Stepan Chapman’s The Troika is brilliant. A surreal fantasy about a twisted family – an old mexican woman, Eva; a Jeep, Alex; and a Brontosaurus, Naomi, travelling together across an endless desert. It’s engaging and wildly inventive, a book of layered dreams and delusions, featuring guardian angels, fiddler-crab cops, Plasma Wars, and insanity. ( )

Amazing err. Ok there is probably no way I can describe this book..

I could start off by saying there is a jeep, a dinosaur and an old Mexican women walking across an infinite desert...

Or I could mention a few key ideas and themes of families and experiments, of insanity and angels, of cyborgs and Aztec sacrifice.

Or I could just drop in a quote (from the wisecracking Alex the jeep)
A story? You want a story? I'm crawling with stories. They slide in and out of me like pinworms. I'm like some long-winded war veteran with a story for each of his missing limbs. I'm like a pilbug on its back, bristling with amputations and waving my long lost legs while silicon chips coagulate in my thick black blood. My brain is clotted with stories.

But all I can really say is I think I can guarantee you won't have read anything else quite like this. It's eminently readable, surreal but accessible, sometimes fun, sometimes horrific, sometimes heart warming and always exciting.

The three characters are rich and their fevered imaginings of the past form the setting for the overarching thriller, easing us in through their bizarre, vibrant short stories with only a tantalising glimpse of truth. The writing is great and its tone almost reminds of a great lyrical, noir crime novel as it sweeps across the genres mashing sci-fi, fantasy and horror.

I really don’t want to give away more but maybe I should to entice you in. This is the second time I have read it and I still love it, in all its audacious glory. It may not be for everyone but I promise you will find it interesting. I still mourn the fact that this is his only novel, although if I had just one book in me, I would be very proud if it could be something like this.

For those interested (and I recommend to everyone) its cruelly out of print but it's going to be
republished as an e-book. Excerpt of book and info here
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/08/20/cheeky-frawg-to-release-e-book-of-stepa.... ( )

Squid-headed priests? Okay, I'm in.

What does a writer with too many ideas? Turns surreal, of course. The Troika, Chapman's debut, is filled to the brim with all sorts of ideas. If anything is possible, how can anything have meaning? Chapman's book avoids this trap, the fragments manage to make sense even if they're really odd.

The protagonists are an unlikely trio. There's Eva, an old Mexican woman. Alex is a jeep and Naomi a brontosaur. They're crossing a desert that seems to go on forever, and the reader is shown glimpses of their past in the form of strange, perhaps false memories, dreams and stories. There's an ending, but if the reader is looking for a proper plot, this book will be a disappointment.

I didn't love The Troika, but enjoyed it quite enough. The turns and twists are interesting and some of the stories paint pretty pictures of curious worlds. I can forgive the lack of plot and all the delusions for that, no problem! (Review based on the Finnish translation.)

(Original review at my review blog) ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=251 ( )

At this point this book is really hard to find. From the moment I read it it instantlly became 1 of my favorites. This book is flat out amazing. ( )