The British Left was notorious for its factionalism; for Ken MacLeod, it provided a rich vein which he mined assiduously in nine out of his first ten novels. He barely had to repeat himself across the span of those books. But in 'The Night Sessions', his eleventh novel, he turns to another sub-culture almost as factionally-riven: Scottish Presbyterianism.

This is almost a book that might have been written as a collaboration between three friends - MacLeod, Iain (M.) Banks and Ian Rankin, because there are elements of the work of each in here. From MacLeod, the factionalism and the near-future setting. From Banks, the sardonic robots. And from Rankin, an independent Scotland and the Edinburgh-based police procedural. It's a tribute to the closeness of their friendship that the result is so seamless; and that MacLeod saw no need to mention this in the dedications.

The setting is also something that all three had in common; and Edinburgh is something of an underlying character in the story. I know Edinburgh slightly, and it came alive for me in a satisfying way. The plot itself is a reasonably straightforward procedural, but in a mid- to late-21st century where the War on Terror became a war against fundamentalist religion of all shades. In the complex back story, that war on religion resulted in a wholesale turning of the back on religion, which is now practiced in private. It isn't exactly banned, but faith plays no official part in public life in any way. Even the USA has passed the 31rd Amendment to the Constitution, completely removing religion from the establishment of the state.

Against this background, a priest is assassinated in a letter bomb incident. DI Adam Ferguson and his sidekick robot, an ex-military Law Enforcement Kinetic Intelligence (or 'leki') called Skulk, have to try to find out whether this is someone with old scores to settle, possibly from Ireland, or possibly from the priest's time in the military. Or is it something new?

Along the way, MacLeod asks questions about faith, intelligence, and whether AIs can have souls. A preacher from New Zealand who works in a creationist country park is somehow involved. And meanwhile, the days are punctuated by regular eclipses as the soletas, giant orbital sunshades intended to try to alleviate global warming that has brought hot summers to Scotland, slide across the sky.

The scope of this novel is great, and it asks big questions. The conclusion is well thought out, though that does mean that it doesn't end with a big set-piece action scene. No matter. There are some minor loose ends in the plot, but nothing that should seriously upset the reader. This is fully up to MacLeod's usual standard. ( )

Picture a world where Religion of all sorts has been sidelined, rejected, and the world is full of secular republics. A world where ex-military intelligent robots work side by side with the police. Where Palestine is a radioactive ruin after the battles of the Faith Wars between the Mulsim East and the Judeo/Christian West. Where there are two space elevators and vast soletas that stop the world from warming up under the greenhouse effect.

This is the world of The Night Sessions, where someone is killing priests and a fundamentalist Scottish Christian sect is plotting a terrorist atrocity on an unprecedented scale. Adam Ferguson is the cop tasked with investigating it all and unravelling the connections between that sect, a lay preacher in a creationist science park in New Zealand, and a rogue humanoid robot passing itself off as an injured war veteran.

MacLeod's neat near-future dystopian thriller is an arresting, thought provoking read. Whether the world would reject religion on such a scale is debatable but the story told here is rooted in a solid, well thought out scenario.

The novel is well paced, the characters well drawn and the reveal at the end is nicely handled. Great little book. ( )

I liked this a lot at the beginning, but by the end it faded a little. The near future Edinburgh settings were great, but for some reason I didn't find the robots too convincing ( )

The Night Sessions, by Scottish author Ken Macleod, is a police procedural set in near-future Scotland and New Zealand after a series of catastrophic “Faith Wars” have resulted in most Western countries adopting a hardline approach to separation of church and state. The state has an official policy of “non-cognisance,” meaning people’s religious beliefs are kept entirely private and not recognised by the state; the actual situation appears to be more social than official, with religious belief having dwindled to a select few anyway. The novel begins with Edinburgh Detective Adam Ferguson responding to an explosion which turns out to be a letter-bomb mailed to a Catholic priest, leading on to the usual deep layers of conspiracy and epic plots foiled etc.

The Night Sessions begins on shaky ground, with a prologue in which a New Zealand priest flying to Scotland has a conversation with a fellow plane passenger about faith which is the very definition of hammy; later he meets some subculture youth at a nightclub who are also oddly happy to discuss the finer points of theology, spouting Sorkinesque zingers complete with ludicrously specific Bible passages. (Why would people keep that information tucked away in their head for debating purposes, in a world where you’d be highly unlikely to ever meet a believer?) Macleod is on firmer ground as The Night Sessions gets properly underway, couched in the familiar language of a crime novel: police lingo, helpful crime investigation exposition, and undersketched characters referred to by surname. But as this wears on it fits oddly with Macleod’s ostensibly grand preoccupation with questions of faith and artificial intelligence, and I felt the novel’s philosophical reach outstretched its grasp. The Night Sessions is readable enough, but never amounts to much. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/review-of-night-sessions-by-ken-macle... ( )