Birds of Paradise by Oliver K Langmead
I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – 8/4
Price – £8.99 paperback £4.74 Kindle eBook
Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.
But now pieces of the Garden are turning up on the Earth. After centuries of loneliness, Adam, haunted by the golden time at the beginning of Creation, is determined to save the pieces of his long lost home. With the help of Eden's undying exiles, he must stop Eden becoming the plaything of mankind.
Adam journeys across America and the British Isles with Magpie, Owl, and other animals, gathering the scattered pieces of Paradise. As the country floods once more, Adam must risk it all to rescue his friends and his home because rebuilding the Garden might be the key to rebuilding his life.
Urban fantasy is often felt these days to be about the inserting of fantasy worlds into our own. What if a wizard was a detective; what if folk tales were living on our streets. Its often the insertion of the magical into our world. That is the hook. What I enjoyed the most about Oliver K Langmead’s weird mythical heist tale Birds of Paradise is this is more the tale of immortals who found we humans had taken over their world which has consequences for both parties.
Adam the First Man is currently working as a movie star’s bodyguard when an encounter with a very slimy screenwriter results in death and imprisonment. But being an immortal has some benefits and soon Adam is released by his friends and constant companies the animals of Eden that change form into human beings and have accompanied his long life. Adam is asked to find one named Magpie who seems to have had a secret project running this century and that eventually sets him into conflict with a group of billionaires all vying for the last remnants of Eden itself.
Birds of Paradise is not your usual tale of immortals and mortals vying for power. Langmead opts for in some ways a leisurely road movie into Adam’s life that covers several months as he moves from the US back to the UK. For a novel that focuses on heists the pace is measured and often dreamlike as we move from place to place seeking answers from eerie Scottish graveyards to a luscious garden in an abandoned football stadium. At the heart of this is Adam who for the First Man seems someone quite disconnected from the world far more interested in gardens and plants than the humans he disguises himself amongst. Adam seems quite a passive figure often being told what to do rather than leading the action, but his immortality gives him strength and vast powers of recovery that his other immortal friends often see as providing useful muscle on their own secret projects. Despite the focus on physical strength and violence we also get a sense of someone who has lived so many centuries that he feels very little in common with people which may explain why sometimes he is just happy to kill them if they prove troublesome – he finds diaries and knows all that are mentioned are long since dead. He is a puzzle - a man who can be suddenly capable of immense violence, kind to his friends and sees hope for humanity when he accompanies a pride festival yet pestered by a constant guilt. A lot of this tale is unpeeling who is the First Man really is.
The other draw for me was how Langmead merges the fantastical of Eden with the mundane world we live in. In this mythology all the creature of Eden from the artistic Butterfly to the flighty Crow all went with Adam and Eve after Eden’s fall and have been travelling in the world ever since. Finding the forms these people have taken and what they do with their lives now humans are everywhere a delight and intriguingly they seem perhaps more invested in the world than Adam ever seems to be. One key element is the law firm Corvid & Corvid run by Messrs Rook and Magpie that keeps the immortal’s affairs going and occasionally savagely destroying anyone who gets in their way. I really enjoyed their scenes and in particular the mercurial Magpie who Adam searches for and gives him a further mission that drives the story. We move across the UK from Scottish towns to London and Manchester all given a refreshingly unreal description that captures the souls of the place. London being many places at once. Manchester quite fractured in styles and then the more beautiful outside places such as Yorkshire Moors or lost forests giving a feel of a tale being about nature versus human. Langmead captures sense of place without going into overt description and it gives the locations an unusual magical property that is weird and immersive.
The crux of the tale for me was Adam’s conflict with the rich Sinclair family. Adam being very passive it is initially hard to see why he would get into a war with anyone, but we find out that parts of Eden have survived it’s fall and these elements of nature that have a greater sense of reality than anything else are highly prized by all sides – a touch of the divine on earth. Langmead raises some interesting themes on the nature of humanity – we tame worlds for our advantage and trample over beauty for our own needs often killing the rarest of creatures for fun or pettiness. Adam remembers a beautiful garden he spent years on and then found during a world war on his return that it had been turned simply into a vegetable allotment. In the present day the Sinclairs and their other rich friends take the world for their own desires not to share but for their own indulgence which is not a million miles away from our current crop of nouveau rich planning their hideaways on earth or further afield in space. The real humanity that Adam does side with is the playful loving side of us he sees in various Pride marches that wrap around a centrepiece theft in broad daylight that is at the heart of the book. Those who share and spread joy are the more deserving of survival and help aid unexpectedly taking down the rich’s dreams of glory leading to a painful and dramatic final confrontation.
As with Langmead’s Metronome this is an ambitious dreamlike journey into a world not quite our own and hovering over a deeper mythology that sounds familiar but does its own thing to make it more compelling. Langmead’s use of language and atmosphere to make the story work. Those seeking quips and action may be disappointed but for those who enjoy strange tales that feel on the edges of the fantastical will find much to enjoy. Strongly recommended.
