Review Category: Books

BOOK REVIEW: THE MOTHERLESS OVEN / CREATOR: ROB DAVIS / PUBLISHER: SELFMADEHERO / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 16TH

“Parents should just get recycled when kids grow up. They’ve served their purpose.”

Rob Davis, best known in the UK for is dazzling graphic novel adaptations of Don Quixote and ’90s reinvention of Roy of the Rovers, has created his first original graphic novel for SelfMadeHero, and it was definitely worth the wait. Tackling timeless coming-of-age themes in a dark, endlessly inventive way, The Motherless Oven somehow manages to be dense, inscrutable and perversely accessible.

Scarper Lee lives in a world where it rains knives, where household objects have varying levels of sentience and autonomy, and where everybody knows their own deathday. Children construct their own parents and strive to find meaning despite the lions that patrol the playgrounds and the endless chitter-chatter of household gods.

After years of disciplined adaptations and work-for-hire, Davis reveals himself here to be fiercely, maddeningly inventive, creating weather clocks and laughing gales, scrap yards for dead parents, and a complex world of god science and shrines for household objects. The meanings inherent in these creations are sometimes obtuse and sometimes more clear. At all times, The Motherless Oven depicts an adolescence that feels familiar and somehow universal.

The Motherless Oven is a book that transcends genre. Despite the fantastical imagery and almost dystopian levels of control exercised over teenagers in the book by the police and school system, this never feels like sci-fi, horror, nor any other clearly defined genre. The relationship between Scarper Lee and Vera Pike – the new girl at school – as Scarper counts down the hours to his deathday is more important than the visual trappings of this bizarre world. The relationships are rich and believable and at heart, the plot is relatively straightforward, even when the symbolism and meaning behind it all builds to crescendo at the end of the book.

Ultimately, this is a story about identity; about growing up; about formative relationships, and existential questions. This is a dark, scary story about the world as perceived by a misanthropic teenage boy, in whom it is impossible not to interpret the youthful questioning of Davis himself.

Whether you choose to read it as an allegorical tale about questioning authority and defining yourself through art, as an autobiographical tale of the creator’s teenage years, or as something else completely, The Motherless Oven is a brilliant graphic novel that you will never forget.

BOOK REVIEW: THE WHISPERING SKULL / AUTHOR: JONATHAN STROUD / PUBLISHER: CORGI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Soon after Lockwood, Lucy and George uncover an old grave containing a corpse bound by all the trappings to contain a malevolent spirit, the excavation site is robbed and a mirror of bone that kills whoever looks into it is stolen. With thieves, thugs, scavengers, murderers and opportunists all searching for the mirror, not to mention the trio’s sanctimonious rivals from a huge ghost hunting agency, there is little time to track down one of the most dangerous objects ever unleashed. Also, the mysterious skull in a jar hidden away in Lockwood’s basement has begun talking to Lucy, and it seems the spirit may know more about what’s going on than anyone.

The Screaming Staircase took us deep into the world of a Britain ravaged by the Problem, a scourge of ghosts that began without warning and refuses to abate. Unshackled from the necessities of backstory and scene setting that slowed the pace of the opening instalment, The Whispering Skull frees Stroud to let his flair for spectacle run riot, resulting in several deftly constructed set-pieces far more akin to true horror than the ghost house antics of the first book. The power of the Bone Mirror is similar to the cursed videotape in the original novel of J-Horror codifier Ring, each seeming to quite literally scare its victims to death. Additionally, the mirror possesses a hypnotic power that compels people to look into its cursed glass, whispering promises of secrets from beyond the grave and fulfilment of your heart’s desire. Neither does Stroud scrimp on the action, peppering the story with battles against deadly ghosts and hired mooks, along with one particularly audacious sequence that could easily have come straight out of a heist movie.

However, the book is not called ‘The Deadly Mirror.’ The skull in question is one George “liberated” from his former employers right before he was about to be kicked out the door due to his impolitic personality. Spiteful and sadistic, the skull revels in being as obtuse as possible when pried for information, and is just as happy to lead people to their potential deaths as it is to help them, if doing so will provide it entertainment through the suffering of others. It was revealed at the end of the first book to be a Type Three ghost, one that has full awareness of its surroundings and complete retention of its personality and memories from when it was alive, unlike the lost and angry spirits otherwise encountered. They are so rare that their very existence is the subject of much debate, and that one should choose to reveal itself without any sort of prompting will likely be an event the significance of which is yet to be fully explored.

Some character development surprisingly comes by the way of Kipps, the obnoxious supervisor of an investigative team that Lucy and the boys often come up against (“Being undiplomatic, I’d say he’s a pint-sized, pug-nosed, carrot-topped inadequate with a chip the size of Big Ben on his weedy shoulder”). Young supervisors are people with the same responsibilities as the adolescent agents, but with their extrasensory abilities having not long faded away after reaching adulthood, they are still dimly aware of encroaching spirits, but now lack the preternatural senses required to properly combat them, which goes some way to explaining Kipps’s apparent cowardice, if not his irritating attitude. Also, Lockwood finally allows his manufactured air of mystery to slightly lift and for once voluntarily reveals one of his closely guarded secrets, ending the book on a revelation that there’s no going back from and will almost certainly become a major aspect of the third novel.

BOOK REVIEW: THE VIDEO NASTIES MOMENT: EXAMINING THE FILMS BEHIND THE SCARE / AUTHOR: CHRISTOPHER A. BROWN / PUBLISHER: VIDEO NASTIES PODCAST / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Christopher A. Brown’s new book, The Video Nasties Moment: Examining the Films Behind the Scare, is a new self-published history of the 1980s panic regarding the direct-to-video release of numerous films of salacious, violent, and otherwise morally suspect films, and the subsequent investigation and/or banning of them by the Director of Public Prosecution and the British Board of Film Censors.

The placing of these films within a broader sense of film history is what really sets it apart from most books on the panic. For example, comparing Nazi exploitation films with other, more critically acclaimed pictures on the same subject such as The Night Porter, really drives home the fact that some of these nasties were mere attempts to cash in on their subject matter, with emphasis on the more salacious elements.

Brown is also willing to appreciate when a film has something to say, however. As much as animal destruction and brutal rape are integrally stomach-churning elements of Cannibal Holocaust, Brown will allow that the film is attempting to make a broader statement on human development and commercial progress, and not just presenting the on-screen carnage for shock’s sake.

By delving into the background behind the directors’ past works and examining the nasties’ influence on their future endeavours, the author is able to make a broader points regarding the DPP banned films, rather than simply commenting on their individual qualities. Those individual qualities are important to the book, obviously, but the nasties are also examined as a collective, both in terms of social influence and their aesthetic appeal.

Brown’s book has an excellent flow, and dividing the films into thematic chapters allows him to take advantage of the ability to compare and contrast films, demonstrating some film’s deserved place on the last, while wondering how some ever saw inclusion.

The downside to self-published books such as this is that while there’s an excellent conversational flow to Video Nasties – anyone who’s ever listened to Brown’s podcast will surely be reading this in his voice – it’s littered with sentences, which need a lot of reorganization. A weekend with an editor’s red pen would have made this a truly excellent read.

It’s a wonderful book that offers up a sense of history and place for all 72 of these films, never once degenerating into a collection of reviews and plot synopses, but the lack of consistent formatting – italicized film titles, elimination of sentence fragments and so on – make this a bit of a rough and bumpy read, eliminating a bit of the pleasure one would otherwise derive.

BOOK REVIEW: ADVENTURE TIME: THE ORIGINAL CARTOON TITLE CARDS / AUTHOR: PENDLETON WARD / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Title cards have become something of a lost art in recent years. This is partly because, unlike in the heyday of the Looney Tunes cartoons (which had some stunning title cards), cartoons are made for TV now, rather than short films designed to be screened in cinemas. Series in the 90’s like Animaniacs and (in particular) Batman: The Animated Series brought back title cards that were unique to each cartoon and it’s something that Adventure Time has picked up again with each story they tell.

This book collects all of the title cards from the first two seasons of Adventure Time, along with artist commentary and concept designs. Each double page spread features the finished title card along with a couple of smaller versions of the early stages of the art (or in some cases a completely different take on the card), a brief paragraph about the piece and usually one line of commentary and a quote from the episode.

The cards draw their inspiration from everything from classic sci-fi movies and adventure stories to noir and vintage horror movie posters. The paragraphs about each card are entertaining to read and offer some insight, but they aren’t exactly in depth. But then this is a book about the pictures and what stunning pictures the majority of them are. Both my 5-year-old son and myself spent ages pouring over the pictures without having read a single word about them.

This is the best kind of art book. It’s the kind you keep coming back to, spending a good chunk of time looking at. You can open it on a random page and get engrossed by both the finished art and the work that lovingly went into creating it. It’s great that Titan have seen the merit in turning these cards into a beautifully presented art book that will appeal to both fans (of all ages) of the show and fans of the art of the title card as well.

Roll on volume two!

BOOK REVIEW: THE RELIC GUILD / AUTHOR: EDWARD COX / PUBLISHER: GOLLANCZ / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Once, the Labyrinth was a great meeting place, when humans traded with the Houses of god-like beings known as the Aelfir. Forty years ago, there was a terrible war; one fought with magic that ruined everything. The Labyrinth became more a prison than city, trapping its human denizens behind hundred-feet-high walls, and it was deemed that all magic was forbidden. Now, forty years later, the battle commences anew as an evil Thaumaturgist is returned to life. Only a legendary band of heroes, the Relic Guild, has the power to stand in this man’s way.

Debut author Edward Cox takes this central concept and places it in a world that is almost Victorian in nature, creating an exciting blend of steampunk, fantasy, horror, and pulp adventure. His world is incredibly detailed, but it never threatens to take over the narrative; in fact, what happened decades ago have a bearing on the present, so much, so that Cox takes both timelines and weaves them together to form the plot of his first novel. He does it well, but there are times when it’s hard to tell them apart – put the book down mid-chapter, for instance, and it may be difficult to immediately recall which era you’re in when you pick it up again.

The book starts with a prologue that initially feels like the author is shouting “look, here’s my bad guy, isn’t he powerful and nasty” but as the pages turn, that introduction becomes more relevant. After that, we’re straight into the action, where a shapeshifter known as Clara is being pursued by two rival bounty hunters. Clara is described as the book’s protagonist, but she spends much of it as an observer, our eyes and ears in the strange new world she has discovered, and other characters often come across as far more interesting, which is testament to Cox’s writing talent.

Cox avoids the fantasy cliché of characters being little more than their occupations or particular field of expertise, and the format of past and present allows the reader to see how much some of them have changed and developed, and why. Even the Relic Guild themselves are prepared to commit heinous acts in the name of good and, while this doesn’t put them on a par with the book’s Big Bad, it will have the reader wondering just how far some of them are prepared to go to achieve victory.

Sometimes, the author’s inexperience shows – pacing can be haphazard sometimes, and dialogue can occasionally turn into exposition – but The Relic Guild is an intriguing, original and enjoyable book, a daring mix of genres that initially feels like it shouldn’t work, but is ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

BOOK REVIEW: DOCTOR WHO – THE BLOOD CELL / AUTHOR: JAMES GOSS / PUBLISHER: BBC BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Doctor’s been imprisoned – for heinous, unnameable crimes – aboard a high security, inescapable prison built into an asteroid far in the future. The trouble is, the Doctor keeps trying to escape; he certainly has free run of the complex and its cells and corridors and whilst he seems in no hurry to leave, it’s not entirely clear exactly what he’s doing there in the first place. Every now again a pert young girl comes to visit, standing out on the landing platform waving placards because the prison’s red tape won’t allow her access to the building. But all is not well aboard the prison; there are constant power outages and there seems to be something mysterious and bloodthirsty stalking the lower levels…

The Blood Cell sees regular BBC Books contributor James Goss make his first stab at capturing the new Doctor/Clara partnership in print and, by and large, he’s nailed the pair of them. Although they’re apart for much of the story when they finally meet their bantering love/hate relationship is much as we’ve seen it on screen. The Doctor – or Prisoner 428 as he’s generally referred to – is recognisably Peter Capaldi too. Whilst Goss gives us little in the way of physical description of the Time Lord – “he had a face made for fury and was making the most of it” is one of the best  – beyond the fact that he looks a bit tired and old now and again, his mannerisms and behaviour are very much as seen on TV. The Doctor is brittle, blunt, and sometimes breathtakingly rude. He’s also occasionally a little bit kinder than we’ve yet seen in the TV series; a very moral man trying to do the right thing but not necessarily absolutely sure why.

Some fans might feel uncomfortable with the book’s first person narrative; the story unfolds through the eyes of the Governor, a jaded, broken, and dejected man whose past glories are way behind him and who really just wants a quiet life at his latest billet. But Goss makes the Governor interesting and a little bit pitiful as events and circumstances spiral out of his control and his isolated, half-forgotten prison falls into chaos and confusion. The ‘Blood Cell’ of the story contains the book’s monster, a great nasty blob composed of body parts. It’s a grisly and graphic image and Goss wisely, for the benefit of younger readers, goes easy on the gore and allows the imagination to do all the hard work in visualising something appalling inhuman. Also on hand are the Custodians, the prison’s robot guards who have a handy line in death rays and whirling claws and blades.

Pacey, highly readable, and ingenious, The Blood Cell might irritate those hoping for a more traditional Doctor Who yarn. For example, the TARDIS is a no-show here even though it’s obliquely referenced from time to time. Goss has, however, made a decent fist of writing a very different kind of Doctor Who story from an entirely original perspective but which, at its heart, is still Doctor Who through and through.

BOOK REVIEW: GLEAM / AUTHOR: TOM FLETCHER / PUBLISHER: JO FLETCHER BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The start of the dystopian Factory Trilogy, Gleam proves to be an ambitious title examining the human condition in a world of extremes, set between the dictatorially ordered Pyramid and the barren wasteland Discard beyond its walls. The survivor of a town massacred by the Pyramidders, Alan is one of those truly resentful of his home. When his constant questioning of authority results in the governing power assaulting his family, he strives for a life beyond its confines…

Embodying classic science fiction themes and tropes of the best kind, Gleam dresses up its ideas in extremely graphically grim content and takes the ideas of freedom or civilisation a step further than you would expect. From the very start, it’s made clear that this is not going to be a happy book with the gruesomely told bloodletting digging in with every detail and setting the tone for the barbaric sights of this world.

While each of the novel’s key locations cloak themselves in mysteries that are largely left unanswered, their thematic impact and relevance to the story’s themes is enough to keep any reader going. Rather than feeling akin to Lost where nothing is answered, it is far closer to Metro 2033 where exact answers are not what the tale is about, instead the meaning of certain ideas to the story.

There is only one key failing, which really hurts the story, which is a lack of descriptive words and broader choice of language on the part of the author. While the descriptions themselves of each location are extensive and thematic in the right places, there are not enough moments where the tale really takes the time to build an image in the reader’s head. For all the times the book might emphasise the nature of a landscape, far too often a lack of emotive language makes the book seem as if it’s stating the information rather than truly telling it to the reader.

Despite this failing, Gleam is a strong start to a very interesting world. Anyone looking for a science fiction tale of grim darkness should definitely pick this one up.

BOOK REVIEW: MAGISTERIUM – THE IRON TRIAL / AUTHOR: HOLLY BLACK, CASSANDRA CLARE / PUBLISHER: SCHOLASTIC PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

First of the new Magisterium series, The Iron Trial is the latest in the long line of attempts by authors to depict young wizardry, yet takes a refreshingly interesting angle with its subject matter.

Many among the latest generation of children dream of possessing the natural affinity for sorcery which will get them selected during the Iron Trial, but not Callum Hunt. With his family shattered by the effects of a magical conflict, Callum has been taught since birth to never tap into his potential. However, when he is selected, despite failing every test, he must now seek to survive within the Magisterium.

While the book wears apparent Harry Potter influences on its sleeve, it soon braches off in a very different direction, using its obvious similarities to subvert that series’ ideas. Magic itself takes on a very different form, and Callum soon proves to be a very different individual from Potter in terms of his destiny and abilities. Better yet, the deconstruction carries over to the main cast and each benefits from a well-rounded character arc, transforming them from their expected archetype into something entirely different.

The ominous threat magic poses and the dangers of the setting are at the forefront of the tale, and the Magisterium proves to be an infinitely more foreboding place than the many schools of mages found in these stories. Magic here is less a whimsical ability than it is a dangerous power which must be controlled.

Despite this, the book is hampered by a few distinct failings. An uneven pace results in engaging and enticing chapters leading into duller affairs, and the novel appears rushed from the start. A great deal of potentially fascinating information is info-dumped, which weakens the impact of the world and leaves it very reliant upon its ideas over atmosphere and presentation to the reader.

The Iron Trial is a troubled but promising start to the series and presents more than enough to get teenage readers going until the last page. Young adults and readers wanting a very different take on magical schooling should take a gander at this one.

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