In his recent Bengal Station trilogy Brown has been revisiting some of the conventions of Pulp SF. He has also treated us to a Big Dumb Object novel in Helix. In Guardians of the Phoenix, he has turned his attention to the disaster novel, or rather, to the post-Apocalypse tale. Here too, though, there are faint echoes of Pulp SF in the Phoenix of the title.

The Earth is parched, the oceans boiled away. Resource wars and plagues have reduced humanity to dreams - and fears - of the old times. In a handful of small communities sparsely spattered over Europe a few surviving humans cling on, barely scratching a living from the harsh, sun-battered environment.

To begin with there are three main viewpoint narratives. With large animals extinct and plants beyond scarce, Paul traps lizards on the girders of the Eiffel Tower to feed his dying mentor Elise. In Aubenas the locals net bats for food and their leader quietly supplements their diet with a little cannibalism. A band of renegades has kidnapped the daughter of one of the elders of the decimated community in Copenhagen.

The action kicks off when the renegades turn up in Paris to seek out the rumoured food horde in a bank vault. A group from Copenhagen has pursued them. In the resulting gunfight the chief renegade, Hans, escapes and Paul, who had fallen into his clutches, is rescued.

Since Elise has died Paul joins the Copenhagen group’s onward trip to drill for water below what had been the Bay of Biscay. Hans returns to his former home in Aubenas just in time to join an expedition to Bilbao to find the remains of an abandoned project designed to save humanity from extinction.

As usual with Brown the focus is mainly on the characters, who are well rounded - the relationship between Dan and Kath from Copenhagen is particularly well laid out and Hans makes a convincing psychopath – though Paul, even given his earlier relative isolation, is perhaps still a little too naïve. Given the above the book’s plot has to follow certain lines but there are twists and turns along the way. The resolution is saved from being a bit of a deus ex machine by very short premonitory chapters featuring members of the Bilbao project, which however give the Phoenix game away somewhat.

As an adventure story the novel works admirably but I found I couldn’t quite buy the scenario – an Earth where the water has evaporated from the oceans would admittedly have a consequent runaway Greenhouse Effect but unless all the atmosphere had gone along with them it would surely be more like Venus, constantly overcast, and hence sunburn would be no problem. (I also wondered how in a parched world as depicted would plants be able to photosynthesise and thus keep O2 levels up? Though animals to breathe it in have of course mostly disappeared.) These quibbles aside however Guardians of the Phoenix is fine entertainment. ( )