Review: A mini-masterpiece of Gothic humour, morbid, macabre and sardonically funny.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 3, 2013
Ruin Nation is a dystopian novel set in an isolated future England, with the ageing King William on the throne. Law and order has broken down. Death might come from a wild leopard or an anarachist in a hot air balloon. The ruler Malmot is a murderous tyrant, and democracy is long dead.The narrator Hugo Jupiter has had a hard life, with his mother exploding in front of him, and his father killed in a mental hospital. Having survived a war, he's now forced to work as a puppet-maker, stitching up the bodies of dead politicans to appease the masses. All the while he is quietly plotting his own ascent to power.The plot moves in a dash through comically grotesque set-pieces. There's little human goodness or hope here; but there's a lot of sardonic humour. Almost every character is vile or broken. Perhaps this is part of Hugo Jupiter's madness. He hates God; yet as the book's narrator he has become Godlike. The world of Ruin Nation is entirely as he describes it.Dan Carver's prose is tightly written and constantly inventive. His sentences often have a musical quality. I found myself reading great passages of Ruin Nation out loud.  I particularly liked the character descriptions, for example:"The charming receptionist with the dead seagull eyes and too much makeup introduces them to - or rather points at - Doctor Holubec, a swarthy Eastern European with a handshake of respectful pressure. But his courteous smile hangs beneath a blank, blue gaze. It's a look that speaks of war crimes and a first family lost to a mass grave. Whatever he loved is long gone. He prefers scientific experiments to people now. They only die within set parameters."Ruin Nation is a mini-masterpiece of Gothic humour. It's macabre and sardonically funny. Carver is a better writer than perhaps he realizes. I look forward to reading more from him.