huginn, Memory and Thought. Odin's faithful companions and his means to the knowledge of the human's deeds. Ravens are important in a large number of mythologies and traditions and especially to the Norse and the Celts. Remember Morrigan, the sacred Celtic goddess, whose symbol was the raven flying over the battlefields. Ravens stand for Memory and for Death and in the land there is none of the first and plenty of the latter after the Allbreaking.

Smaill is also a musician and the way she uses Music to develop the story is exceptional.Music is supposed to be one of the most beautiful creations of mankind. It is there to make us happy, to accompany us in good and bad moments.Yet,in this world, Music has become the instrument of oppression and death.When the chimes strike, memories are lost. Ravensguild is the network that fights for freedom to return and end the reign of the Order. They seek the Lady, a mysterious notion and the key to liberation.

"I hate the day coming again and again and never changing and nothing to hold on to. Because I hate waking into it with nothing there."

The sense of time is vague.The setting is strange.We know we are in "contemporary" London, but it seems that the Order has caused the city to acquire a Medieval feeling. Since memories are absent, there is no complexity, therefore no progress. As I was reading, I was "picturing" images of Medieval markets and dark alleys.The novel I'd enriched with references to iconic classic composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn. She also uses folk myths and legends and,naturally, she often refers to Shakespeare.The tragedy that takes central role is Macbeth.

"Thereafter, I think. A backwards looking word for time that is still to come. In itself a blasphony. Before Chimes, a voice says in my head, there would have been time for such a word. A tripleton rhythm driving upward in my mind. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

Why Macbeth? Shakespeare's Macbeth thought that his reign would change the kingdom. And it did, but in a nightmarish way.The Shakespearean Macbeth becomes a tyrant, extinguishes formerly beloved friends, causes the death of his wife,orders the massacre of a family. He establishes a totalitarian regime in its most vicious form.Smaill also brings to mind thoughts on the institution of Religion and how it has been used as an excuse for oppression and violence by men in power who address frightened and desperate people and have nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus.

Vocabulary has also changed."Yesterday" has become "yesternoch", Diversity is Discord.Solfege has become a sign language.I strongly disagree with some reviewers who claimed that the language is confusing.We have been to school,I believe. I think most of us have been taught Music, most of us know what "presto" or "Lento" means and if we don't, well, there's always good old Google to enlighten us...

I feel that this is a book that I can't review in the usual structured way. I feel that anything I write will not be able to do justice to its beauty.The writing is impeccable, Simon is a character that will touch you deeply, Lucien is one you'll fall in love with at once.This is a dystopian novel of the finest kind.

"When the Chimes fill up the sky,
Then the ravens start to fly.
Gwillum, Huginn, Cedric, Thor,
Odin, Hardy, nevermore."

''In the quiet days of power,
Seven ravens in the tower.
When you clip the raven's wing,
Then the bird begins to sing."

What is Memory? Let us think on its importance for a moment. Can we even begin to imagine a life without it? Our mind a blank sheet and unable to store and retrieve the moments of our lives.Where would we be without Memory? When we don't remember we lack the means to be reminded of our mistakes.When we don't remember our mistakes,we end up repeating them. Now,I think we agree our world is quite bad as it is. Imagine it in the context of History, Politics, Society in general. If we had no memory of Nazism, of the Holocaust,of the Soviet occupations and all the horrors of the past,where would we be? How infinitely worse would our planet suffer?

The regime in Orwell's 1984 aimed in changing the language and rewriting History according to weekly -or even daily- whims. In Smaill's novel,the regime enters the people's minds and erases the memories. So, automatically, they know no family, no friends and loved ones.They don't have a complex job.They just drift. And thus, they are fully controlled by the Order.The time they acquired control is called the Allbreaking.

In this outstanding novel, our point of view is Simon, a young man who arrives in London after his mother's death.There he meets Lucien and Clare, young people who live in hiding and struggle to lead the resistance against the Order. As we witness Simon's life moving back and forth in time,we realise that he has the ability to keep his memories alive in the form of objects and has the gift to actually "see" the memories of others. And this is as far in the plot as I will take you.

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair Lady."

Remember the legend? The kingdom will fall, all peace will be lost once the ravens abandon the Tower.This is why their wings are clipped, to keep them forever and retain the stability of the land. Here, we have a different version...

"Before Chimes, the ravens flew all over the world together. Free to fly and haunt and free to look and understand what they saw. But however far they travelled, they would always return home. Muninn often the last of all, they say, because memory has the furthest distance to travel.Then one day they didn't come back. Muninn was lost."

What do we see now? Muninn and Huginn, Memory and Thought. Odin's faithful companions and his means to the knowledge of the human's deeds. Ravens are important in a large number of mythologies and traditions and especially to the Norse and the Celts. Remember Morrigan, the sacred Celtic goddess, whose symbol was the raven flying over the battlefields. Ravens stand for Memory and for Death and in the land there is none of the first and plenty of the latter after the Allbreaking.

Smaill is also a musician and the way she uses Music to develop the story is exceptional.Music is supposed to be one of the most beautiful creations of mankind. It is there to make us happy, to accompany us in good and bad moments.Yet,in this world, Music has become the instrument of oppression and death.When the chimes strike, memories are lost. Ravensguild is the network that fights for freedom to return and end the reign of the Order. They seek the Lady, a mysterious notion and the key to liberation.

"I hate the day coming again and again and never changing and nothing to hold on to. Because I hate waking into it with nothing there."

The sense of time is vague.The setting is strange.We know we are in "contemporary" London, but it seems that the Order has caused the city to acquire a Medieval feeling. Since memories are absent, there is no complexity, therefore no progress. As I was reading, I was "picturing" images of Medieval markets and dark alleys.The novel I'd enriched with references to iconic classic composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn. She also uses folk myths and legends and,naturally, she often refers to Shakespeare.The tragedy that takes central role is Macbeth.

"Thereafter, I think. A backwards looking word for time that is still to come. In itself a blasphony. Before Chimes, a voice says in my head, there would have been time for such a word. A tripleton rhythm driving upward in my mind. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

Why Macbeth? Shakespeare's Macbeth thought that his reign would change the kingdom. And it did, but in a nightmarish way.The Shakespearean Macbeth becomes a tyrant, extinguishes formerly beloved friends, causes the death of his wife,orders the massacre of a family. He establishes a totalitarian regime in its most vicious form.Smaill also brings to mind thoughts on the institution of Religion and how it has been used as an excuse for oppression and violence by men in power who address frightened and desperate people and have nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus.

Vocabulary has also changed."Yesterday" has become "yesternoch", Diversity is Discord.Solfege has become a sign language.I strongly disagree with some reviewers who claimed that the language is confusing.We have been to school,I believe. I think most of us have been taught Music, most of us know what "presto" or "Lento" means and if we don't, well, there's always good old Google to enlighten us...

I feel that this is a book that I can't review in the usual structured way. I feel that anything I write will not be able to do justice to its beauty.The writing is impeccable, Simon is a character that will touch you deeply, Lucien is one you'll fall in love with at once.This is a dystopian novel of the finest kind.

"When the Chimes fill up the sky,
Then the ravens start to fly.
Gwillum, Huginn, Cedric, Thor,
Odin, Hardy, nevermore."

oh, wow. I don't know how to even begin to talk about this one. Just go read it; you can thank me later.

Moved slowly and wasn't completely grabbed by the idea

I really liked the world Smaill created (not in the sense of wanting to live there but in the sense that she showed skill in crafting it) and the story, while predictable, was exciting to read. However, I was constantly bothered by a question which was never answered:
How did the chimes manage to erase people's memories?? Biologically speaking, this didn't make any sense to me. And it didn't take all the memories (such as the names of objects or how to do things) which made the process even harder for me to understand. The lack of an answer to this made me slightly unsatisfied with the book as a whole...½

Music is at the core of this book and it should have appealed, but somehow this fell flat for me.
In a world not unlike our own where a mysterious disaster leads to a world where every day memory is destroyed by the Carillion, the elite are the makers of music and everyday language is influenced by music and directions are sung. In this world Simon is sent to London, he knows that he has a mission, he's unsure how he could fix it. He meets Lucien who knows more and is going to help him.

It was an interesting concept but it just didn't work for me, I felt a bit underwhelmed and underwhelmed and I think it might have worked better if it had been set in a different world.

It's a concept book and I'm not sure the concept meets the characters well.

What a stunning debut novel! Original in it's concept of a world controlled by musical notes, to the point that people are so brainwashed that they have not only have no memory but have become illiterate . However a guild exists which has retained the ability to remember and is charged with keeping peoples memories for them. When Simon learns he has inherited his mother's ability, he, along with friend Lucien, decides that the source of the music must be destroyed. Lucien was once a member of the controlling order and has the necessary contacts for them to enter the Citadel. This is a book which requires concentration and immersion into this alternate world but well worth the effort.½

Long-listed for the Man Booker prize this year? What a disappointment. The last third of this book should be a novella. Otherwise, the whole thing reads like a first draft. I so wanted to like this book. I even special ordered it.

An original concept for the author's dystopian society -- a carillon, by which I envisioned a monstrous pipe organ -- which destroys memory each day at the expense of the inhabitants. How the sound could reach the length and breadth of England defeats my mind. Much of the novel is based on musical concepts, even down to the people signing in solfeggio and descriptive adjective are musical terms: piano, lento, forte, subito, etc. Two young people set out from London to Oxford to infiltrate the Citadel and to destroy the musical instrument, through playing on it in atonality and dissonance. After their mission has been completed, it is as though people are waking from a dream. "The look on their faces is of something crumbling around them as they watch. The look of something taken away.
It is an awful knowledge. When you were deep inside the dream, all was decided for you. But in the morning is something else altogether. Something you have to choose for yourself."
So people now must decide how to rule themselves.

The world-building was startling and original, but to me, incomplete; I wanted a fuller explanation. What was the cataclysmic event-- the Allbreaking -- that gave rise to this bondage, how did the Order come into being, and why was erasing memories chosen? The author's word coinages added to the atmosphere but I found I had to write down the first instance of each new term.½

Young orphan, Simon Wythern, leaves the farm he grew up on and heads to London carrying only his memory bag. In his memory bag are the items which contain the memories that he wants to hold onto, all the bits of the life he’s led thus far. You see, in Simon’s world, the only memories people retain are those that they carry in their memory bag. If you lose your memory bag, you become one of the nameless, those wandering without purpose, where each day is a new day, without memories of the days that came before, and there is only bodymemory left to fall back on.

In this alternate London, written history has been destroyed and replaced by music. The whole city talks and thinks and carries on to the sound of The Chimes. Each day a carillon sounds the chimes and society has been taught to think and act based on the music of The Onestory which is sounded by the chimes. The music of the Onestory is composed by the elite members of The Order and it tells of The Allbreaking, where the past world was destroyed by a weapon built of dischord, which was then turned upon itself. The Order arose from the ashes of dischord to save the people from chaos and bring about a new world of harmony. Onestory is there to give their world meaning and help the people understand their place in it. All else outside of Onestory is considered Blasphony. But, for those who live outside The Citadel, The Chimes often bring Chime Sickness and eventually death.

Simon arrives in London with only a name and a song to find, a thread to follow. The thread is a woman named Netty, whom his mother referred to right before she died two days ago of the chime sickness. But when he finds Netty, she seems to have no idea who his mother was and Simon doesn’t really know why he seeks her to begin with.

Time passes and Simon finds himself living in a storehouse on Dog Isle. He has become a member of the Five Rover pact. The pact consists of other young homeless kids, pactrunners, who eke out their living by hunting for remnants of The Pale Lady, a silver palladium ore, which The Order holds dear. All of the other members of Simon’s pact have no memory bags and they live on bodymemory alone. Bodymemory keeps them in their places.

But Simon begins to notice that he is different and seems to have a gift. The Chimes don’t bring the usual sickness to him, and he is able to hold on to some of his memories. He also forms a relationship with the pact’s leader Lucien, who has a secret past and seems untouched by The Chimes. The two become part of a secret network of people, working against The Order to preserve memories and pass them on. Simon and Lucien form a plan to uncover the suppression of The Order, in hopes of creating a new world where people can choose for themselves and hold their memories dear and close in their hearts.

The Chimes is a fresh piece of speculative fiction exploring a world I haven’t previously encountered. It is definitely different and has an intriguing premise. Being a music lover, I am not especially fond of the fact that music was used against the people in a negative way, but this story unfolds with a poetic beauty and style that makes it both unique and captivating.

I want to thank the publisher (Quercus US) for providing me with the ARC through NetGalley for an honest review.

For a review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2016/07/15/the-chimes-anna-smaill/

This is a hard slog at the start - the language and the imagined world take a bit of settling into - and I was hoping to be rewarded for pushing on. Unfortunately the dramatic second half of the book didn't really work for me either, so this was a bit of a bust for me. The setting and core features of the imagined world are fascinating and richly imagined, but there's not enough in the characters or the plot to make it worth your while.

review to come shortly.

A science fiction dystopian tale with a hugely original conceit but an inability to hold together a coherent plot or plausible (notwithstanding artistic fantasy licence) set up.

Simon, orphaned by his mothers death through a strange wasting neurological illness and his father's possible suicide, sets out to a post apocalyptic London in a brave new world resembling feudal mediaeval England, with mud tracks, horse drawn carts and the great uneducated unwashed in indentured poverty on the streets controlled from a citadel in Oxford by a mysterious elite. The twist in the new order is that the masses have been brought to their knees by an oppressive tyranny of music where their lives are defined and controlled by a brain damaging musical instrument that controls behaviour, wipes memories and apparently destroys like an atomic bomb. The original event, the allbreaking, either arising from this instrument or necessitating its creation, is commemorated in regular mindmelting broadcasts from the citadel. The written word outlawed and books burnt, all the lucky few have as memories are bags of trinkets serving as reminders of key people and events.

Somehow a malign musical influence permeates every aspect of life. Linguistics are dumbed-down and Italianated up with substitutions like presto and sotto where quickly and underneath would do. The high society are picked for their musical ability and the conservatoire forms the inner sanctum of power. But how any political upheaval could manifest in this acoustic nightmare world defies any kind of comprehension. While science fiction needn't obsessively justify its existance through some convoluted 'origins' story, there needs to be something to enable the leap of imagination if the story is to be set in our own world after some cataclysm. Allusions to the cataclysm are appropriately mythical for a new world where the controlling forces are seen as a new religion: the death of the Tower of London ravens being one trope evoked by way of mythologised explanation. But without a convincing backstory it is hard to understand the motivation for Simon and his troupe of short term memory deficient urchins, led by the inexplicably blind, pasty and twitchy Lucien (subject of his inspiration, motivation and later love interest) as they decide to destroy the system together.

Special powers of memory-telepathy through hallucination, 'chosen-ones', evil sects with secret weapons and the fact the bad guys get what's coming to them but the good guys wonder whether what's left is worth preserving are ultimately clichéd and undermine any novelty of the original ideas. And although the author's misgivings may be with overly proscriptive, rule-defined, elitist music in contrast with that which is freely expressed, creative and universally accessible, why she, an accomplished violinist, might want to give music such an apocalyptically bad name isn't clear.

Nice idea, but ultimately unconvincing and clichéd nonsense sci-fi with annoying musical linguistic tics.

I'm glad i powered through the first part, i was tempted to put the book aside, but i soon became Engrossed with the language and characters.

A bit slow to get into, but this was a really interesting perspective of a society without memory, guided by music.½