Memoranda

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

“In waking from a dream, we obliterate worlds, and in calling up a memory, we return the dead to life again and again only to bring them face to face with annihilation as our attention shifts to something else.”

After the destruction of the Well-Built City (detailed in The Physiognomy), Physiognomist Cley has been living in a village in the wilderness, acting as herbalist and midwife. One day a mechanical bird, obviously built by evil Master Drachton Below, arrives in the village, explodes, and releases a gas that puts many of the villagers to sleep. Cley is the only person who???s equipped to find the antidote, so the villagers supply him with an old dog and an older horse and off he goes (looking a bit like Don Quixote) to the ruins of the Well-Built City.

The City is a real-life construction of Drachton Below???s Memory Palace, which is based on the mnemonic device called the Method of Loci. Everything in the city represents something he wants to remember, but the city has been destroyed, so Master Below has started a new Memory Palace in his mind. Unfortunately, Below is now unconscious because he???s been infected with his own poisonous gas, so Cley must enter Below???s mind and search there if he wants to find the antidote. When he gets in, he finds that he???s not alone in there and that there???s more going on in the Memory Palace than mere storage of Drachton Below???s memories.

In my review of The Physiognomy, I said it was ???sometimes brilliant and always bizarre??? and the same holds true for Memoranda. It???s got an original and fascinating setting, interesting symbolism, and thought-provoking ideas about memory, time, love, addiction, and evil.

The villain Drachton Below doesn???t quite live up to expectations here, since he???s asleep for most of the novel, but I liked the other characters better this time. Physiognomist Cley, who used to be an arrogant bigot, is now quite pleasant. The best characters, though, are Drachton Below???s adopted demon son who wears spectacles because he thinks it makes him look smart and has eschewed raw meat for salads, and a creature called The Delicate who is similar to J.K. Rowling???s Dementors, except that he???s exceedingly polite while he sucks out your soul. This was very funny, especially as narrated by Christian Rummel whose voices had me laughing frequently.

In general, the plot of Memoranda works better than The Physiognomy???s plot (which kind of fell apart at the end). Don???t look too close, though. I sincerely doubt that it all made sense, but a tight plot is hardly the point of these books. It???s supposed to be bizarre, a little bit silly and, perhaps more than anything, ironic.

If you do audiobooks, you definitely want to read Memoranda that way. Audible Frontiers??? production is flawless and Rummel???s narration is brilliant and adds quite a bit of humor.

A voyage to a mind that has built a palace of memory to generate thought without thinking. The ex-physiognomist Cley must return to the ruins of Well-Built City in order to find an antidote to a sleeping disease the evil Drachton Below has unleashed upon the citizens of peaceful Wenau. However, Below lays under the spell of the same disease, so Cley must find the antidote in his mind.

Truly a remarkable book. The mnemonic world introduced in the first book is fully explored here. Sort of a bit metaphysical and drug-induced, but with a clear direction.