Review Category: Books

There are a lot of Doctor Who books being published, and for most fans the decision will be which ones are worth reading? If that’s all you need to know, then the answer for The Legends of River Song is yes, this one is worth reading. You want more?

As the title might suggest, this 224-page book consists of a set of stories about River Song. In total there are five stories, each written by an author very familiar with Doctor Who, and in fact all have been involved in writing for Big Finish, with Jenny T Colgan and Guy Adams writing for River Song in particular. The other writers are Jacqueline Rayner (also writes for Doctor Who Magazine), Steve Lyons (also writes for Doctor Who Magazine) and Andy Lane (who writes the Young Sherlock Holmes series).

So the book has a good pedigree; it also has five entertaining stories and comes across as a coherent set of tales without any need for an arc. Although the authors take different angles on River, they all capture her sense of humour and irony and all feel like they are writing about the same character. The stories themselves have the relevant mix of time travel, glamour and larger than life escapades we associate with the character from the TV show, but here and there give us insight into River beyond what we have seen on screen. All the stories are written in first person, which helps tell us more about River, and her inner thoughts on her relationship with the Doctor are touched on several times, even though he doesn’t feature in many of the stories. The authors raise a few question without imposing their own answers, and this adds a dimension to the stories, without dominating the narrative.

There are no bad stories here, and like any good short story collection it gives the reader the chance to try authors they may not be familiar with. In this case all five come out with glowing reports. Is there a best? That depends on personal taste; all five have something unique to recommend them and this is the mark of a well-chosen collection.

THE LEGENDS OF RIVER SONG / AUTHOR: JENNY T COLGAN, JACQUELINE RAYNER, STEVE LYONS, GUY ADAMS, ANDY LANE / PUBLISHER: BBC BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

In a divided metropolis beset by monsters, Kate Harker and August Flynn exist on either side of the conflict. Kate is the daughter of the ruthless dictator of the North, aspiring to be just like her father. August, meanwhile, wants to prove his curse wrong and be as human and good-natured as his own adopted father, the saviour of the South. As the truce between the two crumbles, Kate and August are thrust together in an uneasy alliance.

So goes the story of the first book in V.E. Schwab’s new Monsters of Verity series. With such a premise, it could have felt like a formulaic ticking off of YA subgenres and tropes (dystopian future? Check. Monster apocalypse? Check. Teen drama? Double check). However, through the strength of the writing, Schwab ensures that This Savage Song becomes something much more interesting – a dark, thrilling and, yes, pretty savage tale.

What makes the book work so well are its full-blooded characters. Split between Kate and August’s point-of-views, you see this world through each of their eyes and understand what makes both of them tick. What is really refreshing is how Schwab does not go down the predictable Romeo and Juliet road and make the pair star-crossed lovers. Instead, the central relationship is far more layered and complex than that. It is a well-drawn friendship, between two lonely people who actually have a lot in common despite ostensibly being sworn enemies. Perhaps the next book will see romance blossom, but that would feel earned after the groundwork laid here.

This Savage Song is also a lesson in how to organically drip feed the description and backstory of the setting and the characters, rather than infodump it all at the beginning as a lesser writer might do. This world and its inhabitants begin the story as blank slates, which might be a little off-putting for some, but over the course of the novel the questions are all answered without shoving them down the reader’s throat.

It might be a cliché, but the book really is unputdownable. Schwab is a dab hand at building an engrossing escalating threat and increasingly dire situation that keeps you turning the pages. While working as its own story but also promising more to come, the end result is a novel that is not to be missed for anyone who enjoys imaginative and intelligent Young Adult fiction. Hopefully subsequent books in this series can keep up the same quality.

THIS SAVAGE SONG / AUTHOR: V.E. SCHWAB / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELAESE DATE: 7TH JUNE

Jackdaw Hammond is missing. After helping to destroy the Countess Bathory during her previous adventure, she is possessed by the dark angel Saraquel, and is sleeping rough on London’s streets after attempting to commit suicide. Her friends Felix, Charley and Maggie are desperate to find her. Robert Conway, an exorcist working on behalf of the Vatican, is intent on finding her too. Saraquel must be eliminated, even if that means killing Jackdaw Hammond as well.

Meanwhile, in another timeline, the infamous Elizabethan alchemist John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley have embarked on a voyage to Alexandria, where the legendary Rabbi Loew possesses knowledge that will help defeat Saraquel.

And, in a third timeline, Edward Kelley’s pregnant daughter is menaced by the Countess Bathory, who threatens to rip the child out of her womb if she doesn’t meet the Countess’s sinister demands.

This is the third book in an ongoing series and, unlike many books that are part of a series but can still be read as a standalone by the uninitiated, this is extremely hard going. Maybe if this writer had read the two novels that precede it – The Secrets of Life and Death and The Secrets of Blood and Bone – we would have enjoyed this entry more, but The Secrets of Time and Fate is a frustratingly choppy experience with chapters that hopscotch wildly between their various time periods and characters that are oddly flat and uninteresting. Not even the presence of John Dee and Edward Kelley can liven things up, and the occult elements are unconvincing – in many ways, this feels like a very bland re-tread of The Devil Rides Out with a sprinkling of The Exorcist tossed in for good measure.

It’s a shame, considering what wonderful inspiration the characters of Dee, Kelley and the ‘Blood Countess’ Elizabeth Bathory must provide, that The Secrets of Time and Fate has turned out to be such a yawn. Maybe that’s part of the problem – what we already know about the real lives of Dee, Bathory etc. is already so colourful that any fiction, which is woven around them, has to be exceptionally good or it will suffer by comparison. Similarly, the rest of the cast needs to be equally as charismatic. Unfortunately, they aren’t. The Secrets of Time and Fate is derivate, plodding and curiously uninspired and we’ve all been down this road so many times before that you have to be a much better writer than Rebecca Alexander to make the journey worth undertaking again.

THE SECRETS OF TIME AND FATE / AUTHOR: REBECCA ALEXANDER / PUBLISHER: DEL REY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A killer fascinated by blood, a series of corpses with their throats slashed and their abdomens ripped open, and a police woman protagonist who has risen quickly through the ranks of the Tokyo PD but who has not yet come to terms with the violence in her past.

Lieutenant Reiko Himekawa is the youngest female detective in the Homicide Division, and constantly under pressure because of it. She follows her gut instincts, and although she isn’t described as a psychic she has an undeniable penchant for ‘reading’ the guilty and the dead. On this occasion, however, none of the victims are surrendering up any clues. Could the murders have something to do with a man who died months earlier, his brain destroyed by a nasty water-borne bacterium? And what about the dead man’s sister, a mysterious young woman confined to a psychiatric hospital? When the cops receive a tip-off about an underground website called ‘Strawberry Night’, and Reiko begins to suspect that the murders may have been staged as some kind of performance art, her investigation steps up a gear. Reiko is desperate to solve the puzzle before anybody else, but her antagonistic rival Katsumata – who has no respect for Reiko’s reputation – is also hot on the trail.

The Silent Dead is the first in a long-running series of Reiko Himekawa novels. According to the author bio, the books have sold over one million copies in Japan and inspired a television mini-series and a theatrical feature film. On the basis of this entry, it’s hard to see why. Maybe the series improves, or maybe it’s the fault of the translation, but The Silent Dead is a strangely unsatisfying, antiseptic read. The dialogue is bland (the schoolyard bickering between the cops is especially irritating) and the mystery is not nearly as clever and convoluted as it wants to be. In fact, there’s nothing here we haven’t read or seen before – the emotionally dysfunctional protagonist with a strained personal life and a long-buried secret, the rivalry between cops, a vicious killer formed by an abusive childhood – there is no real depth to either the characters, the investigation or the rather lightweight conspiracy that surrounds ‘Strawberry Night’. Worse than that, there is no real tension either, not even when the twist is revealed. Even the incident in Reiko’s past – although undeniably horrifying – is so weakly described, it has no impact.

For a story that seems so preoccupied with the colour and meaning of blood, The Silent Dead is curiously bloodless. It is also that rare animal – a Japanese cult hit that hasn’t travelled well en route to the West.

THE SILENT DEAD / AUTHOR: TETSUYA HONDA / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Amidst the seemingly endless commercial bandwagon that accompanies a new Star Wars film there are items of charm and interest; items not designed simply to fleece the indulgent parents of spoiled, sulky children. While there is undoubtedly a place in every pre-teens bedroom for themed curtains, Lego and onesies, there are pieces of merchandise that do not make you want to give up all hope for society in the wake of a tide of commercial consumerism. A little extreme? Maybe, but these two new editions in the Star Wars Construction Book series will restore a little of your (Jedi) faith.

The format is a simple one. Each book follows a basic story populated with various puzzles and problems for little padawan’s to solve. Whether it’s searching for Millennium Falcon-themed words in an asteroid belt of mixed up letters or learning how to successfully draw an Ewok (and we all know how hard that is don’t we?), these books are highly fun and entertaining. The crowning challenge, if one were needed, is to build a replica (from reinforced cardboard) of either the Millennium Falcon itself or an Imperial AT-AT. At 12cm and 14cm high respectively these are well conceived finales to an eager child’s journey through the book.

There are a couple of caveats to all this educational entertainment, however. The puzzles themselves slant quite low on the challenge scale, being designed for younger children, while the construction element can be a little fiddly, and potentially frustrating for the same child. Put simply these are terrific books that will offer a pleasant afternoon’s distraction, but adult supervision, if only to provide an extra pair of hands for the build itself, would be recommended.

If this was the festive period, these would be great stocking fillers. Otherwise, they’d make a great end of term treat.

STAR WARS SMUGGLER’S STARSHIP / STAR WARS BATTLE STATIONS ACTIVITY BOOKS / PUBLISHER: EGMONT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

False Hearts is the latest novel from author Laura Lam. Laura has been slowly building her name up in the publishing world the last few years. But it’s False Hearts that is likely to get her worldwide recognition. This novel fits in between the genres of a thriller and a sci-fi and is likely to be a hit within the UK.

False Hearts tells the story of Taema and Tila, conjoined twins who are eventually separated as their shared heart begins to fail. They are both given artificial hearts, enabling them to live their own lives. However, one day Tila returns covered in blood and is shortly followed by the police. She is arrested for murder and Taema is tasked with taking on Tilas identity to discover the circumstances which led to that night. Involvement with drugs is expected, leading Tila to a crime syndicate. However, secrets are shortly discovered about the twins past, which will mean things shall never be the same again for the twins.

This is very much a thriller but with sci-fi elements entwined throughout the story. It is a fast paced novel told through both twins’ perspectives. The characterization is great. The book has quite a short cast of main characters, allowing Laura Lam to explore each character in turn. The actual storytelling is great, with twists and turns located throughout the whole novel. One of the main elements that struck us when reading it, was the originality and complexity, which adds more depth throughout.

At just over 350 pages, Laura Lam manages to deliver a short but powerful novel that will leave a lasting impression on many readers. A thought provoking, fast paced tale which uses characterization to capture reader’s imaginations. A truly great read from a great writer.

FALSE HEARTS / AUTHOR: LAURA LAM / PUBLISHER: MACMILLIAN / RELEASE DATE: 16TH JUNE

Professor Fred Taylor provides a fascinating insight into his life as a ‘rocket scientist’. On the way he shows how we have been able to launch increasingly sophisticated satellites packed with instruments to study our own planet’s weather systems, and to fire space probes to the Moon, our nearby planets and smaller bodies of the Solar System.

Taylor was lucky enough to be born only a few years before Sputnik 1 was blasted into Earth orbit in 1957. Encouraged by his maternal grandfather, whose hobby was astronomy, he studied physics at Liverpool University and after graduating went on to become a doctoral student at Oxford.

It was at Oxford he became involved in designing and building satellite instruments for monitoring the higher atmosphere. Following this work he went on to gain a position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where he produced instruments to measure the temperature of the planetary atmosphere of Venus for the Pioneer Venus mission.

In a career spanning 50 years, even he is surprised to look back and see that he has been involved in unmanned missions to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and not forgetting a comet.

Through his work, he was able to visit many parts of the world, where he attended conferences and gave lectures, and he was able to indulge in owning some smart looking sports cars. He tells of the politics and details of putting together these missions and how he became friends with Patrick Moore.

All-in-all a very readable account of how Professor Taylor was able to live out his childhood dream of exploring the planets and expanding our knowledge of the Solar System.

EXPLORING THE PLANETS: A MEMOIR / AUTHOR: FRED TAYLOR / PUBLISHER: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS / RELEASE DATE: NOW 

Disney’s takeover of the Star Wars franchise has been a bit of a boon to the tie-in novels. Until recently, the shelves were cluttered with decades of books about Han, Leia, Chewie, and chums, and it was all a little bit intimidating. Now that the Galaxy Far Far Away belongs to the House of Mouse, however, most of those old stories have been consigned to the label of ‘Legends’, which is a nice way of saying that they’re not canon.

Star War Bloodline is part of Disney’s new canon; it is one of the books that is meant to form a backbone of tales about everyone’s beloved heroes. In this case, Bloodline focuses on what Leia Organa got up to after Return of The Jedi. If you’ve seen The Force Awakens you know a chunk of it already, but Bloodline focuses on Leia’s political career rather than her relationship with Han Solo.

On the face of it, this should be a gripping read. Star Wars meets House of Cards by way of Game of Thrones would be the most obvious route, putting the heroically hairstyle princess up against the sort of people who allowed Palpatine to become Emperor. Sadly, the story doesn’t quite go that far.

What we get instead is an intergalactic murder mystery of sorts. Leia is frustrated that the New Republic’s senate is mostly in a sort of deadlock, with the more right-wing Centrists refusing to budge on any motion that the more liberal Centrists put forward. Leia is a Centrist, of course. If we ignore the clumsy parallels to American politics, what we have here is a pretty boring set-up. Leia herself is bored and when the chance to investigate shenanigans off-world presents itself, she takes it, dragging along a Centrist politician in the process for ‘balance’.

The investigation is a pretty by the numbers mystery, and the main reason you’ll keep reading is for the little snippets of information about Leia’s life post Jedi. There are some cleverly thought out insights into her role as a Rebel hero after the war, and the small amount of information about herself, Han and Luke is particularly satisfying. There are also a few throw away lines that debunk some of the worst excesses of the pre-Disney books, and Leia’s relationship with The Hutts is particularly satisfying.

Overall, Bloodlines fills a gap, but feels too much like a wasted opportunity; there could have established a tense political/espionage thriller, (and still kept it Star Wars in feel) instead what we have is a fun throwaway read.

STAR WARS: BLOODLINE / AUTHOR: CLAUDIA GRAY / PUBLISHER: CENTURY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

It seems a quite likely that Adrian J Walker’s bookshelves boast more than their fair share of titles by the likes of John Wyndham, John Christopher, HG Wells and pretty much any number of other authors much given to chronicling possible nightmare Armageddon scenarios. Although The End of the World Running Club is modern, grim, gritty and sometimes uncomfortable, it’s not difficult to trace its lineage back to the so-called ‘cosy catastrophe’ authors who brought the civilised world to its knees back in the 1950s and 1960s in books like A Wrinkle in the Skin and The Day of the Triffids.

This time, it’s asteroids. The Earth is bombarded by thousands of tiny – and not so tiny – bits of space flotsam and jetsam and Edgar Hill, an out-of-shape thirty-something, disappointing husband and could-do-better father, is as unprepared as the rest of humanity for the chaos and carnage of life on a planet, changed unrecognisably by its collision with tons of fast-moving cosmic debris. But at least he’s quick enough to understand the importance of the warning sirens and the panic of his neighbours as he bundles his family into the cellar of their Edinburgh home, waiting to out sit the apocalypse. They’re rescued before their resources can run dry and they find themselves in a paramilitary encampment in the shattered remains of the city; but Edgar is off on a foraging expedition when a fleet of helicopters arrive and whisk off the survivors – including his family – down to the South Coast for evacuation to a more habitable Europe. Torn from the family he’s discovered he does, after all, adore and cherish, Edgar and an ill-matched bunch of fellow refugees have no choice but to traverse the dangerous, ravaged landscape and with the road network devastated they have to do it on foot. By running…

The first hundred or so pages of The End of the World Running Club – the apocalypse itself and how Edgar and his family survive it – are thrillingly page-turning. But as any long-distance runner will tell you, it’s hard to keep up that pace. Walker’s breathless narrative slows down, finds its rhythm and settles into an enjoyably restless canter as Edgar slowly but surely steps up to the plate and becomes the man he would never have become if his world hadn’t come crashing down around him.

Walker’s brisk, absorbing text takes the raw clichés of the apocalyptic subgenre and injects them with a modern grit and vigour. Life in the new ruined world is tough, ugly and cheap. Edgar and his companions – uneasy bedfellows at first but eventually forged by the fires of experience into a ferociously determined and close-knit unit – encounter numerous dangers on their harrowing journey across the shattered country, from trigger-happy rural survivalists to a community in the ruins of Manchester living in the shadow of a terrifying despot who rules with an iron fist (any resemblance to STARBURST HQ is entirely coincidental). The End of the World Running Club will thrill and delight fans who might have thought that no-one was writing books like this anymore – it’s all zombie pandemics around these parts nowadays – and whilst the ‘running club’ conceit never really takes root and the narrative loses its focus a little in its rush towards its commendably-downbeat conclusion, it remains a terrifically well-observed, haunting and occasionally harrowing read. Now jog on…

THE END OF THE WORLD RUNNING CLUB / PUBLISHER: DEL RAY / AUTHOR: ADRIAN J WALKER / DATE OF RELEASE: JUNE 2ND

Two lovers are imprisoned in a bathroom, and as the woman tells the man increasingly strange tales about her life, something ghastly pounds on the walls and door, hungry to get inside… a witch finds herself imprisoned inside the body of a wooden mermaid, and then the mermaid comes to life… an artist, desperate to find a Muse, paints a beautiful mouth that promptly begins to speak to him and tells him she is a Gorgon… a witch struggles to understand her new familiar, and her familiar struggles to warn the witch about a nasty impending danger… some alien abductions are not all they seem… and when her boyfriend is seduced by the goddess of the sea, a young woman must risk her soul to venture beneath the waves and rescue him…

These (and more) are the stories included in Dreams of Distant Shores, a beautiful collection of new writing from award-winning fantasy author Patricia A. McKillip. Although she is still probably best known for her Riddle-Master trilogy, McKillip has been a fantasy-writing tour de force for more than forty years, and whether you are new to her work or a long-time devotee, it will be impossible not to be enchanted by the offerings in this volume. McKillip has that rare gift – she not only knows how to tell a wonderful story and, within just a few brief sentences, make you immediately comfortable with her characters and their universe, she also knows how to keep the reader on their toes and throw in some surprises you will never see coming. But, better than any of that, she writes like a dream in the kind of lyrical, stream-of-consciousness style, that lures you in and won’t let go, making you look at the world you thought you knew in fresh new ways that don’t seem possible (after you’ve read Something Rich and Strange, you’ll never see a trip to the beach in quite the same way ever again.)

Funny, thrilling, revelatory and heartbreaking, there isn’t one weak story in this selection, although if we were forced to choose our favourites they would be The Gorgon in the Cupboard, Which Witch and Something Rich and Strange, which is more a novella than a short story. But hold on, Mer is fantastic and what about Edith and Henry Go Motoring… and you can’t forget Alien!? You see what we mean? And, at the back of the book, McKillip shares some of her thoughts about writing high fantasy, which is a great bonus (although way too brief!) Absolutely spellbinding. It has been a very long time since we read a gathering of short stories as perfect and beguiling as these.

DREAMS OF DISTANT SHORES / AUTHOR: PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP / PUBLISHER: TACHYON PUBLICATIONS / RELEASE DATE: 26TH MAY