‘Zombie Apocalypse’ – Stephen Jones (Robinson)

It was way back in May that I found myself extolling the virtues of cover art that doesn’t mess around with subtlety and hidden depths, sometimes ‘simple and direct’ really is best! The book in question, at the time, was Stephen Jones’ ‘Zombie Apocalypse’; a book that had me really excited and counting down the days until its October release. You should know by now how much I love zombies :o)
Things changed, between May and October, though. I started to wonder if there was a little too much zombie fiction out there with everyone jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to get away from vampires that sparkle. The last couple of zombie books that I’ve read went a long way towards proving me wrong but there was still a nagging little doubt at the back of my mind when ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ came through the door. Was there going to be more brilliance or just something off the bandwagon?
Yet again I’ve been proved wrong. In what’s turning out to be an excellent year for zombie fiction, ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ hasn’t let the side down at all. Quite the opposite in fact...

In the not too distant future, the UK government seeks to restore some semblance of national pride with its ‘New Festival of Britain’. The way things are, you can’t really blame them for trying can you? What you can blame them for though is digging up an old church in South London and then trying to cover up what boils out of the crypts... What results is a plague of biblical proportions where the merest scratch from an infected person is enough to kill you... then bring you back to life with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.
There’s only one way to eradicate the plague at source and when that fails, the world is faced with all out war as the living battle the walking dead for domination of the globe. Who will win? Will anyone win...?

‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is a tale of society’s slow descent into chaos as the overwhelming reality of the living dead proves to be too much for people to handle. Governments try to cover the problem up, people worship zombies as a sign of the End Times and all the while, the problem slowly drifts past the point of no return. The difference here is that the story is told via a series of diary entries, blog posts, new flashes and emails (amongst others) that all combine to form a much larger picture.

If you’re anything like me then you’re probably wondering if ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is a poor man’s version of Max Brooks’ ‘World War Z’, a book that follows pretty much the same format. The clue is in the phrase ‘pretty much’. While there’s no doubt that ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ borrows heavily from ‘World War Z’ in that regard (and that sense of familiarity does detract from the book as a whole), it adopts a much more personal tone that not only balances things out with the format but lets ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ stand out as an entity in it’s own right. While ‘World War Z’ went for the epic ‘wide screen’ approach; ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ really gets right down into the muck and filth (as well as the standard entrails and brains) to show you exactly what it’s like at ground level. If ‘World War Z’ is a Hollywood blockbuster then ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is the TV mini-series that’s just a little bit too creepy and explicit for regular prime time viewing.

And it is creepy. Thanks to a solid looking array of writers, we are taken right inside the heads of various people trying to survive on the streets of London, New York and Mexico amongst other places. Without giving too much away, the zombie virus has an interesting new spin on it here which leads to plenty of nasty surprises being sprung at just the right moments. The quality is consistent throughout and all credit to Stephen Jones for managing to get all these separate writers to come together and form an overall story arc that flows very smoothly and doesn’t have those breaks and jars that you almost come to expect when one writer signs off and another one jumps straight on. I was more than pleasantly surprised at how well it all hung together. While the quality is consistent, there were a couple of moments that really stood out for me. Sarah Pinborough’s ‘Diary Entries’ mix teenage poignancy with the sights and sounds of South London going straight to hell and the end result makes for compelling reading on more than one level.
Tim Lebbon’s ‘Zmbs’ is a lot faster moving and you have to admire a writer that can inject a real sense of urgency into a series of text messages. Lebbon manages admirably and the twist right at the end comes as a really chilling surprise. It’s an ending that I keep going back to in my head purely because of how abrupt and final it is...

 These two excerpts form a part of a much wider narrative that highlights how quickly humanity will fall in the face of events that it just cannot comprehend. This is highlighted superbly in the government minutes where the emergency plan for a zombie uprising is simply ‘run away screaming’. Some things are ultimately outside our experience and this is why they cannot be dealt with, something Jones makes very clear in the worldwide uproar that follows seemingly innocent construction work being carried out on a church site in Greenwich. I wondered if there was a political agenda going on at times, there was certainly a lot being made of how useless various governments are with their reactions to the crisis as well as the work they do on a daily basis. If I’ve been told something once then I generally don’t need to be told the same thing over and over again. This was the case here but I could also see that you are likely to get the same message from more than one viewpoint. It was a bit irritating to be force fed the same line again and again; I could see how it went that way though.

‘Zombie Apocalypse’ follows all the best zombie literature by bringing humanity right to the fore, both the good and bad aspects. The gore makes for some nice decorative touches but it’s the reactions of various characters, to their situation, that make this book an absolute must read for zombie fans everywhere.

Nine and a Quarter out of Ten

‘A Gathering of Crows’ – Brian Keene

All good things have to come to an end although I’m hoping that this is more of a case of ‘good things coming to an end for now and picking up again at a later date.’ We’ll see...
I haven’t really been able to get to the bottom of all the ‘what’s and whys’ but a little poking around the internet, the other day, led me to find out that Leisure Fiction aren’t publishing their mass market horror fiction anymore (it’s all trade paperback and ebooks). The bottom line is that if you see any their mass market stuff on the shelves then pick it up because once it’s gone... it’s gone.
Apparently, Brian Keene wasn't up for this so has bought back the rights to all of his books from Leisure and is wondering what to do with them all. It’s not so much these books that I’m worried about as it is the ones that haven’t been released yet. Am I ever going to read any more of ‘Entombed’ other than the excerpt at the back of ‘A Gathering of Crows’? On a purely selfish note (and as a fan), I really hope that Brian Keene gets sorted with another publisher and the books start flowing again; he’s worth the read.
Until he signs back in again, Brian Keene has signed out with ‘A Gathering of Crows’ and I can’t think of a higher note to go out on.

Brinkley Springs is a small town on its last legs. Local industry has dried up and now the townspeople are slowly leaving for pastures new; the ones who are left might end up wishing that they had left a lot sooner when night falls...
The darkness brings five strangers to town that aren’t going to leave until either every single living thing in Brinkley Springs is dead or the sun rises the following morning, whichever comes first. They’ve done similar things in other towns for hundreds of years and they’re very good at what they do. For some people, tonight will end quickly in a rush of terror and blood; others will find that they have a fighting chance to make it through until the dawn. Dawn is a long time coming though and the only certainty is death...

When I reviewed ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ earlier this year my feeling was that, as much as I’d enjoyed it, Keene was deliberately not playing to his strengths and this made for a novel that didn’t quite hit the heights that it was aiming for. The good news is that, this time round, Keene goes for the jugular pretty much right from the start and it only gets better from there.

While Keene does build things up nice and slowly, you are never left in any doubt as to the sheer evil that Brinkley Springs faces and the sight of the small town going about its business (not knowing what is about to burst from the shadows) goes some way to showing the reader just what the stakes are. Brinkley Springs may look like just another small American Town but Keene fills it full of characters with real depth, no small undertaking in a book that’s only three hundred and one pages long! You know what’s coming but they don’t and this lends a real edge to proceedings as (if you’re anything like me) you’ll want them all to pull through.
Not all of them do and things can get a little predictable when Keene uses his old trick of giving a minor player a little bit of background detail and then killing them off horribly. There’s a rhythm to these passages that lets you know what’s coming and this can lessen the tension. Keene does make up for this by injecting a raw power into the climatic moments that leaves the reader gasping; it’s not quite ‘Urban Gothic’ but it’s close!

When Keene is done with the scene setting it’s on with the story proper and you’d better make sure that you’re ready to keep up as Keene is in no mood to stop and wait for you!
The story is really flowing now and I loved the way that Brinkley Springs made the transition from having a few isolated screams in the darkness to the protagonists being right up in your face when you least expect it. These guys can really move fast and it’s always a lot faster than you’re expecting. Keene does an amazing job of keeping the five strangers fresh and interesting, simply by not telling us what they’re up to until a lot further into the book. They could be up to anything and this deliberate vagueness (coupled with the violence that they deliver) had the desired affect of my wanting to know just what the hell these people were... In the meantime, I had to settle for just being very scared.

Answers to these questions come in the form of fan favourite Levi Stoltzfus, the ex-Amish Magus with a habit of finding himself in the right place at the wrong time. I say ‘fan favourite’... While Levi has never really been a favourite character of mine I found there was a lot to recommend him this time round. Now, more than ever, Levi is a character who isn’t sure that he has what he takes to defeat this particular menace but goes for it anyway. With an attitude like that you can’t help but root for him, I certainly couldn’t. You also get to find out a little more about his past and I had to look at him in a new light after revelations that aren’t necessarily new (for that type of character) but are delivered with an appropriately sensitive touch.
Best of all though, Levi finally gives us a glimpse of Keene’s ‘Labyrinth’ which is something that fans like me have been waiting for years to get a really good look at. This set of extra-dimensional passageways are not for the faint of heart or the curious and only a madman’s ravings can truly capture the weirdness on the other side of the portal, Keene shows his readers only too well just what this weirdness is made up of (a good dose of Lovecraft but something that is entirely Keene’s own).
Without giving too much away, Levi’s use of the ‘Labyrinth’ is pivotal to the plot and results in scenes that fans are going to love and the casual reader will get a lot out of as well.

‘A Gathering of Crows’ may have been a little flawed in it’s overall execution but it was still a welcome return to what Keene does best and I want more of it. We’ll just have to wait and see if that happens...

Nine and Three Quarters out of Ten

Greg Bear to write 'Halo' Novel

Well, going by the release date, I'd say he's probably already written it (or at the very least is polishing off the rough edges) but you know what I mean :o)

From the Tor Press Release,

Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC—the largest publisher of science fiction in the world—is pleased to reveal the title, cover art, and release month of Halo: Cryptum, the first in a trilogy of novels by Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Greg Bear in the New York Times bestselling “Halo®” series based on the hugely successful “Halo” video games franchise for the Xbox 360. Halo: Cryptum will be published in January 2011. An unabridged audio book edition will publish simultaneously with the new novel.

Halo: Cryptum will begin the first deep exploration into the time of the Forerunners, the creators and builders of the Halos. Almost nothing is known for sure about this ancient race. Worshipped by the Covenant as gods, their engineering relics pepper the galaxy, and their connection to humanity remains unanswered. Devoted fans of both the books and games will finally get to delve deep into the era of these enigmatic beings, and discover for themselves the epic story behind one of the great mysteries of the “Halo” universe: the complete disappearance of the Forerunners from existence.

"The enigma of the Forerunners is really at the heart of the drama and mystery of the Halo universe," says Frank O'Connor, Franchise Development Director for 343 Industries. "In all the games and the books so far we've only scratched the surface of the terrible events that engulfed the Forerunners and the Galaxy they protected 100,000 years ago, and we're very lucky to have a writer with Greg's experience and creativity to help us finally shed some light on why the Halos are really here."
 
“There is no doubt in my mind that Halo is one of the quintessential science fiction offerings of our time,” says Tor senior editor Eric Raab. “What Greg Bear has done with the deep lore of this extremely epic and complex story will definitely emphasize to science fiction fans just how amazing this universe really is. It powerfully lives beyond the games.”

Along with this new trilogy, Tor Books has also recently announced a “Halo” novel series that will take fans into the post-“Halo 3” universe to be penned by Karen Traviss. Earlier this year saw the release of the new editions of earlier “Halo” novels written by Eric Nylund and William C. Dietz.
 
I tend to stay clear of 'hard sci-fi' (I don't get all the technical stuff and get a crick in my neck watching it all fly over my head) which I think Greg Bear falls under but I could see myself giving this one a go. The cover art looks gorgeous as well, I'm a bit of a fan of alien landscapes like this. There's also a nice reminder that Karen Traviss will be writing fiction in the 'Halo' universe. I don't get tired of saying how much I enjoyed her 'Republic Commando' books so I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with here.

The Monday Morning 'It's far too nice to be stuck inside' Competition Winner's Post!

I'm sure I've got this the wrong way round, the weather is absolutely gorgeous out there but I've somehow managed to find myself stuck in the office, again... On the other hand though there's a part of me that's glad to have made it in. I've been reading Stephen Jones' 'Zombie Apocalypse' over the weekend so the trip into work was punctuated by nervous glances over my shoulder! Not what I was expecting from this book actually so that was quite cool. Look out for a review later this week...

There will also be a review for 'The Pan Book of Horror Stories' later this week as well but in the meantime, these are the lucky folks who won a copy of the book in last week's competition,

Phil Darling, Stowmarket, UK
Heidi Wilmot, Manchester, UK
Yvonne Clark, Mid Glamorgan, Wales

Well done guys, your books are on their way as we speak! Better luck next time everyone else. There's always a next time and it may even include people from Canada (I'll do my best)... ;o)

‘Random Cover Art Sunday!’ ‘The Technician’ – Neal Asher

Instead of showing you random photos of the reading pile (as I’ve been known to do) I thought it could be cool to grab something, with cool cover art, from the reading pile and gush about it a little bit. It might even give me a little nudge into checking out those books that seem to get lost amongst all the others. This time round, it’s the turn of Neal Asher’s ‘The Technician’. Check this baby out...

I’ve come to realise that my tastes in cover art tend to veer away from the ‘vague and mysterious’ (although I do have time for that now and again) and land slap bang in the middle of the ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ approach. I haven’t read nearly enough Neal Asher but I’ve read enough to know that his books are crammed full of aliens and tech that are pretty nasty yet very cool all at the same time. ‘Prador Moon’ had giant space crabs toting machine guns, case closed :o)

It tickles me then to see a cover that streamlines almost perfectly with what Asher sets out to give his readers. It’s nasty but you can’t deny how cool it is. Can you? Go on, try... See, I told you!

Here’s the blurb...

The Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada. But the Tidy Squad consists of rebels who cannot accept the new order. Their hate for surviving theocrats is undiminished, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is at the top of their hitlist.

Escaping his sanatorium Tombs is pushed into painful confrontation with reality he has avoided since the rebellion. His insanity has been left uncured, because the near mythical hooder called the Technician that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race.

The war drone Amistad, whose job it is to bring this information to light, recruits Lief Grant, an ex-rebel Commander, to protect Tombs, along with the black AI Penny Royal, who everyone thought was dead. The amphidapt Chanter, who has studied the bone sculptures the Technician makes with the remains of its prey, might be useful too.

Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals, stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons.

I might just have to bump this one up the pile...

Giveaway! 'Pariah' (Bob Fingerman)

If you were around at the beginning of the week then you'll already know just how much I enjoyed Bob Fingerman's 'Pariah'. If you weren't around then you've got the choice of either scrolling down a little bit or clicking right Here to find out just how much I enjoyed it, either's good!

Thanks to Tor Books, I get to spread the love a little bit by offering two copies of 'Pariah' for two lucky readers of the blog to get their hands on. Two lucky US readers that is as this competition is only open to people living in the US...

Entering is as simple as ever. All you need to do is drop me an email (address at the top right hand side of the screen) telling me who you are and what your postal address is. Your subject header for this one will be 'Pariah'.

I'll be leaving this one open until the 17th of October and will aim to announce the two winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good Luck!

The Post where Graeme wishes...

... that he was at the New York Comic Con. Not that I've got anything against what I'm going to be doing this weekend but... Comic Con... (sigh)

Tor Books look like they've got a pretty strong presence there this weekend if the email that I got is anything to go by. Check it out,

Tor Books, celebrating 30 years of publishing excellence, is pleased to announce author events at the 2010 New York Comic Con (October 8-10 at the Jacob K. Javits Center)!


Fantasy Writers Panel

Featured guests: Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, Peter V. Brett, Naomi Novik, and Deborah Harkness
Time: Friday October 8 / 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Location: Room 1A15
Description: Join authors Joe Abercrombie (Best Served Cold), Peter V. Brett (The Warded Man), Jim Butcher (Changes), Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon), Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings) and Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches) as they discuss writing in the fantasy genre.

In-booth signing: Bob Fingerman
Time: Saturday October 9 11:30 - 12:30 PM
Location: Tor Books (Booth #2328)
Description: Acclaimed author, graphic novelist, and king-of-all-things-Zombie Bob Fingerman will be signing copies of his new novel, PARIAH, which Publishers Weekly called “a spectacular entre in the zombie genre…Readers should shamble to the store for this one.”

In-booth signing: Brandon Sanderson
Time: Saturday October 9 / 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: Tor Books (Booth #2328)
Description: #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson will be signing copies of his new novel, THE WAY OF KINGS, along with THE GATHERING STORM, The Mistborn trilogy, and other titles.

In-booth signing: Michele Lang
Time: Sunday October 10 / 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Location: Tor Books (Booth #2328)
Description: Michele Lang will be signing her new novel, LADY LAZARUS, the fantastic beginning of a new saga of witches and angels fighting Hitler’s demonic minions on the eve of World War II.

Stop by the Tor booth all weekend for giveaways celebrating our 30th Anniversary including:


Some of our favorite classics: Ender’s Game /Orson Scott Card, Wizard’s First Rule/Terry Goodkind, and Eye of the World/Robert Jordan, Slingsacks, buttons, hats, and other promo items for some of Tor’s best books

And daily book giveaways from a variety of our authors:

Friday: Nozomu Tamaki, Cherie Priest, David Weber
Saturday: Dan Wells, Hideyuki Kikuchi, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, Eric Nylund
Sunday: George R.R.Martin, Carrie Vaughn, Richard Matheson, David Lubar, Rachel Roberts, Mercedes Lackey, and Rosemary Edghill

I'm not going to lie, I want to be there for pretty much all of this (although I'd probably look the other way and pretend not to notice if someone tried to slip me a copy of 'Wizard's First Rule'). The house isn't going to clean itself though... Mabe next year!

‘Stronghold’ – Paul Finch (Abaddon Books)

It may surprise you to learn this but zombies are not just a phenomenon of the twentieth century. The undead enemy has been around for a lot longer than that, popping up here and there throughout history in unceasing attempts to spread their blight across the face of the planet. Don’t believe me? Check out ‘The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks’ for a record of zombie attacks across history, you’ll see what I mean...


Abaddon’s ‘Tomes of the Dead’ range also sets out to chart zombie infestations throughout history, showing us all that the preserve of the zombie isn’t just the usual apocalyptic twentieth century cityscape. Abaddon charts this timeline with varying degrees of success but I’ve always been assured of a fun read in the meantime; I can’t complain about that!

It’s taken me a while to get round to Paul Finch’s ‘Stronghold’ (some vague idea about saving all the darker sounding reads for October, there’s a lot to be going on with...). The cover alone pretty much guaranteed a read and the promise of Welsh zombies, from the thirteenth century, had me looking forward to getting stuck in. As it all turned out, ‘Stronghold’ had a lot more to chew on than Abaddon’s standard pulp fare and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing...

It’s 1295 and the Welsh are making their presence felt on the marches once again. A strong English hand is called for but the hand of Earl Corotocus falls far too heavily on the Welsh and their druids plan a counter attack the likes of which has never been seen before. The hammer will fall at Grogen Castle, a castle impervious to all assault bar the army that now stands outside its gates. An artefact thought to be legend is about to create an entirely new legend, an army of the dead that will not stop until the last Englishman in Grogen Castle has been recruited to its ranks.

Ranulf is the only English knight in Grogen Castle who disagrees with his liege lord’s methods but this counts for naught in the face of an enemy that exists only to carry out the wishes of their dark master. As each wall slowly crumbles, Ranulf must do whatever he can to escape but, as the ranks of the dead swell to outnumber the living, it may already be too late...

‘Stronghold’ is another solid addition to the ‘Tomes of the Dead’ series with Paul Finch delivering a fine tale that takes Welsh legend and twists it into something dark that oozes with sheer dread. While there was never any doubt that I’d be finishing this one off, I also found ‘Stronghold’ to be a book that somehow defied all attempts at being finished off in one go (no matter how much I wanted to).

I think the main reason for this was that there was a little too much concentrating on the ins and outs of Castle Grogen at the expense of the story itself. Personally, I knew that the story was set in a castle and I didn’t really need to know too much more about where various passageways ran etc. While a little description is needed to lend atmosphere to the proceedings, too much leaves me having to hunt to find the story itself. This was very much the case with ‘Stronghold’ which had a setting so detailed that the story was never going to fill it all...

As I mentioned when I reviewed Nathan Long’s ‘Zombieslayer’... If you’re going to write yourself into a castle, and surround it with zombies and no way out, then you’d better make damn sure that you’ve got some neat tricks up your sleeve to relieve the inevitable monotony of a long and drawn out siege. Finch gets round this in part with his ‘druid side plot’ which adds another perspective to proceedings and fleshes things out in a good way. At the end of the day though, we’re looking at a group of men slowly being whittled down in number and as that number falls there are less avenues for the story to go down. All they can do is stand and fight. There is also only so much you can do with ten thousand zombies laying siege to a castle. The same actions are repeated and this lends a rhythm to a book that perhaps isn’t the rhythm that’s needed... You could take this the other way and say that Finch has captured the relentless inevitability of a zombie siege but it didn’t quite work like that for me.

All of this is a real shame as Finch occasionally shows that he is able to defy these constraints and write a gripping narrative full of all the good things you would expect in a book from Abaddon. While the siege does grind on the fight scenes that punctuate it are superbly drawn and Finch does not stint on the horror that is part and parcel of any zombie media (although the throwaway remark, right at the end, about a ‘hive mind’ threw me a little; a little too contemporary for the setting I thought).

Ranulf’s character is also a good choice to base the story around with his desire to do the right thing constantly leading him into situations that he would rather not be in but do have the knack of propelling the story forwards when it’s most needed. His confrontations with Corotocus may stretch credulity a little bit (would an indentured knight really argue with his Lord that much?) but the intensity with which they are written make them worth hanging around for. If Finch was to ever write a sequel, and I think there is room for this, then I would be back to see what happened to Ranulf next.

While I found that ‘Stronghold’ did have its flaws it was also a book that I had a lot of fun reading. Another chilling entry in the library that holds the Tomes of the Dead...

Eight and a Quarter out of Ten

‘Sabbat Worlds’ – Edited by Dan Abnett (Black Library)

I’m a big fan of the Black Library’s output, so feel free to take this with a pinch of salt, but there is one hell of a lot of good reading to be found here. I think that all the arguments about ‘tie-in fiction’ can be locked away and forgotten about by now. While some books might not hit the mark, the majority are just as well written as the mainstream stuff that you find on the bookcases.
Arguably the biggest deal on the Black Library’s roster, Dan Abnett is the man you’re most likely to come across if you’re looking for an entry point to the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. The main reason here is that Abnett is nothing short of prolific in his writing. Close your eyes and pick a book up off the Black Library shelf in your local bookstore, more likely than not it’ll be one of his!
The other reason is that his tales of ordinary men fighting in the far future are big sellers. As much as we’d all love to be genetically engineered super warriors (or maybe that’s just me trying to get through another day at work) it’s the little guy that we all identify with. Abnett does a great job of popping that little guy on the frontline and showing us his state of mind after being shelled for sixty hours solid.

Illness prevented Abnett from being able to fulfil certain writing commitments so a decision was taken that it might be a good idea to let other authors play in Dan’s area of the 40K universe and give fans something to chew on in the meantime. That area is, of course, the Sabbat Worlds; a group of planets firmly under the control of The Archenemy (Chaos) and slowly being taken back by a combined force of literally millions of Imperial Guardsmen. My reading around the Sabbat Worlds Crusade has been woeful to say the least (just ‘Blood Pact’ and one other title that I can’t remember at the moment) and, given the size of the omnibus editions, I thought I’d give ‘Sabbat Worlds’ a go, both to see if it was a suitable entry point to the wider series and also to see what other authors made of Abnett’s setting. The end result was mixed but invariably entertaining. I now need to get going on this series more than ever!

While Abnett’s ‘Sabbat tales’ focus more on the exploits of Commissar Gaunt and the ‘Tanith First and Only’ (with the exceptions of ‘Double Eagle’ and possibly ‘Titanicus’) there is a lot more on offer in both the background and history of the Sabbat Worlds. There is a lot more to play with and the authors that Abnett has assembled go on to do just that with a mixture of tales that explore the very midst of warfare along with its aftermath.

That’s not to say that fans of ‘Gaunts Ghosts’ will be left feeling short changed though as Abnett finds the time to contribute two stories of his own. ‘The Iron Star’ and ‘Of Their Lives in the Ruins of Their Cities’. Both of these tales take place at different points in the annals of the ‘Tanith First and Only’ and a little prior reading is undoubtedly going to pay dividends in terms of these stories giving you deeper insight into a much wider picture.
Despite my limited background knowledge though, these two stories proved to be very accessible with their focussing on the characters rather than particular ongoing events. ‘The Iron Star’ gives its twist away fairly early on but this frees up the plot to concentrate on how a relatively dysfunctional unit of men and women can all come together in a time of crisis. You can really tell that these soldiers have spent a great deal of time together and there’s a real bond between them, even if certain of them can’t stand each other. ‘Of Their Lives’ comes about possibly a few years before ‘The Iron Star’ and goes some way towards showing how these relationships may have developed. At the same time, Abnett delivers a nice slice of armed combat that admirably confirms his status as a writer of quality military science fiction.

The rest of the tales deal mostly with the ongoing war in the Sabbat System. Graham McNeill opens proceedings with ‘Apostles Creed’, a spin off from Abnett’s ‘Double Eagle’ and a tale of life in the elite ‘Apostles’ squadron. McNeill writes blistering scenes of aerial combat (seriously, blink and you’re guaranteed to miss something) but the underlying message seems to follow a familiar path and doesn’t come across as particularly original, no matter how well it is presented.

Nick Kyme’s ‘Blue Blood’ and Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s ‘Regicide’ have a lot more to them, dealing with both a pivotal event in the crusade (Dembski-Bowden) and a situation that could well result in something pivotal if allowed to develop further (Kyme).
Dembski-Bowden’s tale deals with subject matter that long term readers will be familiar with but the way it is presented will make for a refreshing take, especially when the ‘twist’ occurs. Kyme’s recounting of the exploits of the Volpone 50th Regiment made for a gripping read (as the situation gets worse and worse for them) and I imagine that fans will be pleased to see the return of some familiar faces.

Planetary occupation is the theme for the remainder of the tales and it is dealt with from more than one perspective. Nik Vincent opts to take the more traditional approach with ‘Cell’, her tale of life under the occupation of the Archenemy. Vincent captures the paranoia of the resistance cells perfectly; a little too perfectly in fact as I had trouble working out what was going on sometimes... Matthew Farrer’s ‘The Headstone and Hammerstone Kings’ did the job a lot better for me with sides that were a lot more clearly defined and stakes to be played for. Here is a tale where the ending really had me wishing that there was more to come.
My favourite ‘occupation story’, and possibly favourite in the novel altogether, was Sandy Mitchell’s ‘A Good Man’. Any tale that riffs so successfully off ‘The Third Man’ gets my vote and Mitchell makes it even more of a fine read by managing to keep the mystery going even though the influences can hint at only one outcome...

While ‘Sabbat Worlds’ didn’t quite hit the target for me on all fronts, it is nevertheless a collection of tales that manages to fully capture the essence of system wide warfare in this universe of the far future. Very much recommended for fans of Abnett’s work and I’d say it’s a good place for newcomers (like me) to jump on board.

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘Soulless’ – Gail Carriger (Orbit)

I really want to like Urban Fantasy, seriously. Think about it; of all the escapist speculative fiction out there, Urban Fantasy pushes a lot of buttons that other forms don’t because it’s mostly based in our world as it is right now. That in itself offers a lot of scope for the reader not only to connect with the world in the book but also to maybe look at our world in a different light. With this kind of reading on offer it’s a real shame then that a large number of the books I’ve read invariably end with the ‘strong and independent’ heroine proving to be entirely the opposite as she falls madly in love with the first werewolf or vampire (or any one of a number of supernatural beings really) that she comes across.

Like I said though I keep reading, basically in the hope that the next author I pick up will really branch out and do a lot more with their world than slap a sub-par romance bang in the middle of it. The setting for Gail Carriger’s ‘Soulless’ had me wondering if I was finally going to get my wish after all. As things turned out though...

As perhaps the only person she knows who doesn’t have a soul, Alexia Tarabotti’s life in Victorian London comes with its fair share of social tribulations and the sure knowledge that she will die a spinster. All these worries are thrown sharply into perspective however when Alexia undergoes a vampire attack that breaches all social etiquette.
All of a sudden, Alexia finds herself part of a much larger game where she must learn the rules quickly or suffer fatal consequences. Someone is removing established vampires from the streets of London and replacing them with vampires who clearly have no idea of how to live in modern society. This situation cannot be allowed to stand and Alexia finds herself having to get to the bottom of a mystery that she is now very much a part of. Who is the waxwork man and why can’t he be stopped? What is really going on at the Hypocras Club? Can Alexia and the werewolf Lord Maccon really not stand each other or is something else going on? And what is it with all the brass octopi...?

Of these four questions, readers of ‘Soulless’ will get answers to three and it’s these answers that make the book both intriguing and infuriating in equal measure...

As I said, the prospect of an Urban Fantasy set in Victorian London had me not only anticipating something a little different, from the usual fare, but also eagerly looking forward to lots of London fog, dank alleyways and perhaps even a swordfight or two. While there is a little of this, enough to build up a nice atmosphere in the background, Carriger chooses instead to take things along the ‘Jane Austen route’ and go for a comedy of manners approach on the part of her two main characters. This worked for me but only up to a point.

The humour employed felt a little forced although very much appropriate to the setting and subject matter. I found myself chuckling very early on but as the story progressed the humour didn’t develop alongside it; things were very much a case of ‘more of the same’ and it wasn’t the kind of humour that would keep me going throughout an entire book. The laughs dried up for me pretty quickly...

I also found it frustrating that, once again, a seemingly strong and independent female character has her head turned at the slightest hint of some ‘werewolf action’. Considering that there are at least two more books to come in this series, you would have thought that Carriger would have at least waited a little while before Alexia and Maccon got at it. Apparently not though; these Scottish Alpha werewolves are just too much for any city bred woman, no matter strong minded and independent they are made out to be.

To be fair, Alexia does put up a fight on this front and Lord Maccon doesn’t have it all his own way. This does move that part of the plot forwards quite nicely and I found these passages flowed very smoothly. The end result though is never in any doubt though and ‘Soulless’ becomes yet another romance wrapped up in an Urban Fantasy guise. I have to say that I was left wondering how Alexia’s ‘soulless’ state left her able to feel any emotion at all, let alone love...

While I was getting all annoyed with yet another burgeoning romance (cross species, how will it ever last etc...) I found myself very much enjoying the mystery element of the plot and how it is all resolved. Carriger sets things up with a mystery that seems genuinely unsolvable and highly intriguing, throwing all sorts of ingredients into the mix to keep the plot bubbling and the pace constant. This includes moments of action that are well worth sticking around for, Carriger proves to be more than adept at describing what a werewolf can do in the midst of a group of unarmed men...

‘Soulless’ is very much a book with two sides to it. For all its insistence of travelling the same path as countless other Urban Fantasy novels there were moments for me when Carriger really stepped up to show that there is a story here that’s worth sticking with. It’s these moments that will more than likely have me back for the next instalment but there’s a part of me wondering if I’m just letting myself in for more of the same...

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘Pariah’ – Bob Fingerman (Tor)

For all my muttering about there being too many zombie books on the shelves at the moment, I still find myself picking them up. As I’ve said before, I’m finding the gimmicky ‘classic spin off’ approach a little tired now (which is why I haven’t got round to picking up ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead’ just yet) but if I ever come across a zombie novel that isn’t following this well trodden path then you can be damn sure that it’ll be perching near the top of the reading pile before too long.
2010 has been very good to this zombie fan already with ‘The Reapers are the Angels’, in particular, blowing my expectations clean out of the water and set to feature prominently in my ‘best of 2010’ list at the end of the year. Apparently, 2010 is the year that just keeps on giving if you’re a zombie fan. When I picked up Bob Fingerman’s ‘Pariah’ the concept already had me looking forward to an enthralling read. What was inside was even better. Read this review and then go straight out and grab yourself a copy of ‘Pariah’, it’s worth it.

The end of the world has come. Despite the best attempts of the National Guard there are over eight million zombies on the streets of New York City, all looking to take a bite out of the living. All that is left to the last remaining survivors is to take shelter and await the inevitable. That is just what a group on the Upper East Side are doing. Their apartment block has been boarded up but while it keeps them safe there is nowhere left for them to go but inwards. Even if the constant arguing doesn’t spark off into something more serious there’s no doubt that starvation will kill them. If only there was some way that they could get to the supermarket across the street...
Then, one day, it happens. A lone teenager girl appears who is able to walk the undead streets of New York unharmed. The world is about to get a lot bigger once again and that means a lot more room for danger to come pouring in...

Sometimes you read a book by an author who has nailed their subject matter so perfectly that you find yourself wondering if they’re actually writing from personal experience. Bob Fingerman is one of those writers. I finished ‘Pariah’ and found myself wondering if he’d written it, over a period of months, in a boarded up house while trying to fend off the attentions of the living dead. Fingerman has a control of this particular subject matter that can only realistically come from either personal experience or some utterly messed up nightmares...

Fingerman sets the tone very early on and then proceeds to dial the tension right up to breaking point and beyond. Claustrophobia and hunger are the orders of the day in the early stages and Fingerman leaves us in no doubt as to what this entails. Blunt descriptions of the physical affects of starvation and the constant knowledge that there are thousands of zombies just outside the walls combine to form an intense narrative with an ending that cannot be in any doubt.

Or can it? Life goes on as normal (or as near to normal as possible) inside the apartment block and this refusal to surrender offers hope as a counterpoint to the bleakness. People fall in love or attempt to maintain relationships in a completely new set of circumstances while others seek to make their lives better by somehow finding what they need in this new landscape. This is what made the book compulsive reading for me, the fact that even though the ending surely couldn’t be in any doubt it somehow was. Fingerman shows us that while the living dead are implacable, so is humanity with a cast of characters who are close to the edge but still won’t give up. The relationships between Alan and Ellen and Abe and Ruth make for some real heart wrenching reading at times. Relationships are never easy...

If there was any slight criticism to the characters, for me it laid in the fact that Fingerman’s homage to Romero (who he acknowledges) was maybe a little too obvious; certainly obvious enough for me to be able to predict who would live and who would die by the end of the book. A little bit of the tension (on that side of things) was lost but the colour that Fingerman lends to his characters makes up for this. The residents of the block aren’t there to be liked but Fingerman does make sure that their lives are there to be followed. I’m looking at Eddie in particular whose descent into madness is compelling to follow, no matter what excesses it leads him into.

And then Mona arrives...

Not only does the arrival of Mona spark everything off, making for an exciting ending as various agendas burst into life, but it adds a tantalisingly element of mystery to the proceedings. How does Mona walk through the streets of New York and remain unharmed? The answer is understated but makes sense and the beauty of it is that it only applies to her.
What’s more interesting to follow are the reactions that her presence engenders. A group that is at each others throats, before she arrives, cannot deal with the fragmenting affect that follows and this ramps the plot up to steam through to a very powerful ending. Fingerman holds to the maxim that the most dangerous thing in a zombie uprising is the thoughtlessness of humanity in the face of a far greater threat. That maxim is very much evident here and drives the plot to conclusions that you may see coming but I found that I just had to stick around for.

‘Pariah’ is an intense read that you will find you have no choice but to finish. Humanity and the living dead collide to form a read that sits proudly at the top of the zombie genre, pick it up now.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

The 'How to make a Monday morning even worse...' Competition Winner's Post!

It's a Monday morning, it's October and it's all rainy and cold. You'd look at that sentence and think that it couldn't be any worse than that, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong. It's tube strike season once again on the streets of old London Town...
To be fair, my journey in wasn't that bad (I got a seat and everything!) but the thing about London commuters is that we all hate travelling in any kind of proximity to other London commuters. With the tube out of action, and everyone crammed that much closer together as a result, the negative feelings emanating from my fellow passengers were almost tangible. I'm so looking forward to the rush hour commute home tonight! :o(

Oh well, Monday morning should be a whole lot better for the following people as they are the lucky winners of last week's competitions. These lucky people are...

'Haunted Legends' - Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas

Jeff Evans, Portland, USA

'The Fall' - Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

Gerard Sage, Whitstable, Kent
Nina Miller, Glasgow, Scotland
Elliott Day, Watford, UK

Well done everyone, your books should be on their way around... about... now! :o)
Better luck next time everyone else.

Just what the hell is ‘Steampunk’ anyway?

I realised something the other day. While I’m perfectly happy to point at a book and say, “it has elements of Steampunk in it, it’s a Steampunk novel” I couldn’t actually define Steampunk in a couple of sentences. (And why is it my Mum who always somehow manages to stump me like this? Dammit!)

I know that Steampunk resides in a Victorian setting although it’s not always found in Victorian times (I’m looking at you China Mieville). There’s a higher level of technology than you would expect to find historically but it’s all driven by coal or steam (funnily enough). The emphasis of the plot (in least in what I’ve read) is on high adventure, mostly carried out by bored gentry or ladies with ideas far above their station.
There are goggles in abundance but they’re not just any old goggles, oh no. Steampunk adventurers don’t wear goggles, they all wear devices such as ‘Dr. Sanford’s Optical Enhancement Aid’. Same deal with the weaponry. See that dashing young Lord of the Realm who has just spied the mad scientist about to blow up the dirigible (there is always a dirigible)? The mad scientist isn’t up for negotiation here so our hero has no choice but to employ ‘Professor Barking’s Amplified Lightening Conductor’ (‘ray gun’ to the likes of you and I) to save the day!

Now I just know that there’s a lot more to Steampunk than what I’ve light-heartedly covered; genres and sub-genres always seem to come into being with a lot more thought behind them than someone saying, “wouldn’t it be really cool if the hero wore goggles?” What is Steampunk all about once you put the goggles and dirigibles to one side though? And don’t even get me started on Teslapunk…

Can anyone help me out here? In one of those moments of irony, Vandermeer’s ‘Steampunk II’ is lurking around the house somewhere but I can’t seem to find it…

Giveaway! 'The Pan Book of Horror Stories (Herbert Van Thal)

It's been October for just over twenty four hours now so what better time to have a competition for some seriously scary reading...? :o)

This one is a bit of a nostalgia trip for me as I cut several of my reading teeth on the Pan and Fontana horror series way back in the day when I was at primary school. Don't be fooled though! These series were not for children at all and I have to wonder what they were doing on the shelves at my school (especially with stories like 'The Eater of Souls' which was seriously scary stuff...)

Check out the blurb for the reissued edition of the very first Pan Book of Horror,

Fifty years ago Pan launched a series of books that were to delight and disgust - sometimes even on the same page – readers for thirty years. From classics in the genre to scraping-the-barrel nastiness, the Pan Books of Horror had them all and they continue to be a major influence in published anthologies to the present day.


We're delighted, therefore, to announce the reissue of the very first Pan Book of Horror. Specially selected for Pan, here are 22 terrifying tales of horror by such famous authors as Peter Fleming, C. S. Forester, Bram Stoker, Angus Wilson, Noel Langley, Jack Finney and L. P. Hartley.

Stories of the uncanny jostle with tales of the macabre. Stories of subtle beastliness---like Rasberry Jam; of sickening horror---like The Fly or His Beautiful Hands; and of utter chilling terror---like The Horror of the Museum!

The perfect bedside book---for those with nerves of steel!

Thanks to Pan MacMillan, I have three copies of 'The Pan Book of Horror' to give away to UK readers of the blog. That's right I'm afraid, this competition is only open to UK readers...

If you fancy your chances at winning then entering is as easy as coming upon something truly terrifying in a moonlit graveyard. Simply send me an email (address at the top right hand of the screen) telling who you are and what your postal address is. Your subject header will be 'Oh, the Horror!' ;o)

I'll be leaving this one open until the 10th of October and will announce winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good Luck!

‘Mogworld’ – Yahtzee Croshaw (Dark Horse Books)

Regular readers of the blog will know by now that computer games and I don’t get on all that well. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I love more than settling down with a couple of beers to play something on the PS2; the problem lies in those games that allow you to do whatever the hell you want whilst playing (which is pretty much everything apart from Tetris these days). I get bored with these really quickly and games like ‘Halo’ soon become exercises in how to kill the main character in increasingly amusing ways (I actually managed to stab myself with my own lightsaber one time...).
This is the reason why I have never played ‘World of Warcraft’. Not only would I get bored of it really quickly but, in doing so, I would annoy literally millions of people around the world with my ensuing antics! Reading a novel that’s based around ‘World of Warcraft’ (and pokes fun at it at the same time)? That’s a different deal. Having read ‘Mogworld’, I can quite confidently say that I never felt the urge to kill off the hero in a number of amusing ways. Our man was happy to do that all by himself.

If Jim was alive then you could say that he isn’t having a good life at the moment. Not only has he been wrenched back to an earthly existence by a renegade necromancer but the doors to the heavenly plane remain firmly shut, no matter what he does. Not that Jim doesn’t have enough on his plate in the meantime. No matter what he does, Jim always seems to be in the wrong place at the right time in a world that is slowly collapsing under the weight of its own adventurers guild and strange rules on population control. The man who cannot die (no matter how much he wants to) has somehow found himself in a position where he must save his world from destruction!
Somewhere else entirely, Jim’s exploits are about to bring him into contact with a group of people working to a deadline of their own...

Have you ever played a game like ‘World of Warcraft’ and found yourself wondering what the computer controlled characters must be thinking about your interactions with them? In the real world, how would the rules on questing etc really play out? Yahtzee Croshaw has obviously had this playing on his mind a lot as he has come up with a novel that asks these very questions and answers them in such a way that didn’t have me laughing out loud but did have me cracking a wry smile at some of the things going on. ‘Mogworld’ could very well have been written for people like me who like to push computer games in exactly the opposite direction, just to see what happens. In my wildest dreams, I have never been able to bring down the economy of an entire continent! Not only does Jim inadvertently do this but, in doing so, Croshaw shows us that the rules most of us will quite happily accept in a computer game don’t hold up to closer inspection. To be fair, they’re not really meant to (it’s just a computer game after all) but the way in which Croshaw pokes holes in these rules is such that I enjoyed peering through these holes almost as much as Croshaw enjoyed making them!

I say ‘almost’... While Croshaw pitches his work at as balanced an audience as possible I couldn’t escape from the feeling (whilst reading) that I would have got a lot more out of it if I played games like ‘Warcraft’ or at least had more than a passing acquaintance with them. As it was I couldn’t escape the feeling that while I was chuckling at the more obvious commentary there were lots of other jokes that were flying under the radar that I was missing completely. While it’s not the book’s fault that I didn’t quite fall in the target audience this is still worth bearing in mind if you’re planning on picking the book up yourself. The bottom line is that the more you’re into gaming the more you’ll get out of ‘Mogworld’.

That’s not to say that the story isn’t a lot of fun for the likes of people like it me because it very much was. You can tell that Croshaw is enjoying himself telling his story and that enthusiasm is infectious to say the least. The nature of the plot means that lots of the jokes are ongoing and will crop up again and again over the course of the book. This did lend a predictable air to proceedings but I found that this was balanced out fairly well by Jim’s constant struggle to understand the world and the constant stream of sarcasm that he directs towards his travelling companions. There are plenty of other things happening as well that propel the plot forward at an energetic pace. Croshaw certainly proves to be adept at writing pulsating scenes of action that, when coupled with engaging characters, made me want to keep reading so I could find out what happened next.

While the blurb on the back of the book gives the ‘big twist in the plot’ away I’m trying not to do the same thing here. What I will say is that while the twist is not presented as a surprise to the reader, Jim’s eventual realisation (and surprise) is conveyed extremely well and this makes for some touching moments right at the end which add a depth to Jim’s character that he hadn’t been aware of previously.

Perhaps I’m not quite the person that ‘Mogworld’ was meant for but that didn’t stop me having a great time with it. I’m certainly hoping that this isn’t the last I hear of Yaghtzee Croshaw and I’ll be checking out anything else that he writes in the future. Here’s a guy who guarantees a grin with his writing.

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘The Runestaff’ – Michael Moorcock (Millennium/Tor)

If you’ve been collecting the Tor editions of the ‘Hawkmoon’ series (and why wouldn’t you, the Vance Kovacs cover art is gorgeous) then you’ll be waiting until December this year for the final instalment to come out. Myself though? I managed to find myself an old second hand copy of the Millennium edition. While the cover art doesn’t match what Kovacs came up with (although it’s not bad at all) the book itself takes up less room on the shelf and I don’t have to hang around waiting until December to read ‘The Runestaff’. I can’t lose really!


I’ve had one hell of a time reading the ‘Hawkmoon’ books these past few weeks and I’m a little sad that the adventure has finally come to an end. Maybe I should have paced myself a little better but there you go. I can’t say that I’ll learn a lesson from this :o)
The last three books have been building up to what promised to be a cracking finale. ‘The Runestaff’ didn’t let us down there...

Hawkmoon chose to ignore the call of the Runestaff, deciding instead to sail home and be with his wife Yisselda. The plans of destiny are not to be altered though and Hawkmoon will have to tread the path that the Runestaff has chosen for him...

Back in Londra, Baron Meliadus’ all consuming hatred of Dorian Hawkmoon has led him not only to go against the commands of his Emperor but to plunge the Dark Empire of Granbretan into all out civil war. Whatever remains of the Empire will be what Hawkmoon faces when Meliadus’ machinations force the return of Castle Brass to its home dimension. No matter what the state of the Empire though, its soldiers still outnumber Hawkmoon’s men by thousands to one though so the final battle looks like it can only go one way, doesn’t it?

As was the case with ‘The Sword of the Dawn’, ‘The Runestaff’ comes across (at times) as not being so much about Hawkmoon itself as it is about the rest of the rest of the supporting characters. This can only be a good thing (and is) as the book is fleshed out substantially and we don’t have a situation where an overabundance of one dimensional characters detract from the impact of Hawkmoon as the lead character. Hawkmoon is a character worth spending time with (not as melancholy as certain of Moorcock’s other incarnations of the Eternal Champion, he just wants to fight for his love and for revenge) and deserves a supporting cast that highlights these positive points.

So, as a result we get to see how Baron Meliadus spirals further into insanity as the result of a misplaced oath (on the Runestaff itself) that influences whatever decisions he makes. His is an object lesson in being careful how you wish for something, especially if you swear an oath on an object of power! All the best intentions of Meliadus count for nothing as the Runestaff throws all his plans into disarray. It’s also very interesting to have the perspective of someone who is totally neutral in the whole affair. Flana’s neutrality (which places her squarely in the middle between Hawkmoon and Meliadus’ excesses) embodies the notion of ‘Balance’ that Moorcock has running throughout his ‘Eternal Champion’ books. This is fully confirmed when you see who inherits the power of the Dark Empire at the end of the book. While I wouldn’t say that Flana is the incarnation of the Eternal Champion in this dimension (it is very obviously Hawkmoon), I still found that the approach employed here enhanced the story itself and placed it firmly in a wider context.

One criticism that you could level at the book is that the Runestaff itself influences destiny to such an extent that there isn’t any real surprise at the outcome of the story. I can certainly see where people might be coming from with that argument as everything is geared at one conclusion with not a lot of room for many (if any) surprises. I for one found myself settling down for a foregone conclusion to the story...

The thing is though; I’d say that this observation is kind of missing the point of the whole thing. ‘The Runestaff’, and the ‘Hawkmoon’ series as a whole, is very much about swashbuckling spectacle (and a classic fight between good and evil) rather than anything else. All the characters have a decent degree of depth to them but are far too polarised to make for a story that can tread a different path. The ‘Hawkmoon’ books are all about an entertaining ride to the climax. If you’ve got this far and are expecting something different then maybe you should switch your attention elsewhere... What I would say though is that Moorcock’s use of the whole ‘and this is how X died’ approach did rob the book of a couple of surprises that it would have been able to comfortably incorporate.

At the risk of repeating earlier reviews, ‘The Runestaff’ has all the ingredients that made the previous three books such an entertaining read. The action doesn’t stop for one minute but it never feels overdone. Instead, I found myself turning pages all the more quickly so that I could keep up with the pace. ‘The Runestaff’ is most definitely a fast paced book, punctuated with well written scenes of combat that are constantly lending fresh impetus to the story (including a finale that is well worth hanging around for). There may not be any surprises but there is a lot of fun to be had here.

Like I said right at the start, I’m a little sad to have got to the end of the series but that’s been more than balanced out by the fun I had reading it. If you’re after a fantasy series that sets out to entertain above all else then give the ‘Hawkmoon’ books a go. ‘The Runestaff’ rounds things off in fine style.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

A Quick Question About 'The End of the Line'

I use the Underground pretty much every day (go to work, come home from work... and repeat) and I guess I’ve become far too used to it over the years for it to scare me in any way. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the scariest thing about the Underground is watching commuters (who are obviously running five minutes late to wherever they are going) literally throw themselves through the doors as they are closing. I fully expect to see someone chopped in half before the year is out...


That’s pretty much it for me though, the Underground just isn’t that scary. Or is it? Solaris editor Jonathan Oliver seems to think so as his name sits proudly on the front of ‘The End of the Line’, a horror anthology where the stories all share one theme; what’s lurking on the tracks that lie beneath our feet. I’m saving my review copy to read next month (Halloween and all that) but in the meantime I thought I’d go straight to the source and ask the following question...

'I use the underground everyday and I'm here to tell the tale. What's down there that's so scary?'

Jonathan Oliver was kind enough to take time out of his schedule for a reply and here it is...

I don't use the Underground every day. I don't get into London that often, but I used to go a lot when I was a stand-up comic. Usually gigs would go on quite late and I'd have to catch the last Tube. This would see me standing on the platform alone often as not, listening to the distant rumbling getting closer and closer, while feeling the brush of the warm wind rushing out of the darkness of the tunnel. There's something eerily atmospheric about the Underground, and I've often thought that it's criminally underused in horror fiction. There are a few examples (well, more now since we've published The End of The Line) I can think of, such as Deathline, the scene in the Underground in American Werewolf in London, Creep, Neverwhere, but there you see most of those are films, rather than prose. So, the idea for Underground horror has been in my head for quite a while, so when we decided to launch an anthology of horror fiction, this seemed to me the perfect theme. I was so pleased with how varied the stories we got were. These aren't just 19 ghost stories set on the Tube. Instead we have journeys within the characters themselves, as well as on the rails. There are brilliant ghost stories such as Christopher Fowler's 'Down', but there are also stories about impossible destinations (Michael Marshall Smith's 'Missed Connection'), a past love brutally re-visited (Paul Meloy's brilliant 'Bullroarer') as well as more lyrical stories about loss ('All Dead Years') and the paranoia induced by this error of terror (Ramsey Campbell's 'The Rounds). And these are just a few of the treats you can find here.


So what's down there that's so scary? Well, according to my authors, oh so very much. Where do you want to start?

I’m up for being persuaded that there could well be spookiness on the Underground after all, especially when Jon reminded me of ‘American Werewolf’ (that bit was scary!) I’ll be reading ‘The End of the Line’ sometime next month (you should be able to pick it up around the end of October or beginning of November) and will be sure to let you know if it lives up to its promise...

‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ – Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall (Quirk Fiction)

Is there anyone here, reading this blog, who didn’t watch ‘Star Trek’ when they were a kid? I didn’t think so. I used to love Star Trek when I was a kid, a good substitute for ‘Star Wars’ in those ‘pre-video’ days when I would have to wait until Christmas to see Han/Luke etc. All good things come to an end though and I ended up switching allegiance to ‘Babylon 5’ and, later still, ‘Lexx’. I still like the occasional episode of ‘Star Trek’ but I’m not a massive fan and don’t get all the references that my friends (who are fans) make about the show. All of this made the prospect of reviewing ‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ a bit of an odd one. How can I review something if I don’t really get the fandom that it’s sprung out of?


Ah but that’s ok; it’s chock full of zombies! This is something that’s always a good thing for me to come across... or is it? These days I find myself wondering if there’s a little too much in the way of zombie fiction out there. ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ was very much a good thing but it opened the doors for everyone who had a ‘zombie spin off’ to pedal. Don’t get me wrong, I love my zombies but the media dosage has been set on overkill. All of this made the prospect of reviewing ‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ a bit of an odd one. Could I review a book about zombies when I’m starting to feel all ‘zombied out’?

As it happened, I ended up being pleasantly surprised on both fronts...

After a hellish tour of duty in Afghanistan, all Jim Pike wants is a life without any kind of responsibility at all. Assistant Manager in a small Houston hotel sounds like just what he’s after, once he gets the yearly ‘Star Trek’ convention out of the way. There is a nasty surprise lurking in the midst of all the people dressed up as Klingons and Borg though, a strange virus that transforms its hosts into flesh eating zombies! Not only must Jim and a group of survivors escape the hotel but they must also halt the spread of the virus before it takes over the entire planet. All they have is some prop Klingon weaponry and an in depth knowledge of one of the most successful sci-fi shows ever...

I was seriously thinking of taking a break from zombie fiction and films before I picked up ‘Night of the Living Trekkies’. Now that I’ve finished it, I find myself really eager to get to two more zombie books that have somehow found their way to the top of the reading pile. So, what happened?

To put it quite simply, ‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ has a little something for everyone and it all comes together to form something pretty special.

My initial fear about not being ‘Trekkie’ enough to ‘get it’ was dispatched fairly early on. While there may be bits that only the die hard ‘Star Trek’ fans will pick up on, Anderson and Stall pitch ‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ firmly at the likes of people like me; people who know who Captain Kirk is but not necessarily what colour boots he was wearing in the third episode. The result is a lot of fun with plenty of references thrown in that everyone should be able to enjoy. For instance, what do you think the odds are of the guy in the red shirt escaping from a hotel full of zombies..? :o) It’s never laid on to thick either, everything makes sense in the context of the story while raising a wry smile at the same time. As a Star Wars fan, I was pleased to see that it wasn’t just the Star Trek references making an appearance. The quotes used were spot on with a nice little side commentary about genre rival that served as a counterpoint to the serious zombie business going on elsewhere.

What about those zombies though? I arrived at the book expecting something that would poke a little fun at the sub-genre. You’d expect it with this kind of mixture wouldn’t you? What I got instead was something more along the lines of regular zombie fiction. Zombies gnawing bits off the living while the survivors try and make out the best they can. These zombies are slightly different to the regular kind and this difference is where the urgency to the plot springs from. It also leads to a twist in the tale that I saw coming from a long way away. There’s not much effort made to hide it so I had to wonder if this was an intentional move on the author’s part...

In the meantime though, what the reader has is a tale more than effective in its ability to make you jump when you’re not expecting it; you don’t know what’s hiding behind that hotel door... For a book with such a premise it’s also surprisingly apocalyptic with small hints gradually building up into something that’s quite awesome when you see it from the hotel window. Anderson and Stall hit the nail right on the head here.

‘Night of the Living Trekkies’ is a lot of fun to read and features characters that I wanted to stick around for, I reckon you will too. Books like this are the reason why my reading diet will always contain a lot of pulp...

Nine out of Ten

Cover Art - 'Surface Detail' (Iain M. Banks)

Sometimes I'm sure that publishers look at a book, that they'll be releasing, and think to themselves, 'Everyone knows who this writer is, he must be one of the most popular ones on our books. Lets not go too crazy on the ol' cover art, people are going to buy it anyway....'
Check out the cover of Iain M. Banks' 'Surface Detail' for example,

It's not often that I come across a cover that's quite as bland as this one. The only things I can make out about the story, from this cover, is that it involves a planet with the sun shining off it and a woman with eyes. I'm sure Banks has woven a decent tale involving these two ingredients but a first look at the cover left me thinking that 'Surface Detail' is only one of many sci-fi books where the sun rises over a planet and there's a woman with eyes... The only thing that really leaps out is the author's name; it's 'Iain M. Banks' and that's what will sell the book at the end of the day.

A look at the blurb though tells a different story...

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

Now that's more like it! While I don't know if I'll get round to reading 'Suface Detail' ('insert usual excuse about my life here...') my interest was certainly piqued by a blurb that really makes the book stand out as something that could only have been written by Iain M. Banks. Shame you can't say the same thing about the cover really. Makes you wonder why they bothered with cover art at all, I'm sure just as many copies would have been sold if they'd just stuck the title and the author's name on the front of the book...

Giveaway! 'Haunted Legends' (Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas)

I'll be leaving 'Haunted Legends' a little while longer before I pick it up (well, it is Halloween next month...) but I thought I'd give you folks a chance to read it a little sooner :o)

Thanks to the folks at Tor, I have one copy of Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas' collection of ghost stories, based on legends from around the world, to give away on the blog. This time round though, the competition is only open to readers living in the US...

To enter, all you need to do is drop me an email (address at the top right hand side of the screen) telling me who you are and what your postal address is. Your subject header will be 'Haunted Legends'. I'll take care of everything else...

I'll be leaving this one open until the third of October and will aim to announce the winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good luck!