Review Category: Books

Simply put, Battle Without Honor or Humanity is a collection of short stories. However, they are not exactly fiction, but more akin to streams of consciousness assorted into run on sentences that form disjointed paragraphs, bound with the theme of technology holding sway over the human imagination.

The unnecessary verbosity practically dares you to declare you don’t actually understand what’s going on, and thus leave yourself vulnerable to its unspoken judgement. Indeed, the first tale involves a university professor berating a student for his lack of sophistication, and sets the scene well for a barrage of philosophical disdain to be levelled against the reader, strongly implying Wilson’s own attitude for anyone he perceives to be his intellectual inferior (which is most probably everyone).

The are some wonderfully demented ideas hiding amidst the thesaural explosion that comment on America’s political and social landscape, such as a sequel to Planet of the Apes being directed by a monkey or presidential secret service being undertaken by gun-toting steroid junkies, but the intentionally aggravating writing style more than negates any sense of satisfaction you may glean from unearthing their significance. The tales read like snapshots of human thought captured in the phase of its formation, the disassociated jumble of ephemeral fragments that make up consciousness before it’s beaten and streamlined into coherent sentences that we verbally impart to others.

Perhaps if the ideas presented were done in the form of coherent stories or even disconnected abstract they may have been more palatable, but Wilson has crafted his tales as gonzo prose for the information age, placing an idealised version of himself as observer, reporter and narrator to the abnormal proceedings. His self-aggrandised alter-ego swaggers through a surreal dreamscape with intellectual machismo, dispensing condescension and violence to unenlightened proles sleepwalking through their vapid existences who struggle to grasp his singular worldview. He comes off as the kind of social philosopher you meet at a party, the passion of whose ideas pale against his overwhelming need to establish just how much smarter he is than you, like an academic equivalent of “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

Battle Without Honor or Humanity is a very short book, but is nevertheless incredibly frustrating to work your way through. Upon finishing it, it feels like something you’ve endured rather than read, the very act of making it to end an achievement in itself.

BATTLE WITHOUT HONOR OR HUMANITY: VOLUME 1 / AUTHOR: D HARLAN WILSON / PUBLISHER: RAW DOG SCREAMING PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Again. Benjamin (Red Moon) Percy’s new novel takes us to the ruins of St Louis, now renamed the Sanctuary, some 150 years after a biological virus (and a subsequent nuclear bombardment designed to keep the disease on American soil) has wiped out humankind. The survivors – around twenty thousand raggedly-dressed souls – huddle together in their walled enclave eking out a miserable, thankless existence in a parched, baking landscape, terrified of the wastelands beyond in which, they fear, lurk monstrous mutations and terrible abominations. No-one can live out in the bleak, hostile Dead Lands…and then one day a mysterious stranger, a dark-eyed girl named Gawea, appears on the horizon with tales of a green, fertile Promised Land and the tantalising prospect of a life with more to offer than just hiding behind clumsily-fashioned walls and suffering the brutality of the despotic self-appointed Sanctuary mayor Thomas Lancer and his ruthless sentinels.

Percy has crafted a rich, beautifully-detailed nightmare post-apocalyptic world far removed from the cosy catastrophes of many of the recognised classics of the genre. The core of the story sees the Sanctuary’s mysterious magical-powered aged apothecary (and his clanking mechanised pet owl) Lewis Meriwether together with the rebellious semi-alcoholic Wilhelmena Clark join Gawea on a journey across the ravaged countryside, encountering vampire bats and giant spiders and any number of more human obstacles as they begin to realise that life doesn’t, after all, just begun and end in the Sanctuary. Percy’s story (and many of its main characters’ names) takes its lead from the early 19th century Lewis and Clarke Expedition of American legend which saw President Thomas Jefferson dispatch a group of US Army volunteers – led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his second-in command William Clark – from St Louis to explore largely-uncharted Western America. As real-life adventures go, the Expedition is one Hell of an inspiration and Percy recreates it here as a post-apocalyptic allegory, giving the book a familiar colonial framework about which to hang his story of extraordinary peril and lethal, monstrous  inhuman predators.

The Dead Lands fizzes with a real spirit of imaginative, full-blooded adventure. Percy’s writing is beautifully intricate and yet never too heavy-going or impenetrable; he brings his diseased, blasted world to vivid life and there’s an almost poetic quality to his textured prose which alone makes the work a joy to read and savour. This is a magnificently wide and cinematic world – keep an eye on those film rights – packed with incident and characters (not all of whom make it to the last page) and if we can find fault we might have preferred a less hurried, anti-climactic ending. But otherwise fans of dystopian fiction with a mythical, supernatural, monstrous overtone will revel in this clever, confident and sometimes-challenging novel.

THE DEAD LANDS / AUTHOR: BENJAMIN PERCY / PUBLISHER: HODDER/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Again. Benjamin (Red Moon) Percy’s new novel takes us to the ruins of St Louis, now renamed the Sanctuary, some 150 years after a biological virus (and a subsequent nuclear bombardment designed to keep the disease on American soil) has wiped out humankind. The survivors – around twenty thousand raggedly-dressed souls – huddle together in their walled enclave eking out a miserable, thankless existence in a parched, baking landscape, terrified of the wastelands beyond in which, they fear, lurk monstrous mutations and terrible abominations. No-one can live out in the bleak, hostile Dead Lands…and then one day a mysterious stranger, a dark-eyed girl named Gawea, appears on the horizon with tales of a green, fertile Promised Land and the tantalising prospect of a life with more to offer than just hiding behind clumsily-fashioned walls and suffering the brutality of the despotic self-appointed Sanctuary mayor Thomas Lancer and his ruthless sentinels.

Percy has crafted a rich, beautifully-detailed nightmare post-apocalyptic world far removed from the cosy catastrophes of many of the recognised classics of the genre. The core of the story sees the Sanctuary’s mysterious magical-powered aged apothecary (and his clanking mechanised pet owl) Lewis Meriwether together with the rebellious semi-alcoholic Wilhelmena Clark join Gawea on a journey across the ravaged countryside, encountering vampire bats and giant spiders and any number of more human obstacles as they begin to realise that life doesn’t, after all, just begun and end in the Sanctuary. Percy’s story (and many of its main characters’ names) takes its lead from the early 19th century Lewis and Clarke Expedition of American legend which saw President Thomas Jefferson dispatch a group of US Army volunteers – led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his second-in command William Clark – from St Louis to explore largely-uncharted Western America. As real-life adventures go, the Expedition is one Hell of an inspiration and Percy recreates it here as a post-apocalyptic allegory, giving the book a familiar colonial framework about which to hang his story of extraordinary peril and lethal, monstrous  inhuman predators.

The Dead Lands fizzes with a real spirit of imaginative, full-blooded adventure. Percy’s writing is beautifully intricate and yet never too heavy-going or impenetrable; he brings his diseased, blasted world to vivid life and there’s an almost poetic quality to his textured prose which alone makes the work a joy to read and savour. This is a magnificently wide and cinematic world – keep an eye on those film rights – packed with incident and characters (not all of whom make it to the last page) and if we can find fault we might have preferred a less hurried, anti-climactic ending. But otherwise fans of dystopian fiction with a mythical, supernatural, monstrous overtone will revel in this clever, confident and sometimes-challenging novel.

THE DEAD LANDS / AUTHOR: BENJAMIN PERCY / PUBLISHER: HODDER/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

For everyone who ever wanted to know how the My Little Ponies tick (or trot?) and take a peek behind the scenes of the phenomenally successful television show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic… here’s your chance, and you’re going to neigh for joy when you see it.

Mary Jane Begin’s lavishly illustrated book is the definition of gorgeous, packed with lush full-colour artwork featuring all the characters MLP fans know and love – and we do mean ALL the characters. Anyone who still thinks My Little Pony is only about sparkly-eyed candy coloured fillies will get a very big surprise. There’s an interview with Friendship is Magic showrunner Lauren Faust, storyboards, episode breakdowns, a fascinating look into the show’s evolution from a line-up of, let’s face it, pretty uninspiring plastic toys to the animated pop culture phenomenon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has become, and even a quick class into how to draw a My Little Pony of your very own.

And did I mention the piece about pony fashion (because once you’ve drawn your pony you’ll want to dress her/him up, right?), the interview with a proud card-carrying Brony (for the uninitiated, a Brony is a male MLP fan who is… let’s just say… a little older than the show’s core demographic) and there’s even a pretty cool section about Equestria itself with detailed views of Ponyville, Cloudsdale, Sweet Apple Acres, Canterlot… so many places it’s making our hooves sore just to think about it. And finally the book ends with a selection of jaw-dropping artwork submitted by fans to the MLP design contest. There are some very talented MLP buffs out there.

What can we tell you? Mary Jane Begin, an award-winning illustrator and children’s author with a few MLP book titles already under her mane, has done a phenomenal job collecting all of this together and her affection for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the creatives behind it shines through on every page.

Is this a book for young fans? We’d say not, because give it five minutes and they’ll have ripped all the pages out and pasted them on their bedroom wall, which would be a terrific shame. This is a book not just for older admirers of the series but for animation fans too. True, the text is pretty spare once you get past the opening chapters and MLP: The Art of Equestria doesn’t go deep into the technical nuts and bolts of how an episode is made, but there’s still plenty here to admire. This is essentially a loud proud coffee table book and it’s the artwork that makes it special. We’ve got a feeling that a lot of people are going to enjoy this, not just the MLP fanbase.

Pass us a sugar lump and call us Pinkie Pie, we can’t recommend this highly enough!

MY LITTLE PONY: THE ART OF EQUESTRIA / AUTHOR: MARY JANE BEGIN / PUBLISHER: HARRY N. ABRAMS INC. / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

An old favourite among the Song of Ice and Fire fandom, the stories of Dunk and Egg are unlike what you’d expect of a traditional George R R Martin book. Lacking some of the intense cynicism and with far fewer beheadings than you’d expect, it follows the life and times of two unlikely heroes and the way their actions shaped Westeros.

Combining together the novellas The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mystery Knight, the book lacks a great deal of the sheer scale and density some readers might be used to. However, this works in the books favour as it follows far fewer characters and gives a great deal of insight into the world a century before the events of A Game of Thrones. As the book advertises, this is an age where memory of the last dragon has yet to fade and the chaos of the Mad King’s reign has yet to set the realms alight. From the start of the tourney you’re given an impression of Westros from a more common man’s perspective, with the story building up the nature of the world from a very baseline perspective. Opposed to the keeps of noble houses or cities under siege, it’s interesting to see the kingdom in a time of relative peace.

Each of the novellas is only loosely linked to one another, but this allows them a great deal of freedom. It allows the book to read more like an anthology, with each one covering a different stage in the heroes’ lives or some critical event. Along with Martin’s own excellent prose, the new illustrations added to this release offer an odd beauty to the tale, complementing many of the descriptions and highlighted moments.

An unusual beast in this setting to be sure, it nevertheless retains Martin’s best strengths and the vast depth which drew so many fans to this setting in the first place. Open to new and old fans alike, and whether you’re waiting for Season 6 of the television series or the Winds of Winter, this is most definitely one worth buying.

A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS / AUTHOR: GEORGE R R MARTIN / PUBLISHER: BANTAM/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

It’s no exaggeration to say that Star Wars novels have become quite the minefield of late, as for every promising concept there has been, well, Star Wars: Aftermath. Ever since murdering the Expanded Universe, Disney has had incredible difficulty finding its footing, but Twilight Company is a definite step in the right direction.

Set during the Galactic Civil War’s darkest hours, the Sixty-First Mobile Infantry Company mounts a fighting retreat across multiple worlds. However, as they fall back from one battlefield, Hazram Namir’s squad stumbles upon a surprising defector. One who could finally allow them to truly hurt the Empire…

In many respects Twilight Company can be seen as an examination of the Rebellion. While backed by a solid story, a great deal of the narrative goes into how their forces are structured, how they operate and ultimately the problems of keeping a force of idealists and former criminals trained, fed and equipped. The first five chapters alone paint an extremely varied depiction, going into some surprising detail about their recruitment methods and the problems the Rebellion faces in protecting certain species. There’s a surprising streak of realism despite the science fiction setting, and it retains tone which would better befit a Gaunt’s Ghosts novel than a Star Wars tale.

Even among Namir’s own unit the reader is given a definite sense that not everyone among the Alliance’s military is a hero, and each side is far greyer than they would like to believe. It’s seen as much in the Empire’s military as their own, with the book offering some thankfully positive depictions of Stormtroopers and the like.

This said, while offering some fantastic moments, many of the book’s elements seem extremely roughly written at times. There’s never a sense of solid connection to any battlefield or vibrant description of the setting, and its strongest moments come from the slow attrition of the war than any single furious fire-fight. In its effort to depict the war as a whole, it seems to have missed out many of the individual moments which can make a novel so memorable. The same goes for its characters unfortunately, many of who seem all too much like archetypes than individuals, representing ideas of the Rebellion more than themselves.

It’s no X-Wing series, not by a long shot, but this is nevertheless a promising start for a new saga. As a new entry into the setting, it serves as a vibrant look into the lore backed with a solid story, showing the best and worst of both sides in this war. It’s easily the best book of the Disney owned universe so far, so take that for what it’s worth.

STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT – TWILIGHT COMPANY/ AUTHOR: ALEXANDER FREED / PUBLISHER: CENTURY BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 3RD (KINDLE), NOVEMBER 5TH (HARDCOVER)