Review of Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts

I almost didn't read Adam Roberts' novel Land of the Headless (2007). The plot's main conceit was so lacking in subtlety and so ripe with potential for comic book cheese that I was prepared to immediately return it should the first few pages live up to my concerns. The title to be taken literally, it tells the story of a planet where capitol punishment removes the guilty's head but does not take their life. They live on, headless, through the wonders of technology. Something from the pulp era of sf, yes? No...

Land of the Headless is the tale of the poet Jon Cavala. An amorous youth, he forms a tryst with an aristocrat's daughter over the course of a summer. They willingly share a bed outside of marriage, but only to be found out. The daughter and her family betray Cavala, and he is punished for his impatient penis. For in Cavala's draconian society, murder, blasphemy, and in this case “rape”, are cause for capitol punishment. And so the story kicks off with Cavala's beheading. A device attached to the spine prior captures Cavala's mind state—consciousness more or less—so that even after his noggin is lopped off he goes on living. He buys a cheap pair of electronic eyes and ears with what little money he has left and so sets off to live a new life. The headless are shunned and the going is tough. Cavala falls in with a trio of other headless, and together they agree to travel to a nearby city by foot. What Cavala does not tell his comrades is that he goes to meet the daughter who betrayed him.