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Adam Roberts
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Jack Glass Kindle Edition

by Adam Roberts (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 312 ratings
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WINNER OF THE BSFA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged.

Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain and JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humour.

Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challanges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel.

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  1. Print length
    382 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Gollancz
  5. Publication date
    July 26, 2012
  6. File size
    2254 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This intelligent, powerful mingling of sensibilities and a serenely assured style makes for a remarkably compelling novel." —Publishers Weekly

"This is genre-bending, entertaining, slyly thought-provoking, occasionally bloody, and intellectually challenging space opera." —Library Journal

"a spellbinding journey." —Times-News

"In the tradition of Swift, Orwell and Atwood."  —Times

About the Author

Adam Roberts is a novelist whose titles include By Light Alone, The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo, Gradisil, New Model Army, Salt, Swiftly, and Yellow Blue Tibia. His work has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00GU3DHI8
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gollancz (July 26, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 26, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2254 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 312 ratings

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Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
312 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

sb-lynn
5.0 out of 5 stars An unusual story; just an exceptional book. Loved it.
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2013
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Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

Let me say at the start giving a summary of this HIGLY unusual book is not easy, but here goes.

The novel is divided into three parts, each at a different location and with a different mystery(s) or puzzle(s) to solve. The common thread in all three is the mysterious titular character - Jack Glass.

The first starts off on an asteroid where seven prisoners have been set to serve out their 11 year sentence. They must work together to survive and make themselves a habitable place to live and this requires them turning a tiny pocket of air in the frozen asteroid into a livable, breathable space. Not so easy, especially when you're talking about the cooperation of 7 hardcore and dangerous men. One of them is Jack Glass, and he must get off the asteroid before the formidable Ulanov family - the tyrannical family that runs the solar system and heads up its fearsome police system - finds out he is there.

The second section of the book has to do with a murder mystery. Two young scions of the power Argent family arrive on earth for a celebration of the upcoming 16th birthday of the youngest girl, Diana. Diana loves murder mysteries and is thrilled to be involved with one when a servant is killed. To say the least, things don't go as planned.

Lastly, the mystery of a man shot to death in a small enclosed spaceship. How do you explain it when no one is seen entering or leaving. And what does the resolution mean?

Reading this incredibly entertaining and unusual novel was a whole new reading experience for me, and I can't remember the last time I thought that. This was just different than anything I've read - and in a good way.

It took me almost a week to read the book, but not because I was bored in the least. Really the opposite - I would read a little bit and stop to think about it or walk around the house and was thrilled to get back to it. That's not my usual experience with books. If I enjoy something I will feel unable to put it down. With this book, I felt I had to stop for a break but still had that same giddy feeling when I'm reading something I love and when I'm transported to a different place and time. And in this case, to a different "world."

The writing itself is just superb. Here's an example, describing the servants running away. These servants have just landed on earth and are trying to get acclimated to gravity:

"But something had really spooked them, because they all came out through the main entrance, limbs ropey, lurching and staggering and tumbling like newly-born calves, the lot of them. Arms akimbo, legs refusing to bear their weight, falling over and picking themselves up."

The book is replete with wonderful passages and descriptions and you really don't want to miss a single word.

I do want to add one more thing - I am normally not a fan of science fiction (although I like fantasy literature and mysteries) and when I first realized that parts of this book take place in space, I was a little concerned. But I loved it and if you feel qualms about reading a combination of a type of Golden Age mystery with that of modern science fiction let me assure that this author pulls it off brilliantly.

Highly recommended.
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JZS
4.0 out of 5 stars Love letter to the Golden Age
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2016
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Adam Roberts has always been an author who intimidates me. I enjoy following his comments on social media and in the press, but he is SO intelligent and his reputation for complex, original science fiction is so great that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up :) But before I left on a recent trip, I downloaded two of his books “Anticopernicus” and “Jack Glass”. And I am so glad that I did. (I didn’t know at the time that The Guardian had called “Glass” his “most fan-friendly novel”. They were right.)

“Glass” really is a love letter to the Golden Age- both in science fiction and in mysteries. While it is excellent sci fi in depiction of both technology and culture, this really is all about the mysteries- how done it/locked room rather than whodunit. While the first section (episode? story?) is much more grim, claustrophobic and violent than you will find in the Golden Age it does have the feel of Christie’s “And Then There Were None” and the second has the flavor of a traditional Country House mystery. The final section is more Golden Age sci fi like the mysteries of Isaac Asimov.

Glass is a very dense read and it took me longer to read than most books of the same length. But that was fine- I enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve now downloaded samples of Roberts’ other books to prioritize what’s next :)
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George
3.0 out of 5 stars Its a murder mystery set in space. So put your 'suspenders of disbelief' firmly in place.
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2015
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The first part is the best part of the novel and doesn't contribute to the plot of the rest of the book except as an aside. Perhaps it exists to illuminate the character of Jack Glass. Except - does it? I mean, I definitely understood at the end of that first section that he is both a genius and willing to do horrible things that normal humans would not even conceive of. (and this is where your suspenders of disbelief will be extra necessary) But when he later explains his motivation for this act, he is in the process of setting aside the motivations that drove him to those extremes, all the while explaining how important they are. So. Not sure what we learn from part 1, although, I do think its well written.

There is a lot of dream sequencing. I don't know who said that no one is interested in hearing about your dreams, but I find it to be true that I don't want to read about them in a story. But its how the 16 year old Diana figures things out, so there are a lot of dreams.

The fact that Diana is often quite unlovable, in the way that self involved teenagers can be, also means she's is often funny. Roberts nailed that vapid self involved teenager thing quite well. He has a good sense of their sense of confusion when the larger world exposes its backside to them. Diana is the privileged teenager you have probably met before, not a bad person, just so very unaware of reality, while supremely confident that she understands it in its entirety.

He ignores developing the third character, Sapho, almost entirely. She's practically a piece of luggage on the trip until the denouement, where she suddenly gets slid in like a soup ladle in the teaspoon drawer. I can see no logic to putting her in there, except to explain the fact that he mostly ignored her character. As a method of corrective revision, adding an intro and outro layer to the story feels like using bubble gum in place of super glue. In particular since the narrator of this story is omniscient and its impossible to see how that fits in with the intro/outro.

Finally the mystery, the plot, the story. It's a bit convoluted. Its held together by strings and they aren't tied very tight. And the ending is not particularly neat. But not all endings have to be neat. After all, life is rarely neat.
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Andrew Wallace
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, precision-cut Glass
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2015
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The sub-title on the beautifully-designed cover says ‘The story of a murderer’, while the inner title page describes the tale as ‘A Golden Age Story’. The acknowledgements at the end go further and say that the Golden Age referred to is both that of science and detective fiction, with the book an ingenious and original combination of both genres. If these descriptions suggest a confusion of identities that is perhaps appropriate given that the book is formed of three interlinked novellas about the titular criminal, assuming he is a criminal and not a revolutionary. It all depends on point of view, initiated if not clarified by a narrator who offers to ‘doctorwatson’ the story for us. Even this narrator’s identity is not made clear until the last page and, as with much of the book, not what one expects at all.
For example, the genteel detective stories that inspired the book seem very far away from the opening instalment, in which a group of criminals work out their sentences excavating the guts of an otherwise uninhabited asteroid in order for it to become the habitation of the very rich. This section of the book is visceral, horrific and wholly unpredictable. The point of view character becomes ‘Jac’. Is he the titular Jack? He seems very passive, possibly because he has no legs and does not seem much of a threat to anyone. The convicts’ stories and personalities become clearer as they work, but it seems hopeless; the men are trapped for the duration of their eleven-year sentence with only the technology they have been left with to keep them alive. Despite this hopelessness, which is so well described you wonder what’s going to happen in the rest of the book, Jac appears to be working towards something… The denouement is as outrageous as it is unexpected but is pure SF.
SF is often about how the impossible might become possible but ‘Jack Glass’ weaves that idea into the fabric of the story itself, especially in the second segment, ‘The FTL Murders’. In this story, a servant is murdered and the ‘detective’ is one of two sisters in a family bred to process data. There is a vein of dark humour running through the stories like black ice in the first tale’s asteroid; in ‘The FTL Murders’ this manifests as the girl’s delight at having a ‘real life’ murder to solve. If the servants are dosed up with loyalty drugs and everyone is too weak from living off-world to wield the murder weapon, how on Earth (literally) did it happen?
Gravity is an important image in the stories; its absence or presence used in a variety of inventive ways; one chapter is even called ‘Gravity or Guilt?’ while one of the cults worships black holes. Religion plays a big part in the various conspiracies, based as it is on what is believed, which of course brings us back to what is possible and what isn’t. It also takes the ‘locked room’ murder mystery scenario and enlarges it into a universal model; that if faster-than-light travel was discovered and with it the means to escape the limitations of our galaxy, so too would the capacity for destruction. That this theory is expounded in relativistic terms as if it too were the final scene of a whodunit somehow makes it even more mind-expanding. The investigation unwraps a deeper conspiracy, involving rebellion against the ruling clan, played out against evidence of the wreck of alien civilisations, which let’s be honest you don’t get with Miss Marple.
The last section is called ‘The Impossible Gun’ and investigates the death of a famous policeman. This death was recorded on a robot, thus objectively verifying the facts of the case. However, as with the previous murder the death appears to make no sense. Now it is time as well as gravity that is called into question, again phrased in weird religious terms via a chase through various habitats such as 'Red Rum 2010'. That ‘Red Rum’ is ‘murder’ spelled backwards hints that even the text itself is chronologically unreliable, despite its presence on the page and our by now intense association with it. ‘Serendipity favours the angels’ says Jack Glass but who does he mean, really? The novel suggests that laws, of belief, science, politics or whatever are determined by how they can be broken rather than enforced. The hero’s motivation, when we learn it, is a great example of this duality and a satisfying end, although perhaps not for him…
Adam Roberts has written a masterful blend of genres that for all its joyful cleverness is also hugely enjoyable. Recommended.
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Guinea Pig
5.0 out of 5 stars Une lecture enthousiasmante !
Reviewed in France on July 20, 2013
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Voici un livre qui aurait pu attirer mon attention par sa couverture, que je trouve superbe. Pourtant cela n'a pas été le cas, je suis tombée dessus par un conseil pêché je ne sais plus où, je n'avais même jamais entendu parler de l'auteur... Ce furent les avis sur les sites américains et anglais qui ont éveillé ma curiosité et m'ont fait télécharger l'extrait gratuit : à la moitié de la lecture de celui-ci j'étais conquise et j'ai cliqué.
Mon intérêt et mon plaisir de lecture n'ont jamais faibli, cela faisait longtemps (les Miles de Loïs McMaster Bujold ?) que je n'avais pas lu de SF qui réponde aussi précisément à mes attentes.

Pourtant la manière narrative de l'auteur est audacieuse et aurait très bien pu me rebuter : un personnage central mais flou, et surtout un assemblage de trois histoires qui semblent n'avoir en commun que leur thème central (une mort mystérieuse, à la Agatha Christie) annoncées par un court préambule, écrit par le narrateur, qui pique notre curiosité en nous présentant Jack Glass, un homme, ou peut-être un mythe, un meurtrier insaisissable en tout cas.

Que ceux qui seraient inquiétés par cette présentation ne s'y arrêtent pas : les trois récits sont assez linéaires, et mettent clairement en scène le héros, Jack Glass. Il est très aisé de s'y retrouver, les mystères sont ou bien pris à l'envers (le premier récit, où tout est vu de l'intérieur) où éclaircis à la fin de chaque histoire en mode Agatha Christie (pour les deux autres).

Le style est à mon sens parfait : assez littéraire, mais très fluide, ne nécessitant aucun effort de lecture (certains lecteurs se sont plaint d'ennui mortel, il suffit de lire l'extrait pour savoir si vous serez de leur avis ou du mien).
La manière d'écriture est tout simplement exceptionnelle : la mise en scène des personnages, l'amenée des informations (de l'anti infodump par excellence, une prouesse), la façon de surprendre le lecteur, de lui faire apprécier certains personnages contre toute attente ou contre toute raison, l'ambiance, etc.

Le premier récit à lui seul justifierait mes 5 * : une lecture addictive et fluide, alors que le thème n'avait absolument rien pour me séduire !
Une demi-douzaine d'hommes, punis pour des infractions modérées (oui, la loi dans ce futur ne rigole pas !) dont la peine a été "vendue" aux Gongsi, une sorte de guilde commerciale hyper pragmatique, se retrouvent abandonnés pour 11 ans dans une petite cavité hâtivement creusée dans un astéroïde par le vaisseau qui les y abandonne, avec moins que le plus strict minimum.
S'ils survivent ils seront récupérés au bout des 11 ans et les Gongsi récupéreront l'astéroïde bien creusé pour le vendre au prix fort comme habitation (ça ne parait pas très cosy, pourtant on comprend ensuite comment vit la plus grande partie de l'humanité et donc pourquoi habiter dans un caillou peut paraître sympathique...)
Amateurs de Koh-Lanta, lancez-vous, c'est la même chose en mille fois pire !!
Les hommes, qui ne se connaissent pas et ne se supportent déjà plus, font devoir survivre, ou du moins essayer, en travaillant comme des forçats à aménager des cavités dans l'astéroïde, seule manière de trouver de l'eau et de s'oxygéner, puis de faire pousser des sortes de graines, qui assurent une alimentation complète si ce n'est très appétissante. La suite est fascinante et pourtant horrible, rien ne nous est épargné.
Les personnages se dessinent vite et bien, en particulier Jac, un des caractères soumis de l'équipe... ah oui, pour un héros il a une particularité physique tout à fait spéciale !
Le temps passe (combien, comment le savoir ?) les choses avancent, s'organisent, les rapports entre les hommes empirent, certains conspirent, d'autres guettent et surveillent...
Quand la crise éclate, le lecteur n'est pas étonné, pourtant la chute ne manque pas de le surprendre quand même !

Le deuxième récit est très différent et bien moins oppressant. On y découvre deux sœurs, les héritières d'une des familles dominantes, hiérarchiquement situées juste en dessous des régents suprêmes, les Ulanovs. L'héroïne de ce récit, Diana, n'a pas encore 16 ans. Elle est gâtée, privilégiée, riche et surdouée - tout comme sa soeur aînée, Eva et ses deux mères (toutes des sortes de Clones, comprend-t-on vaguement, le récit reste un peu mystérieux, le prix à payer pour un récit fluide et crédible).
Les deux jeunes filles sont envoyées sur Terre pour un séjour d'un mois, à l'abri des complots qui couvent, accompagnées d'une poignée de serviteurs et de gardes du corps.
La vision de notre monde (une petite île méditerranéenne en été) par les yeux de Diana est incroyable de justesse et de dépaysement : la pesanteur en particulier (les deux autres récits sont en apesanteur, en mode "normal") qui fatigue et insupporte la jeune fille, toujours épuisée, obligée de porter des sortes d'attelles, le ciel bleu et non pas noir, la chaleur, la nature, les arbres, les étagères, la façon dont les liquides s'écoulent et s'écrasent au sol...
Ce récit permet également de comprendre peu à peu ce qu'est devenue l'humanité et comment elle vit, ou plutôt survit pour la plus grande partie d'entre elle.
Diana, d'abord pas loin d'être insupportable (tout à fait cohérent étant donné ses origines) devient peu à peu attachante. Sa personnalité à la fois de teenager (vocabulaire inventé drôle et inspiré) et de surdouée (capacité hors du commun à résoudre des énigmes des problèmes, en particulier dans son sommeil, un trait caractéristique de la famille) est très réussie.
On ne tarde pas à retrouver Jack, bien sûr, alors que Diana tente de comprendre la mort incompréhensible qui a frappé l'un de serviteurs (tous drogués de manière à ressentir un amour indéfectible et une loyauté sans faille envers la famille qu’ils servent - une très bonne idée, très bien exploitée).

La troisième partie est également intéressante, permettant de comprendre encore un peu plus précisément comme s'organise désormais la vie humaine. C'est la suite de l'histoire précédente, quelques mois plus tard, mais avec les mêmes personnages. Ce dernier récit permet également d'élucider la troisième mort mystérieuse, d'apprendre enfin ce qui motive Jack Glass, le célèbre meurtrier, et finit par une note douce-amère, tout en laissant quelques petits fils traîner, promettant, j'espère, une suite !

Le sous-titre du livre répond à ses promesses sous-entendues : Jack Glass est un personnage tout à fait fascinant, aussi mystérieux qu'Arsène Lupin, difficile à reconnaître malgré sa caractéristique physique la plus criante (étant donné les mots et noms en français dans le texte, parfaitement orthographiés, je ne serais pas étonnée que l'auteur ait lui aussi pensé au personnage phare de Maurice Leblanc).
La manière dont Jack nous apparaît à la fois parfaitement monstrueux, presque un psychopathe, et incroyablement sympathique et humain est un exploit, tout comme la façon dont nous est présenté le dilemme classique : jusqu'où peut-on aller sous le prétexte du "meilleur pour tous" ?...

Enfin, bien que mes lectures SF ne soient pas très étendues, ce livre est pour moi l'un des meilleurs : j'ai en particulier adoré le parfum de réalité qui émane du récit, qui nous présente un futur possible, sans jamais céder à la facilité des comparaisons, en nous jetant simplement dans le bain, nous apportant les infos peu à peu, avec grâce et toujours un peu de mystère...
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Daniel Brooksbank
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a look
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2020
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I don't normally do reviews but here goes. I love this author's audacity and skill but he is sometimes too clever by half. He' can be a bit of a show-off, as his parades his mastery of genre. I sometimes think he is writing for his literature students (there are little Eng Lit in-jokes peppering the text). Having said all that, this is probably his most approachable work and I really enjoyed it -- though it never quite takes flight and it seems Roberts had an issue with how to draw it to a close. I don't know if he wanted to make it the start of a series. Well worth a read, despite my caveats.
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Timothy Hammond
3.0 out of 5 stars It's a shame - could have been great
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2013
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The author divides this book into three clear parts, which makes a review pretty easy - the first part is great, the second pretty good and the third awful.

Like a great deal of modern British sci-fi, this book is well-written, with some lovely, easy prose. Unfortunately it also has the "look-at-me" cleverness, teenage economics/politics and unfunny jokes of much of modern British sci-fi as well.

The real problem with the book is that the titular character is very poorly and thinly drawn. We learn nothing of his motivations (beyond a Che Guevara poster on the wall type revolutionary creed) and most of the time he just murders people. He justifies that because apparently he is very important to "the cause" but that claim, let alone that moral claim, is not examined. He has no personality at all and calling him one-dimensional is flattering.

The secondary characters are also poorly drawn. In the second part, we are introduced to two sisters, and for a while the younger one in particular is given a real personality. In the third part however, that personality has vanished and she has become - well nothing really.

The other serious problem is that this book is supposed to be about mysteries - locked box escapes and murders. Now whilst the first one is fun, the second one is stupid and the third rubbish. You can forgive the nonsense in the first one as it is clever and funny, but after that, things fall apart.

For example, the second part is ostensibly about the murder of a servant. The murder takes place in the servant's quarters, and we are told that the AI monitors who goes in and out of the quarters. But in this rigid, hierarchical situation, where the servants are dosed with drugs to make them loyal, where they are tracked at all times we are expected to believe that once inside their quarters, the servants are not monitored in any way!

There are numerous other problems with the mysteries, but suffice it to say that they really are full of holes (read the book, pun intended).

It's a shame, because there is some really good stuff here, but I ended up hugely frustrated by the book. It is probably unfair, but as I neared the end I had a vision of a Guardian-reading author, lounging in Soho House and chortling with his friends about how clever his latest book is. And it isn't. It's OK but with more work, more thought it could have been great.
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Diz
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Stuff!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2012
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This is most excellent stuff, this triptych of 'locked-room mysteries'. Inspired by both the 'Golden Age of Sci-Fi' and similarly classic whodunits, Adam Roberts has fashioned a Space Opera that satisfies both the imagination and the intellect.

This is one story, with three distinct sections. The first brought to mind not only Mr Roberts' earlier  work  but also perhaps the ' The Stainless Steel Rat ' and maybe even the redoubtable  Gully Foyle . Blood and butchery are here, but they play a part in the tale; there is nothing gratuitous about them, unlike, for example, the exploits of  Takeshi Kovacs . And, not only do we find the solution to the 'howdunit' (the 'who' is obvious), we also find out why Jack is known as Jack Glass.

The second, longest, section, presents us with another 'locked room mystery' but this is not only different in resolution but also different in kind, more subtle, more devious, more 'psychological' - helping not only to further the story but to build the picture of our eponymous hero. Here, Mr Roberts starts building a world, a complex and believable scenario, with echoes too from his ' By Light Alone ', but spanning a Solar System. The writing has Mr Roberts usual slightly 'baroque' style, but is tempered with some sly and clever humour ('Dun ronin ' indeed!) The thing is, though, under or through all this is a really powerful plot, hanging everything together, building to an excellent dénouement.

There are some wonderful characters - some appearing for far too short a time. The gruesomely horrible Ms Joad, for example, reminded me of Michael Moorcock's  Miss Brunner  or possibly Philip Pullman's  Mrs Coulter  while the policeman/bounty hunter Bar-le-duc came straight from a Western. And there is a complex, believable and sustaining society behind it all. In fact, there is, at the back of the book, a glossary and I admit I read that before embarking on the story - and I would recommend doing so. When faced with Gongsi and the Sump, Lex Ulanova and MOHsisters a little preparation enhances the fun.

Yes, there are a number of typos which sometimes makes the reading a little gritty; there may even be the occasional hiatus in the narrative, but nothing to spoil the trajectory of a very fine story. I hope, very much, that we will meet Jack Glass again. All in all, a multi-layered, clever, comic, mind-expanding and thoroughly enjoyable read.
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