Following the bold, ambitious statement of his debut novel XX was always going to be tricky, but with The Black Locomotive Rian Hughes has shown that he can turn his hand to a shorter, more focused story while retaining the same wild invention, visual flair and knack for combining different media that he displayed before. When the construction of a top-secret Crossrail extension is halted by the discovery of a strange buried structure which hints at a new understanding of London’s distant past, project manager Austin Arnold is called in to oversee proceedings, accompanied by the unusual presence of artist Lloyd Rutherford. Commissioned to document the Crossrail project, Rutherford is obsessed by his relationship with London and its architecture, and finds himself increasingly drawn to the mystery of the subterranean anomaly. When something wakes within the anomaly though, Austin has to turn to older, more reliable technology to ensure London’s safety.
Despite sitting comfortably in the speculative fiction realm, much of this book feels generally eccentric but still grounded in the real world. Hughes’ love of the topics he’s writing about showing through strongly in the way Austin turns to his nostalgic memories of childhood enthusiasms in the form of the locomotive-obsessed Smokebox Club, and Rutherford’s earnest, somewhat pretentious musings on Brutalist architecture and his dreamlike sense of his personality merging with that of the city. The Smokebox Club in particular, with its mysterious leader ‘The Chief Engineer’, jaunty theme tune, secret hand sign and beautifully elegant logo/membership badge, is an absolute delight. The more heavily sci-fi elements of the plot do gradually develop though, taking things closer in some respects to the feel of XX towards the latter stages of the book and balancing that grounding in reality with some interesting, high-concept ideas. This definitely isn’t a hard-SF novel, but rather its own unique blend that doesn’t quite feel like anything else.
It’s hard not to have XX in mind while reading and thinking about The Black Locomotive, and although the two books are not narratively linked, despite their differences they do share a certain DNA. While it’s shorter and generally less complex than XX, there’s still plenty of ambition on display, from an exploration of London’s history, architecture and overall sense of personality to a fond portrayal of steam-powered locomotives as an antidote to modern technology. Most of the bold, in your face graphic stylings of XX are replaced here by stark monochrome photography, fine-lined and strangely compelling CAD drawings, and subtle uses of different fonts to reflect point of view changes, a choice which suits the more linear and straightforward narrative without losing that engaging multi-disciplinary approach. There are a few lovely little touches too, like a QR code linking to original music, a recurring series of vintage Smokebox Club magazine covers, and the occasional hint of humour and personality in the otherwise stark, precise architectural drawings.
Readers who wholeheartedly loved the wild ambition of Hughes’ first book might miss some of its adventurousness, and given that The Black Locomotive is – when you take away the visual elements – actually quite a short book, there’s an argument that perhaps it’s gone a little further than it needed to from what made XX work so well. A slightly higher word count might have given the more high-concept elements a bit more room to breathe and develop for example, without detracting from the rest of the book. That being said, this nevertheless manages to distil Hughes’ vision, ambition and talent into a subtly genre-bending paean to both London in all its Brutalist glory and the heady days of steam-powered engineering, packed full of imagination and creativity. It might be a little more mainstream than its predecessor but it’s still the sort of adventurous, thought-provoking novel that’s likely to linger in the mind long after it’s finished.
Many thanks to Black Crow PR, Picador and Rian Hughes for sending me a review copy of The Black Locomotive in exchange for my honest opinions.
See also: my review of XX by Rian Hughes.
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