Luminous Chaos

The Mysteries of New Venice #2

by Jean-Christophe Valtat, Mahendra Singh (Illustrator)

Book two in The Mysteries of New Venice, the steampunk adventure series The Guardian called a "magnificent achievement"

It's 1907 in the icily beautiful New Venice, and the hero of the city's liberation, Brentford Orsini, has been deposed by his arch-rival -- who immediately assigns Brentford and his friends on a dangerous diplomatic mission to Paris.

So, Brentford recruits his old friend and louche counterpart, Gabriel d'Allier, underground chanteuse and suffragette Lillian Lake, and the mysterious Blankbate--former Foreign Legionnaire and leader of the Scavengers, the city's garbage collecting cult--and others, for the mission.

But their mode of transportation--the untested "transaerian psychomotive"--proves faulty and they find themselves transported back in time to Paris 1895 ... before New Venice even existed. What's more, it's a Paris experiencing an unprecedented and crushingly harsh winter.

They soon find themselves involved with some of the city's seediest, most fascinating inhabitants. But between attending soirees at Mallarmé's house, drinking absinthe with Proust, trying to wrestle secrets out of mesmerists, and making fun of the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower, they also find that Paris is a city full of intrigue, suspicion, and danger.

For example, are the anarchists they encounter who are plotting to bomb the still-under construction Sacre Coeur church also the future founders of New Venice? And why are they trying to kill them?

And, as Luminous Chaos turns into another lush adventure told in glorious prose rich in historical allusion, there's the biggest question of them all: How will they ever get home?



ebook ISBN: 978-1-61219-142-3

Genres: Steampunk, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Alternate History, Adventure

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

JEAN CHRISTOPHE VALTAT was born in 1968. Educated in the Ecole Normale Superieure and the Sorbonne, he lives in Montpellier where he teaches Comparative Literature. He has written a book of short stories, Album, and two novels, Exes, and 03 (published in English by FSG), as well as award-winning radio-plays and a movie "Augustine" (2003), which he also co-directed.

He is also the author -in English - of the "dream-punk" trilogy "The Mysteries of New Venice", including "Aurorarama" (2010), Luminous Chaos (2013), and Suspended Citadels (2016) http://johnblank9.wixsite.com/blankpa...

Reviews

[Liviu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started Luminous Chaos, Jean-Christophe Valtat's sequel to the awesome Aurorarama. Picking up a year after the end of the earlier book, this one lacks a little the freshness and originality of that one but so far had enough goodies to keep me entertained and the style is the same irreverent one of the first volume. Of course as per blurb, the action soon will move from the Polar regions to Paris where the heroes will travel by "Psychomotives":

"Once the pilot is charged with Od, it is but a matter of channelling the force efficiently. For one thing, Od, as I said, is diamagnetic and can be used for easy levitation. Then, because the two hands of the body are differently Od-polarized, they can rotate two disks in different directions, hence furnishing electromagnetic power, which in turn operates contra-rotating turbines with mobile rotor blades for steering. It’s as simple as that, really.

Brentford was unconvinced, but after all, this was New Venice. He had seen Helen stop Time and a kangaroo with a wolf’s head emit telepathic messages: if he willed it, he could make his disbelief diamagnetic and let it float on thin air."

So I guess I can make my belief diamagnetic too and let it float on the air too for what announces to be another superb offering!


Finished the book and sadly there was a point where with all the magic in the book and my disbelief just couldn't be suspended any more; I would like to avoid major spoiler but overall this book is the precise of equivalent of "everything that happened was a dream and life goes on without any changes/consequences" and I dislike such way too much for even its great style and madcap action to compensate

[Jake Owens · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is there a more frustrating/disappointing series out there than New Venice? After the increasingly convoluted mess that was Aurorarama, I got Luminous Chaos hoping that it would better fulfill the series' unique promise. I was initially thrilled at the more interesting premise (Time travel!) and historical fiction setting (Paris!) and some new characters and dared to hope.

Unfortunately, the more interesting characters get almost no spotlight, and we're left to again watch Brentford and Gabriel wander aimlessly from mystery to increasingly frustratingly complex mystery. (Thankfully without as much depravity from Gabriel this time, just a reminder every 5 pages or so that he likes to hook up with underage hermaphrodite siamese twins.)

All the squandered opportunities make this even worse than book 1. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I'm not reading anymore of your crappy books.

[LeeAnn Heringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am just a sucker for this series of book -- in fact, I pre-ordered this one last year. They are beautiful, well-thought out stories. They're true to their own sense of internal history and rules. And the characters within this sphere of a magical city built in the Arctic are so believable. They are so delicately steampunk. I could gush all day.

Can I order the 3rd one in series yet?

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay, but very, very strange and sometimes just confusing and boring. Like some others who have posted reviews, I haven't read the first book in the series. I probably missed a lot. But I liked the writing style, and some of the sentences were just beautiful.

--**--SPOILERS--**--

1. Not okay with Gabriel's thing with the twins. Maybe that's explained/justified more in the first book, but I don't see how it could be. Ew.
2. How did Lilian and Thomas fall in love enough in ~10 days to make the decision to stay in the past forever? I guess Thomas didn't really decide to stay in the past, but still, he was supposedly completely in love with Blanche.
3. Speaking of which, I didn't believe Thomas's romance with Blanche at all. There wasn't chemistry there... Thomas couldn't really keep up with Blanche, there was so much we didn't know about her and she was so unlikeable that I found myself utterly unmoved by her impending death.
4. By the way, tuberculosis is totally spread through the air! By coughs and stuff! So why the heck did Blanche keep her TB a secret and have multiple lovers, and why didn't Thomas freak out when she told him she had it? She had probably given it to him, given that she was constantly coughing around him and they were making out all the time (or at least I assume they were, due to various references to "trysts"). However, I'm willing to believe TB isn't contagious in the world of Luminous Chaos, since there's a bunch of other science in the book that obviously does not apply to our universe.
5. Idk about you guys, but I found the descriptions of Tuluk and his race in general to be a little uncomfortable and perhaps just racist. So many references to Tuluk's people being so much simpler, etc etc. I don't know.
6. In general, I was really annoyed by the progression of the book. They just kept visiting people and learning new scientific stuff that was very hard to follow. And then they would visit someone else and learn something new. The end was pretty exciting, but that was about it.
7. Not to mention, the book's only main female character, Lilian, was just GONE for for most of the book. Like good on you Jean-Christophe for at least including a female character, and also making her a suffragette, but she just peaced out for most of the book! She barely helped AT ALL with getting everyone back home! And okay, I get that she was in love or lust or whatever. But couldn't she have helped out a little and gone to meet some of the scientists etc and acted smart and cool? Because she was supposed to be smart and cool, but basically all we saw of her was through Brentford's eyes -- she was beautiful and awesome but she didn't like him very much and that was it.
8. As for Brentford, he was a pretty boring dude. He was so good and noble, and he never did anything that wasn't good or noble. Besides maybe wanting Lilian back even after she had moved on, but he never tried to hard with that one.

So yeah. I just didn't care all that much for these characters. Sometimes they felt real, but sometimes not. And in the end I just wanted to be done with them.

[Anika Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A year has passed in the polar city of New Venice, and recent elections mean that Brentford Orsini is no longer the Regent Doge. His successor decides to remove him and several of his supporters from the picture by sending him to set up a diplomatic mission in Paris. Psychomotive travel is dangerous, though, and the group find themselves thrown back in time to 1895 – some years before the construction of New Venice. Eventually arriving in a unusually snowy Paris, the travellers find themselves not only trying to find out how to get themselves back to the right time, but they also end up embroiled in various political dramas that could affect the founding of New Venice itself.

If the hermaphroditic conjoined twins and polar kangaroo from Aurororama didn’t scare you off, then there’s plenty more of the bizarre in this sequel. At its heart, this story is a  lot like a travel guide to 19th-century Paris, albeit a steam-punkish alternate dream-Paris. From the architecture and the excesses of the wealthy, to the city’s dark underbelly, it’s all described in intimate detail. These strange and beautiful descriptions made the first book a delight to read and they only improve in the second.

The writing style is very prosaic but I found it took lots of concentration to understand what was happening at times. Not the ideal book to read while you’re looking after a newborn (*yawn*)! In addition there are still concepts from the original story that I don’t really understand – for example, I’m still not sure how far ahead of 1895 the “present” New Venice is supposed to be. I don’t remember if the altered timelines were ever explained properly in Aurororama. It doesn’t make a lot of difference to the story of Luminous Chaos, though.

The characters are mostly familiar and once again Brentford and Gabriel have some very entertaining banter, both with each other and with almost everyone else they encounter. Each of the seven New Venetians have their separate stories in Paris, so we are treated to many points of view to make up the whole picture. I’m told that the released versions of this book have sketches throughout the story that my e-ARC didn’t have – the illustrations in Aurororama added an extra dimension to the story so I’m sure those in Luminous Chaos will do the same!

As well as the beautiful and witty writing, there are plenty of technical discussions on spirituality and timey-whimey existentialism so if you’re looking for a light read, you might like to try something else.

For an amazingly beautiful trip to a wintry Paris with a steampunk twist, I’d highly recommend Luminous Chaos, but read Aurororama first or you may end up as lost as an arctic explorer.

This review was originally posted on Tea in the Treetops blog in January 2014.

[Mahendra Singh]

Valtat's latest installment in his New Venice trilogy … very trippy, very psychedelic. Beautifully designed book … and hey, kids, can you spot the semiotic lingoids in the illustrations? And the giant eyeball in the snow? And the tapeworm in the ice-wracked ship? If you can, HAPPY TRAILS!

[Lille · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should say, I haven't read the first book in the series and I don't think you need to necessarily. Of course there are a few details that I could tell I was missing but they didn't keep me from enjoying this book.

The beauty of this story came from the interesting writing style, the author used a lot of fantastic details and surprising word choices. I must add that it sometimes made the book hard to understand and slow to read but it was also fascinating and just made me happy.

There are a lot of people and I don't have the best memory, so I made a little bookmark where I noted down the persons and I still got confused sometimes. For me, the book would have profited from a little graphic of the characters and also it would have been so fun to have a map of New Venice and Paris. Also, the characters stay a little bit flat if you just read the second book since 500 pages isn't enough to give you a detailed pictures of the world, which the book does so nicely, and develop all the characters. Mostly this didn't bother me just at the end I would have like to have a better feel for the main character in particular as he was the one with the least characteristics.

I loved how the story developed,got more intricate and always stayed interesting. It was sometimes more violent than I expected but I felt that it fit that world. Something I really didn't understand and gave up on was the occult/science-y/magic system, maybe here I was missing the first book, so I just let the story take me for a ride and didn't try to analyse it too much. Also, what annoyed me in the end that the story came too full circle and suddenly everyone knew each other and was related and every arrow found it's mark, that was too much it wouldn't have needed to make sense of everything, for me it would have been more believable. Still, I really loved the world and the writing style and I would recommend this book.

[Trace Reddell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic novel. Valtat's narrative has grown by (temporal) leaps and bounds since "Aurorarama," which was more content with weird atmosphere creation and quasi-allegorical scene-setting. "Luminous Chaos" retained some of the best elements of that, but also told a cracking good story, full of mystery and suspense. The characters were still fairly wood-cut but, to my mind, entertaining, especially in the ensemble setting that this novel brought to the fore. Since I'm a fan of French decadence literature (and of several of the poets and artists who show up in this text) and of both imaginary and real weird technologies, this book was really appealing to me. The finale was brutal, disgusting, and left me in a bit of a state of despair, particularly so with Gabriel, but it was still the almost perfect close to this novel (I'm not sure what happened to the wizard/inventor Sson, for instance, in that teaser of a farewell), which is too decadent to even strive for perfection.

If you want a bit of atmospherics before this, by all means, read "Aurorarama." But if you don't mind some allusions to events, places, and characters that won't be fully explained in this book, I think "Luminous Chaos" will work well as a splendid read on its own terms.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Atmospheric, entertaining and not a little bonkers.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, my God. This book. The next book in the series after Aurororama, it is a little bit less bewildering than the first, but maybe only because now it starts to feel familiar?

Basically, Brentford & Gabriel have been out-maneuvered in their attempt to reform New Venice. They, and a team of "supporting experts" have been sent on a diplomatic mission to Paris in an extremely disreputable transport known as a psychomotive that seems likely to have been intended to kill them. But instead sends them back in time to witness and perhaps participate in the birth of the idea of the city that will be New Venice.

Oh, there is a lot of mystery and snake oil! Occult figures, "medical" devices that affect the mind with magnets and electricity. Wax museums, poetry readings, and "therapeutic" drinking of animal blood. Wise-cracking child prostitutes and a severed head kept alive by complicated machinery.

As usual, I feel like I'm missing every other reference, especially to turn of the century French poets and philosophers. Female characters have more autonomy here, but they still sometimes feel like what a man's "sexy" idea of what a strong woman should be. But some neat ideas on do you really die if a version of you is still alive in another timeline? Is it better to remember or be wiped clean? And the one-step forward, one-step back nature of revolutions.

Another book coming, I think? Still definitely on board until the end.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine a city at the far north of the world, close to the Arctic Circle. This city was built with magic and money and industry and strange science. The city is peopled with Inuit and adventurers and wizards. The city is frozen in time, adrift from the rest of the world. Jean-Christophe Valtat introduced readers to New Venice in Aurororama and continues the unlikely adventures of its inhabitants in Luminous Chaos.

Read the rest of my review on A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.

[Natalie Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this epic tale of a band of questionable characters from the Vernesque city of New Venice who go on a mission in a vehicle propelled by thought and end up in a parallel universe and back in time as well. The characters are richly drawn and easy to empathize with as they avoid being two-dimensional what with their various quirks and flaws. The trouble they get into in Paris is nothing short of diabolical and the solution to their problem of getting back seems more difficult to untwist than a Gordian Knot . . . and what a knot it was! Not for the faint of heart, but for the lovers of all things fantastic and fed by the fires of flaming imaginations!

[Edward Hoover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book - engrossing story, engaging and multi-genre (mystery, adventure, some romance and intrigue, a dash of steampunk thrown in). Valtat has some great turns of phrase and a nice way of making you infer things by context. He also weaves in a few historical incidents (e.g., the Gare de Montparnasse train derailment of 1895) seamlessly - he doesn't beat you over the head with them, instead leading you to an "ahhhhhh, that's it" kind of moment. I liked and was more engaged in this one than its predecessor.

[World Literature Today]

"Luminous Chaos is an enchanting twist on the steampunk novel and serves as a powerful sequel (and, in many ways, prequel) to Jean-Christophe Valtat’s earlier success, Aurorama.... It is over five hundred pages long, but it is a rapid-paced page-turner that ends far too soon." - Haley Mowdy, University of Oklahoma

This book was reviewed in the March 2014 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/PB6fJH

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Valtat has some glowing reviews but this got a big "meh"from me. Political intrigue in the steampunk polar city of New Venice leads to seven inconvenient figures getting sent on a mission to Paris, which due to a psychic disruption in their teleporter turns into a time trip to belle epoque Paris (or a steampunk version of it). Certainly different from the usual steampunk, but not in a good way—slow, without any compensation in writing style or character depth.

[Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book was an eagerly anticipated release which did not disappoint. A fun and simple time travel premise with entertaining characters. While it didn't quite fully match the enjoyment of the first book and maybe got a little too silly towards the end for my liking, it left me excited to see what comes next.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun historical SF/fantasy novel set in a richly-imagined "Belle Epoque-punk" Paris. A little disorienting if you haven't read the first book in the series (as I haven't) due to the frequent references back to characters, places, events, and concepts therein. But a very imaginative historical SF take on an era that blends scientific discovery with political intrigue, spiritualism, and adventure.

[Quenby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of time and place, creation of a 'better' world and how things might go wrong. I loved the earnest, vivid characters and the crazy challenges they faced. Romantic in the best sense. 19th Paris and a fantastical arctic city, time travel and adventure. What could be better?

[Joe Dougherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been meaning to write about this wonderful story and how much I've enjoyed this author's style of creativity. It reminds me of the golden apple by Robert Anton Wilson with its drug induced imagery yes I (Highly) enjoyed that trilogy.

[Tobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved , better than 1st book, Arorarama !!!!!!!

[Brannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the novel; it's quite imaginative, transporting the reader effectively from the fantastical New Venice into an alternate Parisian world of strange doings indeed. Masterfully written.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it. but not sure I got all of it!

[Jurate Stanaityte · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a slow read this was. And not as brilliant as "Aurorarama".

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review of the first installment in the series - Aurorarama. This second book I read even more quickly. It totally satisfies.