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Gwyneth Jones
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Bold As Love (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Paperback – 12 Nov. 2020

by Gwyneth Jones (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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Three extraordinary people in some most extraordinary times:

It's Dissolution Summer and as the United Kingdom prepares to break up into separate nations, the Counterculturals have gathered for a festival where everything's allowed. Among them is a talented little brat called Fiorinda, rock and roll princess by birth, searching for her father, the legendary Rufus O'Niall.
Instead, she finds Ax Preston, the softly spoken guitarman with bizarre delusions about saving the country from the dark ages. Together with Sage Pender, techno-wizard king of the lads, they join the pop-icon team that's supposed to make the government look cool.

Rock Legends. True Romance. A stunning fantasy about England.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    384 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Gateway
  4. Publication date
    12 Nov. 2020
  5. Dimensions
    13.02 x 2.22 x 19.69 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1473230195
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1473230194
  8. See all details
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Product description

Book Description

A stunning fantasy of an England that may yet be and a Once and Future King.

About the Author

Gwyneth Jones lives in Brighton with her husband and son. She won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for BOLD AS LOVE; CASTLES MADE OF SAND was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award. She is the previous winner of the James Tiptree Memorial Award and two World Fantasy Awards; four of her previous books have been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.She has also won the Pilgrim Award, for lifetime achievement in SF scholarship; the BSFA Short Fiction Award, for 'La Cenerentola'; and, as Ann Halam, the Children of the Night Award from the Dracula Society, for The Fear Man.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gateway (12 Nov. 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1473230195
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1473230194
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.02 x 2.22 x 19.69 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

About the author

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Gwyneth Jones

Gwyneth Jones
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Gwyneth Jones grew up in Manchester UK and lives in Sussex. Among other honours she's won the James Tiptree award, two World Fantasy awards, the Children of the Night award, the Philip K Dick award, the BSFA award, the Pilgrim award for Science Fiction criticism, and the Arthur C Clarke award; for Bold As Love, first episode of a techno-green Utopian "near future fantasy" series. She's a volunteer for Amnesty International, a member of the Soil Association, keeps a blog and lives in Brighton. Hobbies include playing fantasy games and staring out of the window.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

sfbuff
5.0 out of 5 stars Like all of the 'Bold as Love' sequence
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2014
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Like all of the 'Bold as Love' sequence: an impressively well written novel which encompasses and synthesises our underlying current societial issues in the UK should society as we know it fall apart while also acknowledging the implications of globalisation, clmate change and post peak oil transition, cultural power shifts and possible technological developments. All of which might be boring except there are characters you can care about, the return of magic and the attempt to protect the populaton from it, a compelling narrative and a gritty realism you can cut your teeth on. This is a believable world and possibly the best description of how an alternative society in Britain may come about, complete with a clear eyed vison of the down side and what it may involve for the excluded of the new order.
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Eileen Shaw
3.0 out of 5 stars "Jesus, Lenin and Trotsky," he muttered, "Is this England?"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2012
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This is England, but not as we know it. The Counter-Cultural forces are at work and have de-stabalised the political system to the point where the government have formed a coalition with these rock stars and guitar heroes who have converged in all the usual places (Glastonbury, Reading, etc.) in order to have a good time, smoke a lot of weed and generally engage the suits in mind-enhancing dialogues. In this parallel world what solves people's dissatisfactions appears to be lots of free concerts by big name rock stars. The middle-classes are, presumably, just getting on with things in their own knitted cardigan sort of way, busy eradicating aphids in the garden and running their small businesses, because, after all, the people running the country are their children. So that's all right then.

This is so nearly wonderful that you read it hoping it can do the magic and make you believe in a world with a rock group called Pigsty and the Organs living in Buckingham Palace. But no, sadly, it doesn't quite come off. There is a lot of talking, a lot of action, not to mention the defeat of the Islamist Republic of Yorkshire, in a North Yorks Moors battle. One wishes to believe that the people of England would, for just a short period of time anyway, get off their backsides and believe in something enough to fight for it. It's hard to believe - even squeezing one's feet into Dorothy's red shoes wouldn't do it.

There are only three characters of any note in this - Ax Preston, "soft-spoken guitar man", Sage Pender, "techno-wizard king of the lads," and Firoinda, "talented rock and roll princess by birth, searching for her father, the legendary Rufus O'Niall." There is no attempt to characterise the grey suits of the government, and any opposition to the Counter-Culture is null and void as a result. But it very soon turns into a kind of soap opera, with Pigsty convicted of paedophilia and the power of rock music reigning supreme. Fiorinda has a prolonged psychotic episode caused by a bouquet of roses that has been dusted with psychotropic powders; then she gets to choose which of the two available men she wants to be with - and she chooses both. Dream on.
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R. Palmer
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent near future novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 July 2010
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Bold as Love is a sort of SF/Fantasy vision of a near future England.

It's set in a time where the counter-cultural movement has gained a lot of ground (this is mostly alluded to) whilst the United Kingdom is dissolved. As the title "Bold As Love" implies, this novel is indebted to rock music. The government of the new England decides that it needs to cosy up to the more powerful counter-cultural movement; there seem to be a number of reasons for this. Again, these are quite often, rather than explicitly told alluded to.

The novel has a large number of themes and ideas in it; it is also a good literary piece of SF.

It is clearly set in a time where there has been a breakdown (but in absolutely no way complete; people still live their lives in a way that we'd recognise) due to environmental crisis - predominantly energy crisis, I think. Like I say, though, this is never, explicitly, told. This leads to the growing importance of the environmental and counter-cultural movements, which leads to rock stars being invited to government. These make up most of the main characters in the novel.

There are many things that I liked about Jones' novel. Firstly, it's character driven, and these characters are well drawn. Though there are some people that are worse than others, even the "good" characters are far from perfect, they have problems and make choices that they don't agree with because they are politically the correct thing to do.

The mainstreaming of the environmental movement in the novel is handled well, too. It's portrayed as being multi-layed with people who are interested in treating the surroundings better, through to some people who hold questionable views on science or unfortunate views on Englishness.

The referencing of made up rock stars could be lame...but actually, I think it works well. Mostly the dynamics of the rock world are actually handled in a believable way.

It also covers some difficult issues around physical, mental and sexual abuse in an unflinching way. These bits are pretty grim reading, but worthy enough.

There are a couple of things that let the novel down. These, though, are actually more to do with when the novel was originally published. The first is the depiction of the web. Some of it really feels like a depiction of what the web was like in 2001, and an extrapolation of that. Sometimes this feels intrusive, but I don't think, in all fairness, that's the author's fault.

The other is that, though it covers the idea of there being a separatist movement amongst radicalised muslims in the north of England, it does seem to have been written pre-Sep 11th (which it must've been, given it was published in 2001).

These faults are minor, though. If you're looking for good, character-driven, literary SF which portrays an interesting fantastical view of near-future England, this is a good place to go.
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charlie james
1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 December 2018
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Just, awful. Michael moorcocks worst excesses filtered through a late middle aged melody maker journalist with depression
5 people found this helpful
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Alex
5.0 out of 5 stars Bold as Love
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 May 2023
Thoroughly good novel, which I enjoyed reading.
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T
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 September 2011
A tour de force of faith, politics, technology, magic, hummanity and england as it's never before been seen. Highly recommend this book, and the rest of the series.
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Top reviews from other countries

David Nasty
4.0 out of 5 stars Rocking sci-fi English style.
Reviewed in the United States on 25 November 2011
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Book was old school rock sci-fi, a neglected subgenre but a fast read and a satisfying one. Overall worth the time.
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