Review: The Wind City

The latest book from loc­al spec­u­lat­ive fic­tion pub­lish­ers Steam Press is the début nov­el of nine­teen-year old Sum­mer Wig­more. It’s a won­der­ful urb­an fantasy, set quite con­cretely in the very real environs of mod­ern-day Wel­ling­ton, but pop­u­lated through­out with myth­ic­al char­ac­ters and creatures from Maori folk­lore (col­lect­ively known as iwi atua).

Our two main prot­ag­on­ists are Saint and Tony, the former an out-of-work young-man-about-town (“love­ably fear­less” as he reg­u­larly reminds him­self), and Tony, a dol­phin tour oper­at­or whose busi­ness is lit­er­ally scuppered when she has a run-in with one of the pon­taturi (sea spir­its). Both Saint and Tony have the abil­ity to see the vari­ous non-human creatures (for reas­ons that become appar­ent as the story pro­gresses), and thus become cent­ral to the plot when two new atua – Noah and Hine­wai – arrive in Wel­ling­ton and enlist the loc­als in their respect­ive quests.

At times it’s remin­is­cent of some of Tom Holt’s nov­els – tak­ing mod­ern, unas­sum­ing char­ac­ters (in this case Tony, Saint being any­thing but unas­sum­ing), and throw­ing them head-first into odd and inex­plic­able situ­ations pop­u­lated with oth­er­wordly creatures, for both dra­mat­ic and comed­ic effect. There’s cer­tainly plenty of humour to be had. Saint is a walk­ing quip machine, jok­ing his way through scenes even while facing impend­ing death at the hands of vari­ous mon­strous creatures, and the inter­ac­tion between the good-natured Tony and the impossibly beau­ti­ful, but socially inept Hine­wai is hil­ari­ous. At one point, in the Hikur­angi (the atu­a’s secret cafe, of course), Tony leads the assembled atua in a sing-along of the Flight of the Conchords song Robots, good fun in its own right, and bet­ter when, hav­ing just been informed of some of the rather anti-human beha­viour of cer­tain fac­tions with­in the atua, the punch­line comes: “once again without emo­tion, the humans are dead”.

The mix­ture of myth­ic char­ac­ters with the mod­ern set­ting also leads to some won­der­ful moments of bathos. In anoth­er scene, Whai and Ariki – rival spir­its – are hav­ing a spat; insults have been traded, Whai hav­ing just cri­ti­cised Ariki’s hair. Ariki’s hav­ing none of it…

“Well your hair looks like shark oil! Like red ochre, like all that’s con­tempt­ible in the world.”
“You stink of unclean­li­ness. You’re a dog, you are! My fern-root’s the bones of your ancest­or!”
“You’re bored enough to play at war, but you know noth­ing of death or the hunt. Play with your nets as much as you like, fish­er-rat. They will be the things that hold you still when I drown you, when I burn you, when I stab you deep.”
“You’re a dick.”

It’s that sort of book. The pacing is excel­lent, jump­ing between the vari­ous char­ac­ters and plot-lines with ease and flu­idly, and the twists and turns are like nug­gets of lit­er­ary hokey-pokey, adding extra fla­vour to an already deli­cious dish. The only thing that occa­sion­ally jarred was the lib­er­al use of adverbs. Dia­logue is not just said; it is said loftily, or con­fid­ently, or stiffly, or urgently, or lazily, or absent­mindedly. This habit may have more atten­tion drawn to it by a recent read­ing of Elmore Leonard’s “ten rules” of writ­ing (which bans any modi­fic­a­tion of the verb ‘said’), and it nearly seems as if Wig­more has taken that par­tic­u­lar rule, and decide to turn it on its head. No mat­ter, Wig­more’s ima­gin­at­ive prose and fant­ast­ic story-telling more than make up for any minor styl­ist­ic quirks.

The Wind City is a start­ling debut nov­el for a nine­teen year-old writer. More to the point, this is a start­ling nov­el for a writer of any age, at any stage of their career: first book or tenth.

You can grab a copy in-store or online from Unity Books, or an e‑book ver­sion from Kobo (and oth­er pur­chas­ing options and info can be found over at the Steam Press site).

(note: Sum­mer has since turned twenty, but I wrote this review before that aus­pi­cious date, so I’ve left it as is).