The Knife and the Serpent

As a child you read books and imagine that you may be that child who is whisked away on an adventure. Perhaps you will be the chosen one to be taken through a magical wardrobe or told you are a wizard. By the time you are studying for a PhD such flippancy is no longer part of your character, so how would you react if your girlfriend turned out to be a multidimensional traveler? A mixture of being flabbergasted and getting on with what life throws at you. This is at least how Glenn tackles this very issue in Tim Pratt’s new novel, The Knife and the Serpent. 

Glenn has an ordinary life and things are looking up as he is deeply in love with his new partner Vivy. Almost a year has passed, and they share everything, almost becoming the same person, but Vivy is keeping a secret. Several secrets. When Glenn is transported across the multiverse, he finds himself standing next to Vivy, not at her cousins as she said, but off fighting space fascists. Will Glenn be able to trust Vivy ever again? Things get even more complicated when his ex-Tamsin turns up. Are any of his lovers from his Earth? 

Having read Pratt’s earlier Of Sleep series, I was happy to see that Knife was an adjacent title taking some of the same ideas but telling a new tale with different characters. Whist Of Sleep was a book that spanned countless other Earths, Knife is a more focused character-based story that settles on only a few. Glenn lives on our Earth but imagine that we are one side of a piece of paper. On the other side is another Earth, the one where Tamsin is from. The two Earths are close in terms of multiverses, close enough that someone could build a door between them. 

The story is told from the perspectives of Glenn and Tamsin. For large parts of the book, they are separate. Glenn is dealing with the information that he fell in love with a starship trooper. Tamsin finds herself in deeper waters. A murdered grandmother leads her to discovering she is part of a lost and powerful dynasty. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Tamsin goes out to fight for her family’s legacy. 

I would place Knife in the pulp science fiction bracket as it has a light feel and throws ideas at you. There are plenty of psychopaths in the book, but their murders are committed in an amusing manner. The slight surreal nature of the book comes from how Glenn and Tamsin react to the concept of multiple universes. Rather than finding a dark room to curl up and cry in, they both are blase about it all. Glenn is just a nice guy trying to piece together his relationship, whilst Tamsin comes across as psychopathic herself. 

There are a lot of fun ideas and places in this book and exploring them is enjoyable, but it is the relationships that make the book. The core relationship is between Glenn and Vivy, and later Tamsin. We learn a lot about it. Perhaps too much. I am no prude; I am more disinterested in the sex lives of most characters if anything. At least in this case, the sex life of Glenn and Vivy informs their relationship in part, but I think their japes were done more for light relief and not a deep understanding of their connection. The throwaway remarks are witty, but a little juvenile. 

With a lightness of touch and slightly flippant style, Knife borders on a comedy science fiction novel, but it is no Red Dwarf. The book is pure pulp science fiction, and this alone makes it entertaining, going on an adventure across multiple universes with irreverent characters is just fun. This is a sci fi book for a fan of the genre looking for something a little lighter to read.