‘Star Wars: Knight Errant’ – John Jackson Miller (Del Rey)

Some things are just a given aren’t they? You don’t even need to think about whether they will happen, you just accept it as a matter of course when they do. Night follows day, brandy and a nice cigar after dinner (or maybe that’s just me) and the crushing inevitability of going back to work after a weekend are just a few examples of this. Hang on, there’s one more... it’s very much a given that the Star Wars franchise will continue to churn out new fiction as fast as we are able to read it, probably faster in fact.

I wasn’t too bad at keeping up with all of these books until the New Jedi Order series came along and showed me that my wallet really wasn’t up to the task of keeping up with a mammoth series that I probably wouldn’t read more than once anyway. I fell out of the loop and never really got back into it; there must be dozens of Star Wars books now that I haven’t read. I still like to keep my hand in though and occasionally pick one up for a go, preferring ‘stand alones’ rather than something that requires me to dive into a series. ‘Knight Errant’ looked like it would deliver the goods on this score (it continues the story began in the Dark Horse comic book but I haven’t read that and it still worked for me...) so I decided to check it out. While I liked the approach it took in terms of avoiding some of the pitfalls prevalent in this sub-genre it failed badly at avoiding others. Or maybe it didn’t. To horribly misquote a certain famous Jedi, it all depends on your point of view...

A thousand years before the events of ‘A New Hope’ the galaxy is in a very different shape with Sith Lords running rampant (fighting Jedi when they’re not too busy fighting each other) and the Jedi more or less confined to a tiny area of Republic space where they remain on guard duty. Kerra Holt is a newly promoted Jedi knight whose participation in a covert mission into Sith space has left her stranded behind enemy lines with no real idea of how to get home. While she’s in Sith space, Kerra may as well see what she can do about the Sith Lords in the meantime...
One Jedi against several planets worth of Sith and their underlings. The odds aren’t good but the web of intrigue that Kerra Holt is about to walk through could well end up working for her as it does against. There is a pattern behind these warring Sith

I briefly mentioned the cover for ‘Knight Errant’ a week or so ago when I said that a franchise as well established as Star Wars can easily afford to go generic on the cover art. I mean, look at it... If it wasn’t for the title then this could be any Star Wars books. Unfortunately, the same goes for what’s inside that cover.

At a first glance things don’t look that bad and the book does actually go a long way towards avoiding some of the more obvious problems associated with fiction in the Star Wars universe. Setting the story one thousand years in the past removes the problem of coming up with an interesting story for characters that are ‘untouchable’; instead you have characters that (in theory) could have anything happen to them.
Well, that’s the theory.

What you get instead is pretty much what you get in every Star Wars novel that you pick up; a hero who is going to win through simply because she is the hero and that’s what heroes do. There isn’t even a brief moment of ‘oh dear, I could be brushing with the Dark Side here...’ as Kerra Holt is just too damn good, even though she has only been a fully fledged Jedi for such a short time.
Miller does capture the scheming of the Sith very well with layers of intrigue folded neatly on top of each other, gradually unfolding to form the whole picture. When the rest of the story is so black and white though you’re left wondering just what the point of all the intrigue is. It just doesn’t sit well when you know that the hero will cut through it all with one sweep of her lighsaber because... she’s the hero.

But isn’t that the whole point of Star Wars though? Good honest pulp fun that leaves you on the edge of your seat at the display but also leaves you safe in the knowledge that the right people are going to come out victorious at the end? Of course it is and, in that respect, Miller has come up with a Star Wars book that will sit comfortably with the rest of them even if it might not stand out from the rest of the pack. The heroes are heroic, the villains are evil and when the two meet the end result is the kind of pyrotechnics that you would expect to see on the big screen. (That’s not counting the obligatory well meaning guy on the wrong side of the tracks who learns a lesson about doing the right thing...) In keeping with all good Star Wars books, ‘Knight Errant’ moves along at a ferocious pace and it’s very easy to get caught up in the rush.

Was that enough for me though? Not really. ‘Knight Errant’ may well be very good at what it does (and it is) but it doesn’t do enough to stand out from the rest of the pack as a book in its own right. It could be any Star Wars book that I’m reading here and if that’s the kind of choice that I’m faced with then you’ll always see me going for the Star Wars reads that I know will do the job for me. Timothy Zahn’s books are the deal here.
I guess you can’t blame Miller really as the success of the line is based on a well established formula that looks like it must be adhered to (although like I said, there are loads of Star Wars books that I haven’t read now so I could be wrong here). ‘Knight Errant’ is just a little too formulaic for me though...

Six out of Ten

‘Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others’ – Mike Mignola (Dark Horse)

I’ve only read two of the ‘Hellboy’ graphic novels, so far, and have had wildly differing experiences of the setting in each. While ‘Seed of Destruction’ was a great read that promised great things for the series to come, ‘Wake the Devil’ turned everything on its head by wrapping everything up far too quickly and not really giving the reader much of a chance (if any at all) to really build on what had come before. I’ve since been reliably informed that things do get a lot better and I’d do well to stick around; I’d pretty much decided to do that anyway after having read ‘The Chained Coffin’. Rewinding things a little though... Picking up ‘The Chained Coffin’ saw things evenly balanced between the ‘good’ and ‘more than slightly disappointing’ and, for me, it’s times like these when a series feels like it can go either way... purely on the strength of the book that you’re just about to dig into. Despite some slight misgivings, ‘The Chained Coffin’ points things in the right direction again and (like I said) I’ll be carrying on with the rest of the series because of it.

‘The Chained Coffin’ is a break from the main Hellboy arc (Arcs? I don’t really know having not got that far with it as yet) in the form of several short stories about our favourite demonic paranormal investigator. If you never picked up the individual comic books, which these stories featured in, then this edition will be very welcome.

While the short stories differ in quality, at least as far as I’m concerned’, the one thing that is consistently good throughout is (once again) the artwork of Mike Mignola. One thing I’m finding difficult about reviewing ongoing series like this one is the fact that I’m inevitably saying the same thing over and over again about the artwork. If you’ve read my reviews of the last two books then you might want to just skip this paragraph entirely and go straight to what I’ve got to say about the stories themselves...
For those of you who haven’t, Mignola’s art perfectly captures a grim and dark supernatural world that exists just beyond the corner of your eye and once you’ve seen what Mignola populates this world with then you might just find yourself looking over your shoulder. The artwork here is not only atmospheric but packs a punch just when the story demands it.

As far as the stories themselves go, it’s more of a mixed bag in terms of overall quality. To be fair you can’t really blame Mignola for this as he was obviously working to tight constraints in terms of format so there was obviously only so much that he could do in a certain amount of space.
‘The Iron Shoes’ and ‘The Baba Yaga’ are the main casualties here with plenty happening but not really much to explain why. Having said that though, ‘The Baba Yaga’ is worth a look as it fills in a pretty important gap in ‘Wake the Devil’.
Brevity isn’t necessarily a bad thing though as Mignola proves in the titular piece where Hellboy discovers what might be a clue to his own origin. ‘The Chained Coffin’ is a tale that leaves you wanting more after finishing it and that’s never a bad thing.

As Mignola has more room to work in, the stories gradually reflect what he is really able to do in terms of building up an interesting plot that throws the reader in unexpected directions. ‘The Wolves of St. August’ and ‘Almost Colossus’ (which offers another link to events in ‘Wake the Devil’) are great examples of this (the imagery of the little girl with the wolf’s head is superb by the way) and the compilers of this volume pulled off a masterstroke by opening with ‘The Corpse’ which is possibly the most gripping Hellboy story I’ve read so far. You want him to succeed here but you can quite understand why others might want him to fail. Watching these conflicting themes play out made for some compelling reading.
The only longer story that bucked the trend here was ‘A Christmas Underground’, a tale that was rich in atmosphere but didn’t feel like it had a lot of meat to it. Maybe a second read will prove me wrong.

That’s the thing about this volume, despite my misgivings there will definitely be more than one read to be had here. ‘The Chained Coffin’ is a sinister selection of dark treats that offer us an insight into what it means to be Hellboy and walk in this world. I’m really hoping for more of the same to come.

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

Dan Abnett signing at Forbidden Planet.

After missing out on seeing Dan Abnett at the SFX Weekender (I’ve got loads of his stuff that I’d like to get signed) this email made for some welcome reading.

Forbidden Planet is pleased to announce an EXCLUSIVE PRE-PUBLICATION signing by Dan Abnett for the Forbidden Planet Limited Edition of his new Angry Robot novel Embedded. This will take place at the Forbidden Planet Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR, on Saturday 26th March 1 – 2pm

The colony planet of Eighty-Six looks as dull as all its fellow new worlds to veteran journalist Lex Falk, but when a local squabble starts to turn violent, and the media start getting the runaround from the military high command, his interest is seriously piqued. Forbidden from approaching the battlezone, he gets himself chipped inside the head of a combat veteran – and uncovers the story of a lifetime. When the soldier is killed, however, Falk must use all his resourcefulness to get back home again… and blow the lid off the whole damn thing.

Dan lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. He has laudable pile of comic titles to his credit, including work for both Marvel and DC; he’s also been one of 2000AD’s most prolific writers and responsible for one of the longest running strips of the last decade, Sinister Dexter. More recently, he’s the Black Library’s leading author, writer of several of the enormously successful Horus Heresy series including Horus Rising and Prospero Burns. Embedded is his second standalone novel for Angry Robot Books.

Abnett is swiftly becoming my ‘go to author’ for all things military sci-fi so (all the usual stuff permitting) you might just see me there for this one.

‘What they hear in the dark’ – Gary McMahon (Spectral Press)

Who says that horror is a dead genre? Leisure Fiction may have done their best to kill it off in the US, and the current deluge of Urban Fantasy doesn’t leave it what’s left a lot of room on the bookshelves, but it’s still there for those of us who know where to look. Spectral Press is the latest small publisher to give the genre a shot in the arm with its release of limited edition chapbooks dedicated to the ghostly and supernatural. ‘What they hear in the dark’ is actually Spectral Press’ first publication and definitely bodes well for the future…

After their young son’s murder, Rob and Becky bought the old house as a way of trying to save their marriage by building something new. It was never going to be as easy as that though, some cracks were never meant to be papered over and the couple’s relationship is at a breaking point.
Then Rob and Becky find a room in the house that was never in the plans, a room that swallows all sound and leaves you with only your own thoughts for company. A room where demons can either be exorcised or given free rein…

I’ve never read a chapbook before so was interested to see that ‘What they hear in the dark’ is only twenty-one pages long. The shortest books I normally read are around the three to four hundred page mark so it was a real change to read something that would literally take as long to read as it would take to have a cup of coffee (I drink coffee that I make very quickly!)

‘What they hear in the dark’ initially came across as very rushed with the ending arrived at before you’ve had a chance to get acquainted with the beginning. I’m writing that off as my unfamiliarity with the chapbook format though, it is only twenty-one pages long after all! A second read through really paid dividends though.

You may not have much of a chance to get to find out much about Rob and Becky but what McMahon does do is build up an oppressing ‘haunted house’ atmosphere in a very short space of time, working this around Rob and Becky’s very differing feelings over their son’s death. Things are sign posted very clearly but this somehow adds to the overall tension that arises as things progress. You know what’s happening, Rob and Becky don’t, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The ending is particularly chilling as one of the couple finds out the worst possible consequences of bringing your own ghosts to the Quiet Room. It was at this point that I was literally holding my breath and McMahon cruelly ends the story in such a way that I had to release that breath just after finishing.

Gary McMahon is fast becoming a horror writer to look out for and ‘What they hear in the dark’ is a fine example of his natural skill in this field; a tale that creeps up on you and has it’s claws in you before you know it. Grab it if you can.

Nine out of Ten

P.S. I wouldn’t normally post links to buy books but these chapbooks are very limited edition (only a hundred at a time being printed I think) and you will miss out if you’re not careful. Click Here for more information – I think I might have to take out a subscription.

Giveaway! ‘The Unremembered’ (Peter Orullian)

Now here’s a title that has somehow found its way onto a whole load of ‘Looking forward to picking this one up’ type lists. Check out the blurb...

The gods, makers of worlds, seek to create balance—between matter and energy; and between mortals who strive toward the transcendent, and the natural perils they must tame or overcome. But one of the gods fashions a world filled with hellish creatures far too powerful to allow balance; he is condemned to live for eternity with his most hateful creations in that world’s distant Bourne, restrained by a magical veil kept vital by the power of song.

Millennia pass, awareness of the hidden danger fades to legend, and both song and veil weaken. And the most remote cities are laid waste by fell, nightmarish troops escaped from the Bourne. Some people dismiss the attacks as mere rumor. Instead of standing against the real threat, they persecute those with the knowledge, magic and power to fight these abominations, denying the inevitability of war and annihilation. And the evil from the Bourne swells….

The troubles of the world seem far from the Hollows where Tahn Junell struggles to remember his lost childhood and to understand words he feels compelled to utter each time he draws his bow. Trouble arrives when two strangers—an enigmatic man wearing the sigil of the feared Order of Sheason and a beautiful woman of the legendary Far—come, to take Tahn, his sister and his two best friends on a dangerous, secret journey. Tahn knows neither why nor where they will go. He knows only that terrible forces have been unleashed upon mankind and he has been called to stand up and face that which most daunts him—his own forgotten secrets and the darkness that would destroy him and his world.

I’m interested to see how far this one stretches itself beyond what looks like a fairly typical blurb. Look for a review... well... hopefully a few days after I receive my advance copy :o)

In the meantime, how do you fancy checking out this title a little earlier than the rest of us? Thanks to Tor, I have three advance copies of ‘The Unremembered’ to give away to three US/Canadian readers of the blog (sorry about that everyone else). If you want in then 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 ‘The Unremembered’.

I’ll let this one run until the 13^th of February and will aim to announce the winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good Luck!

Giveaway! ‘The Auralia Thread’ (Jeffrey Overstreet)

I’m more than a little bit excited about this one (although not mad keen on the above art work)...

Way back in the dawn of the blog I was sent a copy of Jeffrey Overstreet’s ‘Auralia’s Colors’ to review and it turned out to be one of those surprise reads that I end up really enjoying – review Here. Me being me, I promptly forgot about the rest of the series until I got an email from Waterbrook Press asking me if I’d like to review ‘The Ale Boy’s Feast’ (the last book in the series). To cut a long story short, not only will I be catching up with the three books that I haven’t read (looking forward to that) but I also thought it would be cool to run a giveaway for this series at the same time. So here goes...

Thanks to the good people at Waterbrook Press, one lucky winner will receive a pack containing ‘Auralia’s Colors’, Cyndere’s Midnight’, Raven’s Ladder’ and ‘The Ale Boy’s Feast’. If ‘Auralia’s Colors’ is anything to go by then you should be in for some quality reading. Unfortunately though, this competition is only open to people living in the US or Canada (sorry about that everyone else...)

If you’re still with me then you’re doubtless already sending me an email (address at the top right hand side of the screen) telling me who you are and what your postal address is. I’m also pretty sure that your subject header will be ‘Auralia’.

I’ll let this competition run until the 13^th of February and will aim to announce winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good Luck!

Well, there was going to be a review here but...

We were in and out of hospital with Hope yesterday so today's review is more like next week's review instead... Hope is ok though (will be even better once she can start keeping food down a bit better) and that's the main thing :o)

These two books were waiting for me when we got back from the hospital (the first time) and not only are they potentially great reads but they look good as well so I thought I'd post pictures. Check em' out...

Don't they look gorgeous? Sometimes simple really is best :o)

Adventures in the Reading pile (an occasional series)…

If you like reading books then you have a reading pile, that’s the long and short of it. Whether it’s just a couple of books from the library or a pile that has spilled off the shelves and swallowed your cat… ‘Reading Pile’ is such a vague term so it all counts.

My reading pile currently sits at maybe, well… I don’t know really know how many books are in it right now. Definitely over a hundred and I’ve got plans to read them all… eventually… one day.
That’s the thing about plans isn’t it? You can have all the good intentions you want but life gets involved, throws its elbows around and before you know it there are books on the pile that you’ve been planning to read for years (I’ve got a few of those)…

What I also find though is that I don’t need life to stop me reading books from the pile, I’m quite capable of doing that for myself (no matter how much I’m looking forward to picking up the book in question). Take this book for example,

‘The Anvil of the World’ has only been on the pile for the last couple of months, a mere whippersnapper when compared to some of the longer term residents, but it’s one that stands out as one of my eagerly anticipated reads. Baker’s sci-fi stuff (what I’ve read of it) was good but her fantasy work was where it’s at as far as I’m concerned. ‘The House of the Stag’ and ‘The Bird of the River’ made for superb reading and were both that special kind of book where you read them and feel like you’re waking up in the world that they are portraying. If you ever find yourself at my place you’ll see these two books on the shelf.

‘The Anvil of the World’ will round off my reading nicely (even though it’s actually the book that begins this loose trilogy) but as much as I want to get into it… I can’t pick it up. You see, Kage Baker passed away around about this time last year and I know that once I’ve read ‘The Anvil of the World’… well, that’s it. No more of Baker’s fantasy for me.

It’s completely irrational but there you go. I may never pick this book up, I might just give myself a metaphorical clip around the ear and start reading tomorrow. In the meantime, ‘The Anvil of the World’ continues to sit on the pile with long term residents such as Glen Cook’s ‘Lord of the Silent Kingdom’ (three years and counting) and Alastair Reynolds’ ‘Terminal World’. Do you have any books like this on your pile? What’s stopping you from picking them up?

News from here and there...

Every so often, my email inbox gives me a metaphorical tap on the shoulder and politely reminds me that it’s carrying a whole load of press releases and would I kindly mind doing something about them all. I believe in trying to be nice to my inbox at all times so post all the news bits on here instead, leaving my inbox free for other things.

Check this lot out...

Signings at Forbidden Planet (London)!

Forbidden Planet is pleased to announce a signing by Jasper Fforde for his new novel One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing at the Forbidden Planet Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR, on Wednesday 23rd March from 1 – 2pm.


Jasper Fforde is one of the UK’s most imaginative and entertaining authors. He creates hilarious, absurd and compelling adventures within bizarre and zany worlds and has enjoyed international success with two bestselling series. His books are loved by readers and have a mass following of dedicated fans.

Thursday Next is a literary detective who juggles her time between contemporary Swindon (though the Crimean War has not yet ended and dodos are house pets) and her travels in the world of fiction. In this, the sixth book in the series, it is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only Thursday’s diplomatic skills can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, she vanishes. Has she returned home to the RealWorld or is this more sinister?

But all is not lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worthy of her illustrious Namesake. With her clockwork butler Sprockett and her Designated Love Interest Whitby Jett, Thursday has to get to grips with her inability to match up to her Namesake's talent, and prove herself to the one person she respects more than anyone else: The real her...

I haven’t read any of Fforde’s books but do have a copy of ‘One of Our Thursdays is Missing’ sat patiently on the reading pile. I hope to pick it up soon.

That’s not the only signing I’ve got news of though...

Forbidden Planet is pleased to announce a signing by David Wingrove for his astounding novel Son of Heaven at the Forbidden Planet Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR, on Thursday 3rd March 6 – 7pm.

The year is 2085, two decades after the great economic collapse. It’s power broken and it’s cities ruined, the West continues in scattered communities. In rural Dorset, Jake Reed lives with his 14-year old son, haunted by memories. Back in ’43, Jake was a rich young futures broker, immersed in the datascape of the world’s financial markets. He saw what was coming – and was one of the few to escape. For 22 years, he’s lived in fear of the future – and now it’s coming towards him. Chinese airships are in the skies and a strange glacial structure is dominating the horizon. A civil war looms – and Jake will find himself at the heart of the struggle for the future.

This all sounds well and good but I hear that this series is around twenty volumes long... I’m having enough trouble with series that are around half the length! I don’t think I’ll be picking this one up but could I be missing out? Drop me a comment if you’ve read this series (being reprinted by Corvus) and let me know.

The Americans among us might be sat there thinking that they wouldn’t mind going to the Fforde signing but they’re more than a little put off by the distance (I would be). You’ll all be pleased to know that Fforde is touring in the US as well, Check out the dates...

Barnes & Noble /NY, NY / Union Square / March 8 / 7pm
Brookline Booksmith / Brookline, MA / March 9 / 6pm
Joseph-Beth Booksellers / Lexington, KY / March 10 / 7pm
Book People / Austin, TX / March 11 / 7pm
M is for Mystery / San Mateo, CA / March 12 / 2pm
Barnes & Noble (SE 82nd Ave.) / Portland, OR / March 14 / 7pm
Tattered Cover / Denver, CO / march 15 / 7:30pm
Minneapolis Public Library / Minneapolis, MN / March 16 / 7pm
Kansas City Library / Kansas City, MO / March 17 / 7pm
St. Louis County Library / St. Louis, MO / March 18 / 7pm
Quail Ridge Books & Music / Raleigh, NC / March 19 / 5pm

Orbit acquires three new ‘Dresden Files’ novels!

This isn’t news as such because, to be honest, the Dresden books do so well that we’d be more surprised if Orbit had decided not to acquire the next three books... It’s a press release though and that’s enough to see it featured in this post,

Little, Brown Book Group’s Orbit imprint has acquired three new Dresden Files books in this Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling sequence by author Jim Butcher. Commissioning Editor Bella Pagan bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Ritsuko Okumura at Penguin US. The Dresden Files books have attracted a loyal army of fans and follow the trials and tribulations of Harry Dresden, P.I., the only wizard in the Chicago phonebook.

Pagan said: “I couldn’t be more delighted to acquire more of these amazing books. Jim Butcher’s writing seems to gets better with each book, as he delivers high octane supernatural shenanigans leavened with Harry Dresden’s appealing wry humour. If you love urban fantasy with a strong crime element, Jim Butcher is at the top of his game.”


Orbit has Changes in paperback coming out in March, followed in July by Ghost Story in hardback. The first new Dresden Files hardback will be released next year, matching Penguin US dates.

I’m horribly behind with my Dresden reading, should really do something about that.
And talking of being horribly behind with my reading...

Chapter One of Steven Erikson’s ‘The Crippled God’ up on Tor.com!

Calling all Malazan fans!! THE CRIPPLED GOD, the highly-anticipated final volume in Steven Erikson’s New York Times bestselling epic fantasy series, “The Malazan Book of the Fallen,” comes out from Tor Books on March 1, 2011, but fans can read a sneak peek of Chapter 1 right now on Tor.com at 12pm noon EST today (Note from Graeme: I actually got this email on Monday night and should have posted this sooner, dammit...)

www.tor.com/crippledgod

The Malazan Book of the Fallen,” starting with Gardens of the Moon, has always been for the hardcore fantasy fan: the series we recommend to those who want the best of the genre. The sheer size and scope of Erikson’s world-building is unparalleled, the many plotlines and convergences, dozens of original creatures and races, and hundreds if not thousands of unique characters. But alas, we’ve reached the end…where the final confrontation between gods, ascendents, and mortals is destined to go down as the mother of all convergences.

Great news for those of us who have managed to read ‘Dust of Dreams’, if you’re me though... well, you’re probably looking a little shamefaced right about now. I’ll get there, one day... (And maybe then I’ll think about tackling Esslemont’s books as well)

That’s about enough news from me for now. Before I go though it would be remiss of me not to introduce a little public service element to this post, especially where zombies are concerned! Check out this link if you’re not already stocked up in preparation for the zombie apocalypse; it could very well save your life... ;o)

‘The Founding’ – Dan Abnett (Black Library)

Big thick books are the absolute bane of my life at the moment. On the one hand a thick book should mean that there’s potentially more goodness inside, waiting for me to get stuck in. On the other hand though, there isn’t enough room on the tube to even think about opening a chunky book let alone actually doing it for real. If you’ve written a thick and chunky book this is more than likely the reason why it hasn’t made it off my reading pile yet, sorry about that...
Not for much longer though! One of my ‘unofficial New Year’s Resolutions’ was to try and get through more of these books, if only to make the back bedroom look a little tidier. There were many candidates for the first book to be picked up but, in the end, I settled for Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K omnibus ‘The Founding’.

If my reading pile is anything to go by, Dan Abnett must loom over the Black Library like a colossus having written extensively in both the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K settings. I can be notoriously bad at starting a series at the beginning and so it was that I came to ‘The Founding’ via ‘Blood Pact’ and the ‘Sabbat Worlds’ anthology. There was enough in these two books for me to know that going back to the beginning of the series would be worthwhile at the very least. ‘The Founding’ contains the novels ‘First and Only’, ‘Ghostmaker’ and Necropolis’ as well as the short story ‘In Remembrance’; I was going to break it down into a review for each of the three books but eventually decided to look at the three books in terms of the single omnibus that they are collected in as well as a brief look at the three individually...

The worlds of the Sabbat systems have slaved under the rule of their heretical overlords for too long! A crusade force of Imperial Guard (numbering in the millions) and Space Marines has been tasked with reclaiming these worlds for the Imperium in an offensive that will carry on for some years.
Amongst this vast organisation of men and machinery are the ‘Tanith First and Only’, a newly raised regiment that saw their world destroyed around them, by the forces of Chaos, while they were boarding the troop ships for deep space. These men would rather have died fighting for Tanith and resent their commanding officer, Commissar Ibram Gaunt, for not allowing them to do this. Gaunt must mould these recalcitrant men into a force capable of winning worlds for the Imperium but, while he does this, he must also negotiate the infighting that arises from the politics between rival Imperial Guard regiments. If Gaunt can succeed at both of these tasks then his tiny regiment might just be ready to take on the massed ranks of cultists, heretics and Traitor Marines that stand between the crusade and liberation of the Sabbat worlds...

‘The Founding’ is an eminently readable book that I think any fan of military sci-fi will get a lot out of (as well as established 40K gamers). It has pretty much everything you’re after with a wide ranging interstellar war packed full of men and machinery, a well defined military hierarchy and plenty of well drawn settings to take the fight to. Most important though are the regular troops themselves and Abnett not only gives his readers a good look at the main players but he also leaves you in no doubt as to what it means to be an Imperial Guard in the forty first millennium. When a military organisation numbers it troops in the countless millions then the rank and file can be thrown into the most extreme missions regardless of the cost in human life. Abnett illustrates this clearly by lending his characters real humanity and then dropping tonnes of munitions on their heads to see what they do next. There is some real stirring stuff here, more than enough in fact to make me want to fill in the massive gap that lies between these first three books and ‘Blood Pact’. The way in which the three stories link together so well also makes the prospect of future reading a pleasure rather than a chore.

Looking at the three books individually though tells a slightly different story as certain of these books, although holding true to the positive aspects that contribute to the overall anthology, does suffer from its own individual flaws.

 ‘First and Only’ serves as a fine introduction to not only the regiment but also to the Sabbat Worlds Crusade as a whole (thanks to those handy explanatory historical pieces at the beginning of each section). What I had trouble with though, given the wider context of the 40K universe and the religious zeal of its human citizens, was the extent of the rivalry that existed between regiments (or more specifically, the Tanith First & Only and everyone else). Would Guard Colonels really run the risk of ruining a military campaign in order to settle petty scores? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’ but it didn’t ring quite right with me. On the plus side though, the ‘espionage/counter espionage sub-plot’ was fun to follow with an ending that really makes you think about the ethics and morals of the Imperium; some people will do anything to win the war...

‘Ghostmaker’ was an odd one in that the narrative approach intrigued me at the same time as it came across as diverting the main plot unnecessarily. I loved the flashbacks as they give you real insight into key players in the regiment (I’m looking at Larkin in particular here, I loved the story of his encounter with the angel; Rawne’s fight with the Ork is worth a look as well). At the same time though, this approach meant that you don’t really get to see a lot of the main plot (foiling a Chaos plot on the planet Monthax) itself which is relegated to the final chapters of the book. There is an attempt to tie it in with one of the flashbacks but this felt like ‘too little, too late’ to me.

‘Necropolis’ though... This makes up for the shortcomings of the first two books with an epic slice of warfare taking in two hives (gigantic country spanning cities) that have been thrown into war with each other through the corrupting influence of Chaos. Abnett gets the balance spot on here and displays a fine ability to switch from the cut and thrust of large scale engagements to the smaller (yet just as deadly) confrontations between skirmishers. In between the warfare outside the hive (and inside it too) Abnett not only gives us a captivating picture of how the war affects ordinary citizens but also throws up some absorbing side plots as a result.
‘Necropolis’ is a gorgeous read and quite possibly the book that ensured I will read the rest of the series.

‘The Founding’ isn’t without its faults but offers enough potential to show why this series is held in such high regard by its fans. I’ll be reading more to see if the series lives up to these standards.

Eight and a Quarter out of Ten

‘The Age of Odin’ – James Lovegrove (Solaris)

To be honest, I’ve never paid too much attention to bestseller lists and what’s on them; as is well known here, my methods of choosing that next book to read tend to range from ‘ooh pretty cover!’ to ‘can’t be bothered to get up off the sofa, what’s the nearest book’... Until a couple of days ago that is. I received an email from the people at Solaris who were understandably very proud of the fact that James Lovegrove’s ‘The Age of Odin’ had hit the New York Times Bestseller Lists at number thirty three. I don’t know how high you have to get up the list before it’s seen as a big deal but coming thirty third isn’t bad is it?
I’d steered clear of Lovegrove’s ‘The Age of Zeus’ as I hadn’t read the book before it but the email assured me that all of these books were stand alone and could be read as such. Seeing as I had a copy of ‘The Age of Odin’ on the reading pile, there didn’t seem to be any excuses left not to finally give a bona fide New York Times bestseller a go. It wasn’t a bad read but...

Gideon Coxall was a good soldier until a roadside bomb left him deaf in one ear and a metal plate in his head; now he’s good for nothing except dead end jobs and being an example of the kind of absentee father that the Child Support Agency makes its living on. That’s Gideon’s life until the day he hears of a mysterious agency looking to take on retired military personnel for unspecified combat operation; the pay is excellent so Gideon’s in. The Valhalla Project is far more than a mercenary unit though. The world is in the grip of the Fimbul Winter and that can only mean that Ragnarok is not far away at all... Gideon’s new employers are none other than the Viking gods of myth which can only mean that Gideon will be fighting frost giants, trolls and... the American army?

‘The Age of Odin’ is one of those funny books where you have a lot of fun reading it but when you come back to it, a couple of days later, you find that you cannot remember a lot about it. It’s very much the ‘book equivalent’ of watching one of the Transformers movies, loads of sound and action but maybe not quite so much in the way of story...

That’s not to say it’s not a fun read for the commute because that’s exactly where I read it and I had a great deal of fun doing so. And maybe I’m being a little unfair with the whole ‘not so much in the way of story’ thing. If your subject matter is Norse gods then you can’t do much else with them apart from have them go up against frost giants for a big old scrap. Lovegrove does this with great zeal and a keen sense of the dramatic, taking time to ponder how Norse legend might play out in the twenty first century and giving us his well worked take on this. You can’t deny the power and fury of the resulting conflict and it makes for gripping reading at the time. By keeping the plot true to Norse myth though, Lovegrove’s work becomes too episodic and repetitive (monster turns up, monster is defeated, wait for the next monster to arrive, monster turns up...) and this means you get lulled into a comfortable rhythm when what you’re really after is a shock to the system. I also found that if you know a little bit about Norse legends then Lovegrove’s faithfulness in this regard does rob the plot of some much needed tension. You might not know what will happen to Gideon (although you can work it out) but you know exactly what’s going to happen to all of the other main players, pretty much before you get too far into the book.
There are a couple of decent twists, during the course of the plot, but Lovegrove’s subject matter proves to be too much of a constraint for anything huge to be able to come out of left field and smack you right between the eyes...

At the same time though, ‘The Age of Odin’ is an undeniably entertaining read; very much a book for those of us who decided that our childhood games would involve taking on the might of the Norse pantheon armed with machine guns and grenades. (For the record, I never did this but I really wish I had now...) Gideon Coxall is unlikeable enough a character to make you want to stick around and see if his attempts to redeem himself come to fruition; he also has the balls to throw himself into any number of situations that make for literally explosive reading.
On this score, ‘The Age of Odin’ is a read where the pages absolutely fly by; you can’t help but be carried along by what is obviously a successful combination of ‘myth and munitions’.

I can totally see why ‘The Age of Odin’ made it onto the New York Times Bestseller’s List; in terms of entertainment value alone it certainly deserves to be up there and I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it on the big screen in a few years from now.
It’s a shame then that the story itself didn’t quite match the pyrotechnics on display. I wasn’t surprised that this was the case (given the constraints mentioned) but I still felt a little flat after finishing the book...

Seven out of Ten

The 'I've been promised free tortillas!' Competition Winner's Post!

Is there any better way to start the week than to be promised free tortillas? No, I didn't think so either... Thank you nice lady handing out free tortilla leaflets at the entrance to my office! All I have to do now is come to work tomorrow and pick up the little coupon that gets me the grub (a good reason to come to work)...

I'm not the only person though who will be getting free stuff (and I'm not counting everyone else who picked up a free tortilla leaflet outside my work); I'm talking about the two people who won copies of 'The Difference Engine' in the competition I ran last week. The lucky winners were...

Milo Milton-Jefferies, Devon, UK
Jamie Gibbs, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

Well done guys! Your books will be on their way as soon as I can make it to a post office to send them...

Have a great week everyone! I'm working my way through 'Knight Errant' so as to have a review up later this week. What you can count on appearing though are reviews for James Lovegrove's 'The Age Of Odin', Dan Abnett's first 'Gaunt's Ghosts' omnibus and Charlie Higson's 'The Dead'...

A Lazy Sunday Cover Art Post...

Because, well... it's Sunday isn't it? After the last week at work today is officially a lazy Sunday. It's such a lazy Sunday, in fact, that I can't even be bothered to do one of those posts where I link to other people's posts. If that's what you're looking for then click on the blog names at the right hand side of the screen, the content is all good :o)

Yep, what you're getting today is a brief look into my reading pile and what may or may not be read in the next few weeks...

The 'Will Reads'...

A lush and gorgeous setting in your book means that you get a lush and gorgeous picture on your book cover. It's only fair isn't it? I enjoyed 'The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms' so will be picking this up soon.

Proof positive that once you've got a multi-million dollar franchise behind you then you can have covers that are as generic as you like. The cover for 'Knight Errant' could really be the cover for any Star Wars book, couldn't it? Proving my own point though, I'm hoping to have this one read in the next week :o)

The 'Might Read'...

I'm not sure whether I'll pick this one up or not as I really didn't get on with 'Hunt for Voldorious'. Can't deny it's a gorgeous cover though :o) If  I spilled his pint, I'd apologise quickly and buy him two pints...

The 'Probably Won't Read'...

This one should probably sit in the 'might read' list but I haven't read 'The Bookman' and I've got a feeling that I should read this before picking up 'Camera Obscura'. I probably won't be reading 'The Bookman' anytime soon so can't see myself reading 'Camera Obscura'. Or is it 'stand alone'? I've got no idea...
Anyway, it's another nice looking cover if nothing else :o)

Have a great Sunday, whatever you're doing!

Just can’t seem to get into...

You know how it is, despite all the good things you hear about certain books you’ll invariably find that some of them just don’t work for you. What’s even more annoying is when the part of you that wants to keep reading ends up in conflict with the part of you that is physically having trouble working through each sentence. That’s where I am with a couple of books at the moment, I want to finish what I’ve started but it’s just not happening right now.

Glen Cook’s cover quote on Anthony Huso’s ‘The Last Page’ made it a book that I really wanted to check out. A chapter and a bit in though... Two characters that I’ve got no interest in pursuing a relationship that doesn’t seem to have any point to it. What I’ve seen of the surrounding world, so far, doesn’t really make me want to find out more about it either. I’m only a chapter and a bit into though, possibly too early to bale out? Other bloggers, whose opinions I trust, have got a lot out of this book so maybe I shouldn’t give up on it just yet.

James Enge’s ‘This Crooked Way’ is a different deal as I’m roughly half way through the book (instead of just past the first chapter) but have still come to a grinding halt. Whilst a big improvement on ‘The Blood of Ambrose’, I’ve come to the feeling that I’m not going to see anything new from Morlock Ambrosius other than the same smart tricks that I’ve seen already. It feels like both Morlock and Enge are treading water here and I want to see something more than that (although the way Morlock constantly outsmarts the troll was very funny).

I’m not after a big vote on whether or not to continue reading as I suspect I probably will anyway. I was just wondering if any of you guys have read either of these books and, if so, what you thought of them. Any comments on beating ‘Reader’s Block’ will be appreciated too!

‘The Enemy’ – Charlie Higson (Puffin)

One of the things that I’ve really come to look forward to, as far as running this blog goes, is that magical feeling you get when you pick up a book that you know nothing about and end up being blown away by what’s inside? Checking out something for the first time is always a risk but when it really pays off like that it’s always worth taking that chance. These days, what with one thing and another, I’m more inclined to stick with what I know but I still love the buzz I get from a ‘surprise read’ so you’ll still see me taking a chance on new stuff in the future.
Charlie Higson’s ‘The Enemy’, I have to say, is not one of those books.

I actually came to read ‘The Enemy’ as a direct result of picking up its sequel, ‘The Dead’, over Christmas and swiftly coming to realise that I had a ‘surprise read’ on my hands. As you know, I don’t generally tend to read ‘Young Adult’ books (nothing against them as such, there’s just a whole load of adult books that I want to read first) but I gave ‘The Dead’ a go and am very glad that I did. More on that when I review it in the next week or so. I didn’t hang around after finishing it and went straight out to find a copy of ‘The Enemy’. Perhaps I should have reviewed these books in the order that I read them but ‘The Enemy’ kicks things off so it seemed like the logical place to start...

No-one knows how it all began but that’s not the point anymore; no-one under the age of fourteen is safe anymore... All the adults got sick and some of them died but the ones that are left... they’re hungry and they’re coming for the children that are left on the streets.
Children hole up all over London in locations with varying degrees of safety but the end looks inevitable. That is until rumours appear of a place that is not only safe but offers children the chance to begin an entirely new life. One gang of children are about to start searching for this safe house; all they have to do is find their way across a London where even the most innocent looking doorway could prove to be a trap. And don’t even think about taking the underground...

I haven’t been entirely truthful here. The other reason that I don’t generally feature YA fiction here these days is that, well... I’m an adult but I’m not the kind of ‘Young Adult’ that this book is aimed at. How to approach a book like this then? Wouldn’t it be unfair to judge a YA book through adult eyes? The solution wasn’t hard to come by but a little difficult to implement so you’ll have to bear with me here.
Yes, the solution was to invite another reviewer onto the blog and let them say their piece about ‘The Enemy’. That reviewer was still me though; it’s just that I decided to see what I would have got out of this reading experience as a ten year old boy as well as what I got out of reading it now (I would have read this as a ten year old although it’s probably aimed at boys who are slightly older).

Not being the overly critical type (far preferring a hefty dose of action and gore), my ten year old self loved reading ‘The Enemy’, a fast moving book that’s punctuated liberally with shocks and gore. There’s always something happening and the pages are very easy to keep turning as a result. The whole ‘kids vs. adults’ thing has been done in a number of places before but there’s a very good reason for that (what child isn’t going to want to read a book where the grownups get their *cough* handed to them?) and Higson uses this approach to good affect, upping the stakes with the mindless acts of violence that the adults are capable of. Being a child is no protection here and Higson makes that abundantly clear with several graphic scenes of violence that my ten year old self loved but also more than justified the warning on the back of the book. In short, an unqualified success and a great way to keep my inner child happy.

As a thirty five year old reader though? I’m not so sure...

I can’t deny that all the cool stuff I would have enjoyed as a child still appeals to me these days and ‘The Enemy’ very much delivers, on that front, for all the reasons I’ve laid out (although I’m on the other side of the whole ‘children/adult’ divide now and would want that side to win!) This was very much a ‘polish off in one sitting’ kind of book.
What I found though is that the frantic pace of ‘The Enemy’ has the unfortunate affect of making it a book where style wins out at the expense of substance. You can’t blame the book for that as the demands of the plot pretty much demand that sacrifices are made to keep things powering forwards. It was annoying though to see character development pushed to one side in favour of sound bites that are used to distinguish one character from another; the children ended up merging into one ‘uber child’ after a while... The concerns that the children did have didn’t strike a chord with me at all but then, to be fair, they wouldn’t do would they?
Without wanting to give too much away about the plot, there were also moments that had me scratching my head and thinking ‘this doesn’t gel with what’s going on in the rest of the book...’ There’s at least one more book to come after ‘The Dead’ though so maybe things will make more sense then (they didn’t now though...)

I can see ‘The Enemy’ really appealing to its target male audience who would get a lot of enjoyment out of it. For me these days? It’s a fun and light read for the commute lacking the substance to take it to another level.
For the record... My ten year old self wanted to give ‘The Enemy’ top marks but then he would :o) I’d personally score it at a six. The true score lies somewhere in between...

‘Sword of Vengeance’ – Chris Wraight (Black Library)

It’s funny how time can pass and you don’t even realise it’s happening sometimes. I read Chris Wraight’s ‘Sword of Justice’ way back in August last year and had a hell of a time with it. Wraight’s journey into the Old World may not have been perfect but it was almost there. Plenty of politics, battles and a threat growing in the shadows... all at once! I don’t read an awful lot of stuff in the Warhammer fantasy setting but I would go so far as to say that ‘Sword of Justice’ made this world come alive for me while I was reading. If you like fantasy then give this one a go, that’s all there is to it.
All of this had me looking forward to the release of ‘Sword of Vengeance’, probably one of my most anticipated Black Library titles after ‘Prospero Burns’. In situations like these though, you can’t help but wonder whether the new book will meet the high standards set by its predecessor and whether any kinks will be ironed out. Reading ‘Sword of Vengeance’ left me in no doubt that Wraight easily maintains the standards set in ‘Sword of Justice’ but the slight problems that the last book suffered from are still here... (It goes without saying that you might want to skip the next paragraph or two if you haven’t read ‘Sword of Justice’ and want to avoid inevitable spoilers...)

The province of Averland has fallen to the insidious taint of Chaos that Ludwig Schwarzhelm inadvertently helped to thrive in the fractious city of Averheim. An army of cultists arises, headed by a woman with dark plans stretching far beyond the mortal realm. When Chaos threatens, the Empire responds with brutal force and a vast army led by the Grand Theogonist himself marches on Averheim to purge the unclean and restore Imperial rule. Ludwig Schwarzhelm is also on his way back to Averheim with fresh knowledge of the enemy’s plans and full of the desire to redeem himself. What waits for them in Averheim though may be too much for even these two mighty heroes of the Empire to handle by themselves (well, them and the forty thousand soldiers in the army of the Grand Theogonist but you know what I mean...) All hope rests on Kurt Helborg and the secret discovered in the depths of Drakenmoor, that’s if he can survive to make any use of it...

Like I said, I’ve been waiting what feels like a long time for ‘Sword of Vengeance’ to see the light of day so I could find out how this tale ends. That’s the beauty of the Warhammer setting; things are just unrelentingly grim that the outcome is always in some degree of doubt. There was no way I was putting down once I’d started and I even found myself reading ‘Sword of Vengeance’ with the aid of a tiny reading light very late into the night (something I haven’t done with a book for more years than I want to remember). What? I didn’t want to wake the baby up...

Chris Wraight builds on a fantastic opening book and does it all over again here, rounding things off in fine style. ‘Sword of Vengeance’ is another helping of intensive character study, vicious political infighting and fighting very much of the ‘dirty great broadswords and magic’ kind. You find out just how high the stakes are and once you know then you’re in for the duration. You might be wondering here if Wraight is simply repeating what he did in the previous book... The approach is the same (why fix what was never broken in the first place?) but things are kept fresh by it all being applied to different people and situations. The disgraced elector-apparent Rufus Leitdorf, Grand Theogonist Volkmar and Kurt Helborg come to the fore here against a background of Chaos inevitably turning on itself. We get to learn a lot about the inner workings of characters that were either briefly looked at in the last book or were not mentioned at all; Wraight really delves into the depths of these people and lends his fictional characters a real air of humanity that makes the story itself pack more of a punch.

It’s a bit of a shame then that, having worked so hard to establish these characters Wraight sends them into situations that suffer from the same slight failings as before. I’m talking about the battle sequences here… Last time round I mentioned that things could drag out a bit but that you could excuse this to a point seeing as that really is how battles can go sometimes. This time round, the battle for Blackfire Pass seemed to drag and not necessarily in a good way. While you could certainly say that siege warfare involves a lot of impasse it felt like this sense of impasse almost worked too well, slowing the plot right down when it needed to maintain its impetus.
This end result is even more unfortunate when you compare the siege to the climactic battle for Averheim. When you see how well Wraight can write a battle scene (with heroic moments that will appeal to fans of the game as well as fantasy fans in general) you can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t do that for all the battles in the book. At the end of the day though you don’t get a bad return for your money at all. When Wraight is well and truly on song then you’re looking at battle scenes that well and truly stir the blood.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is cornering the market in excellent Warhammer 40K fiction and I think that what we’re seeing here is Chris Wraight beginning to do exactly the same thing on the fantasy side. Despite that odd niggle, ‘Sword of Vengeance’ is nothing less than a gripping read and I’m now left eagerly awaiting whatever’s next from this author. Look out for this book, on the shelves, in the next week or so.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

‘Gods of Manhattan’ – Al Ewing (Abaddon Books)

It was way back in August 2007 that I reviewed Al Ewing’s debut Abaddon piece ‘El Sombra’, a book that I regret losing now as it totally delivers on its promise of honest pulp fun with a liberal dose of Nazi death robots. Can you tell that I enjoyed it (because I did)? In fact I’d go so far as to say that it completely rocked and the first thing that I did upon finishing was to email Abaddon and ask if we were going to see any more adventures from my new favourite masked swordsman. Unfortunately the answer was ‘no’ but this was balanced out by the fact that I got to read the excellent ‘I, Zombie’ and ‘Death Got No Mercy’ instead. I did wonder though if El Sombra was going to go the way of certain other Abaddon titles (that perhaps didn’t do so well) and be quietly retired. I should have known that you can’t expect a man like El Sombra to go quietly...
I was very surprised (and excited at the same time) to see El Sombra make his return in ‘Gods of Manhattan’. It took me a little longer than anticipated to finally crack the book open and (as has been the case with certain other books) I had to kick myself for not doing it sooner. ‘Gods of Manhattan’ is one hell of a read...

While Ulysses Quicksilver is busy protecting the Empire of Magna Britannia it’s a whole different world on the other side of the Atlantic... Superheroes walk the streets of Manhattan, battling super villains as well as the last remnants of Hitler’s Reich (seeking to undermine America from within). Top superhero in Manhattan (and probably anywhere else in the world) is Doc Thunder, possessed of near invulnerability and impossible for criminals to stop. Monk, his sidekick, isn’t so lucky though and when an attack leaves him bleeding out in hospital Thunder knows that a game is afoot far deeper than any he has ever played before. A new vigilante is in town that is ready to use his pistols to make sure that crime is stamped out permanently, what are his real motives? Are any of the criminals that Doc Thunder saw dying actually dead? And just who is the masked Mexican swordsman pursuing his own agenda through the blood pouring onto the streets of Manhattan...?

After Al Ewing got all metaphysical and broke the fourth wall, in ‘Death Got No Mercy’, I have to admit that even though I was looking forward to reading ‘Gods of Manhattan’ there was still a part of me that approached the book with some trepidation. Using that approach really threw things out of kilter for me and I didn’t want to see that happen again here. It turned out that I didn’t need to worry, Ewing is all about keeping things simple here and just concentrating on the plot to hand; what the very lucky reader gets as a result is an thoroughly gripping read that never fails to entertain.

‘Gods of Manhattan’ is only a mere two hundred and thirty eight pages long but, if you didn’t check the page numbers, you would be forgiven for thinking that there’s twice that here with the sheer amount of plot that Ewing manages to cram into a relatively short space. If there’s a back to be stabbed or someone to be double crossed then you can safely say that’s what will happen. Maybe this lends a slightly predictable air to the proceedings but when you’re looking at a pulp fiction read then that’s almost the point isn’t it? Heroes are there to win through at the very end and the villains’ plots to take over (or even destroy) the world are there to be shot down in flames right at the very death. It’s not spoiling things to say that this is how it ends because the real fun lies in getting there and Ewing does have a few surprises to throw our way when we are least expecting it. Everything comes together very well at the end with the chaos unfolding in the plot doing very well to draw attention away from a firm pair of writing hands at the wheel. There is plenty going on here but all of it serves a purpose.

All of this is driven by characters who may subscribe heavily to ‘pulp tropes’ but are still a pleasure to follow throughout the book. It was great to see the return of El Sombra and finally pick up the story of a man torn between two very different personas (and the situations that this condition throws him into). When you hear that laugh you just know that something great is going to happen!
Doc Thunder also made for an interesting character to follow with his invulnerability offset by dark secrets that the book brings to the fore. These may not come as much of a surprise but the real fun is in watching how he deals with them.

If you’re a fan of Marvel or DC comics then ‘Manhattan Gods’ also has a lot to offer as it’s clear where Ewing has got a lot of his inspiration, for his superheroes, from. Reading ‘Manhattan Gods’ is like walking down a rogues gallery of iconic comic book heroes but Ewing sensibly errs on the side of not overplaying this hand too much; preferring instead to give us quick snapshots of these heroes before turning them loose into his bustling and almost nightmarish vision of Manhattan. I think he gets it spot on here with an interesting spin on established heroes who are perfectly suited to this particular environment (I don’t want to give too much away but I think you’ll like the heroes picked by Ewing to star here...)

You can’t have a superhero novel without at least one ‘smack down’, it’s pretty much the rule. It’s certainly a rule that Ewing is happy to follow as he punctuates the intrigue with plenty of action that takes large chunks out of the surrounding landscape. If we’re looking for a comparison here then I would have to go with ‘Superman vs. Doomsday’; yes, it’s that kind of a stand up fight and well worth the price of entry.

I can’t emphasise enough how much fun I had with ‘Gods of Manhattan’, a read with no pretensions other than to give its reader a ride like never before. Not only does it succeed but it does so in some style. Now to track down a replacement copy of ‘El Sombra’...

Nine and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘Allison Hewitt Is Trapped’ – Madeleine Roux (Headline)

‘I remember when all this was fields...’

Okay, maybe that’s a little overly dramatic but sometimes it really feels like you can’t take a step without tripping over a zombie novel these days. I remember a time (and it really wasn’t that long ago) when I went book shopping and could only find the two Brian Keene books and Joe McKinney’s ‘Dead City’ on the shelves. These days you’re spoilt for choice and I’m wondering whether that’s a good thing or not. I guess the bottom line is that if all these zombie novels are good then I’m quite happy for the shelves to be overflowing with them but that’s never gong to be the case is it? If there’s a demand for a certain genre of book then it stands to reason that publishers are going to go and hoover up anything similar that they can get their hands on and quality control suffers. I’ll happily admit that ‘quality control’ is a relative term and that books like ‘Allison Hewitt is Trapped’ may totally do it for you; it didn’t do it for me though (although I thought it would at first...)

When the zombie apocalypse arrives one of the worst places to be trapped has to be in the staff break room in a downtown book shop; low on essential supplies and rapidly getting bored reading the one magazine that is all anyone had on them (especially as there’s a whole load of books that you can’t get to!) What there is though is wireless internet and store worker Allison Hewitt has a laptop so...
What follows is an online journal detailing Allison Hewitt’s journey through the shattered landscape of the zombie apocalypse (as well as those of the people following her blog) starting from the break room and finishing at...

With the positive deluge of zombie novels out there at the moment it’s clearer than ever that a zombie book has to do things a little differently if it’s going to stand out from the rest. Roux has obviously taken this on board as ‘Allison Hewitt’ is possibly the only zombie novel that I’m aware of where the story is told via blog. When I saw this, I was immediately interested in reading more and seeing how this approach translates into a book. It was a bit of a mixed bag really...

What I did enjoy was the way that the ‘blog approach’ gives the reader more than one story of survival through the comments left by Allison’s readers. This isn’t just Allison’s story, there are people all over the world going through the same kind of thing and what the reader gets as a result is the sense of apocalypse on a worldwide scale. Some of these shorter responses are actually a lot harder hitting than what’s in the main bulk of the book and you get the feeling that people leaving these comments are really pressed for time and have to make every word count. It’s a shame then that these shorter comments are ultimately at odds with Allison’s journal itself which can come across as rambling and not so urgent in comparison.

It’s funny that the concept which got me interested in reading ‘Allison Hewitt’ is trapped was the very same concept that got in the way of my engaging with the book itself. I had the same kind of issue when I watched Romero’s ‘Diary of the Dead’; great film but I kept thinking that things couldn’t be that bad if the main character felt safe enough to carry a dirty great camera around and film it all. It’s the same kind of deal here with Allison at times worrying more about the wireless connection, on her laptop, than what dangers might lurk in this new world. I gave it a go but, in the end, I just couldn’t buy that scenario playing out and this gave me a lot of trouble trying to engage with the plot. I also couldn’t help wondering if the act of survival, in this landscape, was such a big deal if Allison was able to remember conversations etc in such detail at the end of each day. You could say that the whole situation was so traumatic that everything going on would be engrained in her memory but it just didn’t feel that dangerous to me you know that Allison will be there at the end of the day to blog about it.  J.L. Bourne’s ‘Day By Day Armageddon’ handles this approach a lot more effectively with a diary format that really gets across to the reader how dangerous things are (abrupt endings, cliff hangers etc).

This was a real shame as the character of Allison holds the plot together well and is someone that you want to follow, even when things appear contrived towards moving things on just for the sake of getting them going. I’m thinking about the zombie squirrel here by the way; what’s the point of introducing a zombie squirrel and then seeming to ignore the whole issue of zombie animals for the rest of the book (they should have been fighting their way through all kinds of zombie animals)? Not even a ‘lets get moving, keep an eye open for more zombie squirrels...’
Sorry, getting back on track again... While I may not have liked the way things were moved forwards there’s no questioning the fact that Allison is a good character to move forwards with. Allison may be afraid but knows that sitting still is the most dangerous thing to do when the dead are returning from the grave. You have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and that’s what Allison is good at. Roux also finds time to introduce an element of human drama (along with zombie obstacles) which forces Allison’s character to develop. The Allison we begin the book with isn’t the Allison who ends it and that is all to the good.

‘Allison Hewitt Is Trapped’ benefits greatly from its strong lead character but that ended up being almost the only reason I kept reading. The concept that the whole thing was meant to hang on didn’t hold up as far as I was concerned and that was a real shame for a book that had potential to begin with.
I'm pretty sure zombie fans will like this anyway but there is better out there.

Six and a Half out of Ten

The 'cheese and wine before bed is such a bad idea...' Competition Winner's Post!

I knew it was a bad idea, I just knew it... Didn't stop me though! Last  night was all about some of the trippiest dreams I've ever had and this morning is all about me feeling like someone has used my head as a door mat. Look, here's the deal. I'm going to tell you who won last week's 'Midnight Riot' competition and then I'm going to hide under my desk until the headache goes away...
The winners were,

Ruthann Shurtleff, Salt Lake City, Utah
Bill Jolly, Southaven, Mississippi,
Sara Chamama, New York

Well done guys, your books should be with you soon.

See you all tomorrow, I'm going to go and drink lots of coffee now...

Giveaway! ‘The Difference Engine’ (Bruce Sterling & William Gibson)

Being officially in my mid-thirties now, more and more things make me feel old and one of these is to find that a book I only read a few years ago (although it had been published for a few years by then) has all of a sudden found itself on the ‘Sci-Fi Masterworks’ list. What happened there? Where does the time go etc etc...?

I can think of at least one book with Gibson’s name on it that might have been a worthier choice for inclusion, as a ‘Sci-Fi Masterwork’, but ‘The Difference Engine’ is still worth a look and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing in the next couple of weeks when I go back for a re-read. How do you fancy joining me?

Thanks to Gollancz, I have two copies of ‘The Difference Engine’ to give away on the blog to two lucky UK readers. That’s right, this competition is only open to people in the UK... (I’m paying for the postage on this one and payday is a long way off) If you fancy your chances, use the normal email address (the one at the top right hand side of the screen) to drop me a line telling me who you are and what your postal address is. Your subject header will be ‘What’s the Difference?’ (because I never get tired of getting people to write silly things in email headers!)

I’ll leave this one open until the 30^th of January and will aim to announce the winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Good Luck!