Reading this I was from the start prepared for the copout you describe, but while the reality of the story is undermined by the postscript, the reality of said postscript is undermined from within as well. The ambiguity remains, which I personally like better than either the copout or making absolutely clear that yes, this is real.

I just read that in late December myself. I decided to catch up on my Robson before Novacon, as she was guest of honour & I was on a panel with her.

I rather enjoyed /Mappa Mundi/ and /Silver Screen/ had its moments. /Natural History/ is a strange, hallucinatory space opera with possible contact with a possible other intelligence which is possibly on another planet possibly in another galaxy. And has given us or possibly we have accidentally found a sort of FTL star drive thing that is also an AI or the alien or something.

It’s very hard to tell. It’s confused, self-referential, barely explains its own background or setting.

Kinda fun if you don’t mind being permanently confused.

Then I read /LNDTTGOL/. This borrows a couple of references from /NH/ and makes passing reference to the primary Plot Device™.

I found /LND…/ almost unreadable, myself, and very hard work. It’s a confusing morass of a book with no discernable primary plot, & a whole bunch of the primary viewpoint characters who are basically nothing but dei ex machinæ. They can do whatever they want whenever they want to anyone they want, be anyone they want, except when they randomly can’t, and nobody can stop them. But people love them anyway. Sometimes. Except when they hate them.

Deeply irritating book with no real redeeming features.

/NH/ is confusing but all right. You sort of mainly know where you are & what’s going on most of the time if you don’t mind doing some guesswork.

But it has no bearing on /LND/ and /LDN/ as no bearing on it. It’s hard to believe they’re the same authoress.

/LND/ reads, to me, like one of those wretched Gwyneth Jones things which is all about “questioning the nature of identity” or some balls like that.

As for Ms Robson, stick to the one-off novels or the current robo-elf-pr0n series. They’re actually quite fun.

However are they religious nutters are just nutters?

If they were truly religious they would see that their religion makes no injuction about using the word ‘hell’. Likewise their religion doesn’t prevent them from naming a town in Lincolnshire!