I’ve long been a fan of the work of Christopher Priest, whose rather unique style of writing sits perfectly placed among the genres of weird and science fiction, magic realism and slipstream, blurring the lines and adhering to few of the tropes usually associated with these genres. Priest’s plots are always grounded in reality, with his subtle subversion of recognisable life creating an unsettling tone.

The Gradual features the central character Alesandro Sussken, classical composer, who lives in a fascist state on an island called Glaund, just one close to an area known as The Dream Archipelago. It is time of war, and the state-controlled media and transportation network emphasise the stifled constraints under which they live. When Sandro is sent on a cultural tour, he also embarks on a journey of mystery and discovery as he finds his life affected by the mysterious powers of the islands.

Priest loves messing with the reliability of perception, memory and identity, and temporal lapses often feature in his fiction. This novel has a haunting beauty to it, melancholy and unsettling, as Sussken journeys across the islands in a dreamlike-fugue. The use of first-person viewpoint poses questions about the reliability of the narrator, and yet none of this really matters, as the travelogue-style plot at least offers a framework around which the weirdness hangs. I’m not fully sure I understood all of its intricacies and layers, but the atmosphere and cumulative effect of the dream-logic prose left me thinking of the novel weeks after I’d finished reading it. A really enjoyable novel which will no doubt appeal to those who prefer their science fiction more subtle than space opera.