Force Majeure The Faction Paradox novel that was but wasn't, an analysis
Force Majeure an analysis-'partial review' through a Faction Paradox lens
“Force Majeure” -- a greater force or a superior force, a fitting name for a book in which all participants to some degree or another are under the power or sway of a greater force they cannot fully comprehend.
For those that don't know, Daniel O'Mahony’s Force Majeure was at one point intended to be a book in the Faction Paradox series. Little else seems to exist online other than this titbit about the book, but given it was published by Tellos Publishing in one of the lulls when Faction Paradox was without a publisher, perhaps this is one of the major reasons why it was not.
Regardless, it remains in tone, themes and concepts very much a Faction Paradox book in all but name, just one in which the titular skull masked group, the Great Houses and Enemy do not appear in name, which is pretty much the case for a number of Faction Paradox books. This one just doesn’t name drop.
While I will try and minimize spoilers to a point, it would be impossible to effectively do this analysis without involving them.
I will also mention in warning for anyone who wishes to read this book, that while I will be not bringing it up (as it is largely irrelevant to themes and plot I'm covering), sex, prostitution (though not sex scenes or graphic descriptions) and related elements do feature in the book -in some parts more heavily than others- so be aware of that fact before opening its cover.
This analysis is not exhaustive, and as I am yet to properly read through the author’s published Faction Paradox novel Newton’s Sleep, I'm sure there are things I will have missed related to it or not in my readthrough, and I welcome the input of others. So let’s begin.
First of all, this book’s cover, and to a much lesser extent its blurb, do this book a big disservice, the cover in particular (a cgi dragon in front of a modern city) does not in any way represent the book’s content (though in some more abstract ways you could say it represents some of its themes).
The Dragons of the book are (other than perhaps something at the end I will not spoil) more metaphorical, a name most commonly given to the original founders of the city or at least its precursor The Old Free House (The Dragons house) who have erased themselves from history. More on them and that later scattered throughout.
There are points in the book where dreams perception and a dreamlike logic cause the narrative or perspective to skip around backwards or forwards in time, and while at times it does lead to events being more confusing to follow than might be necessary, it does very much lend itself well to the book’s themes and for the most part holds together well, it just means that you need to pay attention and try and put the pieces together as you go (and possibly on the odd occasion look back a page).
Candida
Its name ‘means Dazzling white, but is also the name of a fungal infection which can live inside people ‘potentially’ without causing them problems’. Given the city’s effect on people, comparing it to an infection in some ways is perhaps not without merit.
Oh where to begin? With the City of Candida details are vague, while precise, in flux and never still, while also ancient and unchanging.
Where time can flow differently, a place which people can enter by choice (though not without difficulty) and others all over the world will suddenly wake up within unwillingly. It is not a part of the world, some wonder or fear that one day it will cover the whole world and there will be no people left outside of it. It pulls in the flotsam and jetsam of the world, both people and things.
It gets its hooks into people eventually (at least without side interference) and when it gets into them enough that they don’t want to leave, don’t want it to change, “forget who” they've “left behind” or at least have no wish to go back to them. Is this a bad thing? Is it a good thing? That is very much left unclear.
To talk about the City means talking about a lot of other things. Though perhaps first and foremost for its current form we need to explain Doctor Arkadin, a name which apparently means Problem Solver, Healer, Comfortable, Practicality, Realism. Which feels like a fitting intentional choice given what little there is about him.
Something existed here before him at the very least almost certainly the Old Free House, (the head of the house claims that the house was there even before humans). Almost no record of Doctor Arkadin's over-200-year old expedition exist (in or out of the city) It’s almost like he never existed, but he did. He ‘died’ long ago but he’s still alive in some ways.
He established the city and attempted to lay claim to it, to open up to the outside world to bring it under his control, his will, he failed. He tried to sit on the figurative (at least I‘m pretty sure its just figurative) Dragon's Throne (takeing the place and power of the its erased masters) and tried to bend the city to his will.The guards he established still exist (though weaponless and relatively powerless) and his influence can still be felt throughout. But despite not leading the city, more power within it still falls to the Old Free House which came before Doctor Arkadin, and its chatelaine, Flower-of-the-Lady (or The-Lady) is not its owner or master, more its “House Keeper” .
According to one of the only records from the expedition he fell into “madness and delusion” (which may just have been the City’s influence on him) and in the end “he killed himself”. What form that death took though, is unclear, as previously stated he almost seems like he was erased from history. And while he is gone his influence and presence remains.
He constructed a giant brass head three times the size of a human one “with no sign of lines or joins” on its surface. It could not speak, it could not move but “It observes. It orders. It computes. I conceived it after the Oracle of Delphi”. It would seem that it was a machine to try and predict or control the future. Whatever its function, when someone else tried to take control of Candida, when the dust settled the head was found “smashed open like an egg” revealing the “ruined clockwork of its brain”. With it destroyed, the influence and reign of Doctor Arkadin was over. “The Dragon’s throne” was now vacant, and his name would now be said without the title of Doctor.
It seems that, having failed to take the vacant Dragon's Throne for himself, Doctor Arkadin installed the giant head machine on the throne, from which its basic machinery allowed it to use a fraction of the Dragon's power and influence over the city, as well as also having the side effect of preventing anyone else from taking the throne while it still functioned.
A part of the city’s unusual connection to time seems to affect the dreams of its inhabitants, or at the very least the Appeared who enter it. Dreams are not just dreams in the city. Each Appeared only get three and then no more, and the events of these dreams, whether in the past, present, or future, have/will come true (though elements and details of the dream may not be fully literal in nature given the nature of dreams).
Kay (the main point of view character) during the course of the novel would seem to have more than three dreams, though technically speaking the two additional ones may be something different. One is a traumatic memory of her past which is altered, an additional figure being added to it as history changes as if they had always been there. The other is the thoughts of someone else who is in the room while she sleeps and then a memory of theirs. So given that one is a memory being changed by alterations to history related to the city, and the other is a telepathic connection, neither of them really count as one of the three dreams.
Over time the unfamiliar language spoken in the city (and the mix of other languages) become understood by the former Appeared who enter. Without them trying to learn them.
The giant “off-white edifice of The Old Free House” at the highest point of the mountain built city
The city and the Old Free House’s layout seem to shift and change over time and are impossible to map out into 2D. While they are confusing to outsiders (the Appeared), once the city has got into them, and they are part of it they can navigate them with ease. When under siege the chatelaine Flower-of-the-Lady was able to activate functions to reconfigure its rooms and passages, trapping and containing its invaders. During the course of the siege no one who enters dies.
In hindsight many of these points lead me to think that the House may be a damaged and/or modified time ship, or perhaps something more similar to the living Houses of the Homeworld.
It is called “Old Free House” -- perhaps it broke away from the Homeworld wishing for some form of Freedom.
If it is a House of the Homeworld variety (or a similar Enemy form of entity), following a similar sort of set up, the Flower-of-the-Lady is acting, as the book outright says, as the “House Keeper” and someone sitting on “The Dragons throne” would be something akin to the role of the Kithriarch (perhaps a greater level of power).
Following this line of thought of the Old Free House being a House Timeship or some combination thereof, it is growing very, very slowly larger over time, and slowly but surely (and on occasion quickly in places) expanding, reconfiguring and growing the city which rests below it.
See Book of War for 91-Form Timeships
Absorbing it (and perhaps even its people (as we know they can do that) into itself converting them into the living equations of block transfer computations)
See (Lawrence Miles short story) Toy Story
Its telepathic circuits reaching out into their minds allowing them over time to understand the languages spoken, influencing their dreams as a side effect of this connection when it alters the past or future of their personal timeline (perhaps to feed off the potential energy, perhaps for some other reason)
The Old Free House and the city (for by the time the book takes place they are in many ways one and the same) exists almost in a separate realm of its own, at any rate it is deliberately stated to be very much not a part of the world.
Characters focusing primarily on events, connections and themes
Azure
meaning bright blue in colour like a cloudless sky. She is a Messanger, a Voladora to-be , the “insect girl”, later she becomes “the bird girl” .She becomes a Voladora meaning flying.
At first she is a messenger who travels by bike and delivers messages to and from the Old Free House and its former inhabitants/members.
Her role stays the same but becomes faster, farther reaching and more well regarded, after she is ready to undergo a ritual (on which Kay accompanies her in order to watch and guard her for the duration) she “becomes a bird”.
They are taken through tunnels to a mountain slope where there is no sign of the city or its light, where Azure is ritualistically chained, blindfolded and her whole body painted with images.
Before this they had to consume a grey looking and grey tasting substance (which it is made clear is not a drug) which temporarily untethered them from time so that the Dragon’s (the erased founders) can “consume” Azure and allow her to become a Bird. Kay sees some of what occurs but is pulled into visions of her past for most of the experience. -In hindsight I am 99% sure the Grey tasting substance is intended to be Praxis.
Once Azure “has become a bird”, when she rides her bike and gets up to enough speed she and everything on her and the bike fully become a bird and fly. The first time Kay’s mind blanks out the experience, the second she remembers becoming one with Azure and the experience of flight in full.
Xan
An interesting figure who takes some time before he materializes in the story
He is not from Candida and the “connotations”’ of the given term of Appeared bestowed upon those who enter it from the “real” world grate against him.
Upon being first presented he appears like he could be a certain familiar figure.
A 'slim' man In a 'cream linen suit' and hat wearing a 'tie, with' 'sharp' features a 'clean of complexion' and “maybe Scottish if his voice was a guide. He seemed unintimidated by her gaze” and a strange sort of pull which draws people into him, and is a charismatic personality.
But once he left trying to remember anything but fragments of the details of his face, of his appearance, is a fruitless exercise, a feature somewhat shared by the Doctor . (This part while fitting for some descriptions of the Doctor particularly more Nyarlathotep ones, is just the start of what makes him over the course of the story stray away from being the Doctor in any form)
He would seem at first to be the VNA era Seventh Doctor in many ways (and I will admit I did end up reading his lines in my head in Sylvester McCoy's voice). I do wonder if this character first began as something similar to the character implied in a post VNA Ace in Daniel O'Mahony’s Newtons Sleep, and became something else over revisions and as the story chose a different route, or if his first appearance was always intended to be a red herring to throw off readers.
In later parts his appearance will ‘change’ or more accurately the descriptions of him will change, as if history is changing and he was always like this. His suit will be grey and more ragged, his demeanor will be less affable (in a way which doesn't seem like its solely linked to events occurring), and he will be described as more as someone who has harnessed what little remains of a lingering power, a prince of his own little domain, who has had sex with all who work under him. Except of course for Kay, Kay is a special case.
There are complexities with Xan’s nature and elements of the truth about it which are left unclear, in part due to all interactions with him being from Kay’s perspective, and his denial of her theory for what he is (which does not mean she was necessarily wrong, just that he refuses to accept the truth she offers.)
The traumatic memory of her past that she keeps reliving has a new figure in it since she came to Candida, a young boy who carries himself in the same manner as him who flees from her presence. Xan claims not to remember this, though Kay points out that she didn’t remember this either before she came to Candida and that her memory of this event in her past changed.
It takes a fair amount of time after entering Candida before he comes to her (almost as if at first he did not tangibly exist there) and once Xan does, Kay finds that he has taken control of, and utterly reshaped the project which was the reason she was sent to Candida in the first place. How Xan is, his goals, his manner, etc. was everything Kay felt she wanted to achieve when she came to Candida. Kay becomes convinced that Xan is part of her, her wants and dreams brought to life and given form by Candida. He claims that this is wrong, that it’s just the city getting to her, getting inside her head, and over time Kay find he has changed or she has changed. He has gone beyond and in directions she feels she never would have considered to achieve his goal, and she wonders, if one of them dies, what happens to the other.. In the end Kay feels that Xan is not her, at least not anymore.
As stated, it is left unclear whether Kay was correct with her theory, but it does seem there was at least some truth to it, some form of connection or link established.
His appearance does change one last time. When we see him last, Kay sees him in shining armor covered in jagged spikes, but later when she looks again she just sees him in a much more battered form of his old clothes, leading her to question herself on how she could have been so mistaken.
Given everything that has occurred, either for a moment her perception was shifted and revealed something of the truth, or time shifted while she wasn't looking and her memory changed with it. The incongruous spiked armour does make me wonder if Xan was intended to be from one of the War time Powers, or at least not native to the era, but there’s enough uncertainty about Xan origins, not withstanding he is a threat, though not to Kay.
Kay
Meaning Pure. I won’t say much. Events focus around her in this story and she stands out in a way which is never fully pinned down, as the one who could change Candida.
Estaban Meaning crown, garland. Also later Millo Meaning Fullness,. Solid foundation, Supporting structure
Elements of both fit. He is one of the guards who sees Doctor Arkadin and is tasked by him, and in the end helps secure the city. However, he saw Doctor Arkadin when he was just a boy despite that being over 200 years ago. When questioned on that he just responds that he could be older than he looks; he describes the point in his life the book is set as his “second childhood.”
His interaction with Doctor Arkadin shown in the novel is through a dreamlike lens, through Kay’s mind linked in her sleep to Estaban, so it’s unclear if this is a dream of a memory of the interaction he remembers happening as a boy. Or a new second interaction which happened both at this very moment and retroactively at the same time or two days after Kay’s arrival. The text seems to imply the latter. Regardless, he is unable to recall Doctor Arkadin’s appearance in a similar way to Kay’s experiences with Xan, which has some interesting implications.
When Estaban calls him "Sir" he responds with “if you must address me then call me Doctor” (pretty sure this is not implying that he was an incarnation of the Doctor, but who knows. O'Mahony has come up with new incarnations of the Doctor before, who have appeared only in a background role so I wouldn't put it past him)
Random minor asides
In a parallel of sorts to an a Adventuress of Henrietta Street we again have a brothel in a position of power but not in charge, some of the women of which perform rituals and get referred to in a few cases as witches.
Also remember witch blood = a time sensitive. The appearances of the word “witch” could be well be remnants of such elements as the few uses of the word feel slightly out of place with the rest of the novel. But that’s just idle speculation on a very minor thing.
Of the three dreams which are true that Azura has, the last feels somewhat out of place, the other two are of things yet to happen at the time she has them. While the third is of something which happened years before Azure came to the City. “I dreamed there was a body in the library, a man with angel wings instead of arms, and really old, really wrinkly skin, and eyes like he’d died of shock.” With enough leeway for dream logic you could relate it more to her, but it seems pretty clear that is not the intention. It feel like a nod to Newtons Sleep a book still yet to be released when Force Majeure was published (so even without the dream elements interfering I’m unsure how closely it will line up with anything in that novel) but it is a link.
While Azure is told that the angel wing part just meant messenger, given other stuff in this novel I suppose the reality could well have been much more literal.
Godma January or the Godma
Godma Meaning Chief, Educated, Good Understanding. January Named for the Roman god Janus, protector of gates and doorways.
A old women who never leaves the “fastness” (a secure place well protected by natural features) “of her cottage on the city limits”. Would seem from what little we see of her to fit with her names meaning, -according to Luis at least- she and Luis were former gun runners who came to the city when they got lost in the mountains.
Like Azure could during the ritual, she could tell, smell, feel that Kay was connected to Xan and shunned her as a result when first meeting her (though would later send her thanks and apologies in the end after Kay’s actions). She was linked to and a former member of The Dragons house. Whether where she lived was to serve the function of an active vigil on the city’s edge or a retirement of sorts was left unknown.
Luis
Meaning Famous Warrior
Large, wide, and with a beard like Father Christmas, despite having no interest before he came to the city, he became the House’s blind Librarian. He is pretty mysterious and despite claiming that his senses have not been heightened is more aware of what goes on around him than almost anyone else, and despite his blindness is able to read and identify books with no issue (though he claims that he has just memorized them long ago).
Like some others in the city (but more than anyone else it seems) he plays the highly complex board game “The War in Heaven” a ‘game’ which can last years and have no clear winner. While you can read the game as simply that, a game along with being a reference to The War its gets its title from, with its complexity and long play times being an analogy of sorts for The War itself.
Given the nature of dreams and other things in the city, and their effects on time and the world beyond, could it not be possible for battles waged on the board to mirror those also taking place out in the universe in some other time and place. Could it and the red and black pieces on its boards in fact be a microcosm of battles of The War itself, and if so could the effects of one change the outcome of the other? .
Perhaps, perhaps not, interesting thought though, and while not something touched on in the published version of the book it would certainly not feel out of place.
(I’m sure Auteur would certainly agree with such a reading)
While not my favorite book ever, I honestly enjoyed the ride overall and would say its well worth a read. It is very much a Faction Paradox or Worlds of the Spiral Politic book, regardless of the lack of branding on its cover. It is still available in print from its publisher Tellos and as an ebook on amazon UK and US
