Ludluda by Noon and Beard

Ludluda is the follow up and finale to the spectacularly strange story begun in Jeff Noon and Steve Beard’s collaboration Gogmagog. Gogmagog was ostensibly a fantasy book but packed full of other genre elements including steampunk, horror and science fiction. It told the tale of a journey up a river that is also the ghost of a long dead dragon with a ragtag crew captained by the ancient plant-woman and sailor Cady Meade.

Ludluda picks up directly where Gogmagog finished. Meade has arrived in the city of Ludwich where her passenger, ten-year-old Brin, will undergo a transformation known as the Hesting. Despite being warned not to let this ceremony happen, Meade facilitates it and sets in a train a possibly destructive train of events. But before she can get to fixing that problem, Meade has to work out how to germinate the six buds growing out of her own body. On the way she will navigate further up the river and discover that her city of Ludwich is somehow connected to another city in another universe called London.

If all of this sounds too weird, suffice to say the actual book is a whole lot weirder. But readers who have been on this journey from book one will be keyed in enough to follow. And Cady Meade is such a rich and fascinating protagonist that it is easy to follow where she goes. That is more so in Ludluda which is more focused on Meade and her personal quest than Gogmagog which had a slightly bigger cast.

Ludluda is dark, redolent, often visceral new weird fantasy. Like bower birds, Noon and Beard have taken bits of and pieces of other genres and combined them into a glittering and heady mix of character, action and philosophy. While not quite as successful as Gogmagog, Ludluda does round out and complete the story and is a must for fans of the first book. And for those who want to explore more of this strange world, Noon and Beard provide a sting that hints that there could well be more to come.

Ludluda by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard

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8.0/10