Across the Dark Metropolis

Across the Dark Metropolis is the third and final book in the Borribles trilogy by Michael de Larrabeiti. If you've been following this blog at all, you might be familiar with my less than stellar reaction to this series. The first book was fairly clumsy and it's 'cult' status seemed fairly unwarranted. The second book picked up the game a bit and seemed to display a wiser sense of plot construction and grasp of language. So what's the verdict after reading the third book? Well, I wasn't impressed... it was surpremely average.

We pick up our story almost immediately after the last Borrible adventure. Most of the Borribles are lying low in Battersea, waiting for the heat of the SBG (Special Borrible Group - a police division specially created to track down and capture Borribles) to wear off. When it seems to be safe, they decide to travel back across London to distant Neasden, where their beloved horse - Sam - can be put to pasture and live without any further worries. Meanwhile, the SBG are being reprimanded by the higher echelons of administration for letting the Borribles get away, and are being encouraged to use more underhanded means in catching the wayward pointy-eared ones.

What ensues is a long and eventful journey across a Borrible's-eye-view landscape of London. The sewers and junkyards and back alleys are their terrain, and they come across various memorable and crude figures in their travels... including hideous 'meffos', other tribes of Borribles, and a disgusting and decrepit old woman named 'The Queen Mother'.

But at every corner, it also seems the SBG are waiting for them. Diabolically, the police have enlisted the help of disguised dwarfs to infiltrate the Borribles and help engineer their capture. Traps are laid, and virtually no stranger can be trusted, and things start to become very desperate for the Borribles as it soon becomes apparent they may never have freedom again.

The author continues his exploration of what it is to be 'Borrible'... freedom, lack of interest in monetary values, a healthy disdain for authority and order, and refraining from violence amongst their central tenets. All admirable themes. Unfortunately, this exploration remains as stunted and unfinished as it has been in the previous novels, and sometimes the logic of de Larrabeiti's world is far too undeveloped and full of holes. His action sequences are as impressive as always, and the last few set pieces involving a slaughterhouse-stampede and a battle in a junkyard are amongst the most well-executed in the trilogy. Unfortunately these remain sone of the few memorable things about these books.

The second book, The Borribles Go for Broke, succeeded in it's improved writing. Now I'm not sure if I imagined this or not as this third book seemed fairly poor at times. Sometimes the author would come out with a surprisingly effective piece of descriptive writing, and the dialogue wasn't as clumsy as it has been in the other books, but at other times he wrote some atrociously bad pieces of prose, such as "Napoleon smiled like concrete" or "He could feel his mind dancing. Like an electronic chip the size of a hillside".

Also, one particular thing I felt rather miffed about was the author's reluctance to show rather than tell. Constantly we're told how each Borrible has a story attached to their name, and they're forever telling these stories to one another, but not once are we (the reader) ever told what any of these stories are. Hence we get nonsensical name after name, 'Twilight' (a Bangladeshi character - don't tell me he's called Twilight just because he's black?), 'Norrarf', 'Swish' and 'Treld'. What does 'Treld' even mean? What interesting story or adventure could possibly be connected to a name like that? It's patently obvious the author doesn't know either, because we never get to hear the origins of these names, despite being told that they all have fascinating stories behind them.

Anyway... while a lot of it was childish and awkward, I don't regret reading this trilogy completely. It passed the time fair enough and it wasn't boring, it was just poorly executed and could've been so much better. The second book was easily the best, which doesn't bode well for any trilogy. Meh.