The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson

I was lent this in the form of old 2000AD issues, all printed on newsprint before I was born. It was quite a special reading experience.

The first story shows us Halo at eighteen, living in the slums of 'The Hoop', an artificial city in the middle of the Atlantic. It starts off quite light-heartedly, though Halo's world is quite dystopian, and it's hard to define where that sense of humour comes from. Life on the Hoop is going nowhere, but it's not until she loses two of her best friends - one murdered, the other simply giving up - that Halo hardens her resolve to get out. She and her remaining friend Rodice leave, but jobs are few, and Halo gets the one they can find, hostessing job on a beautiful antique ship - thanks to her seriously uncool ability to speak Cetacean. This is where it feels like the story gets started, the first book giving Halo the impetus to leave - with an agreement to meet up with Rodice in a year's time, in a bar on another world.

I was surprised to find I'd read Book 2 before, at the library it must have been, because I remember things. I remember the dolphin navigator, I remember the boy-girl Glyph whom no-one notices, and the rat-king with all his tails twirled together. I even remember the end of that story, when Halo has reached the bar, says to the barkeep, "Play it again, Yortlebluzzgubbly." I remember double-checking she got his name right, because I did it again. It's very odd, rereading things you'd forgotten about.

In the third book, Halo is a lot older, and having run out of options, joins the army. We are already aware of the war going on in the Tarantula Nebula; now we see it, and it's not pretty.

I enjoyed the whole thing very much. I like being thrown into such well-thought out science fiction worlds - you can tell how well-thought out it is, with things mentioned that you don't expect to matter, but that help form the fabric of the world. And maybe they end up mattering a lot. It's a bit confusing to be thrown into at first, because you're not told anything - but you're shown it, and I think that's the best way it could have been done. I expect it would hold up well to re-readings.

The writing isn't always so subtle as it is in portraying the worldbuilding; some things are overstated - dialogue that goes on emphasising the way Halo and her roommate aren't even aware of Glyph's existance amongst them - though Glyph saves Halo twice. It's the comment on what's going on that overdoes it. It happens with the war too, the telling when all we really need is to be shown what happens. There's no fear of killing people off, certainly. But you can excuse the occasional heavy-handediness because it mostly is very well told.

Generally I am not a big fan of Alan Moore; I think he is too literary for me. Halo Jones being some of his earlier work probably helps there. It reminds me more of Paul Hope's sci-fi than anything else of Moore's; I think because of the worldbuilding. A 'bigger' story, though - one episode implies Halo ends up a historical figure, with books being written about her. It makes me wonder what else they had planned. Alas! I shall never know. But the three books there are are definitely worth the ride.