Review Category: Books

BOOK REVIEW: RESISTANCE / AUTHOR: SAMIT BASU / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Serving as a sequel to Turbulence, Resistance explores what follows when the world faces a growing number of meta-humans who are a law unto themselves. Set in 2020, a decade after a flight of passengers gained superpowers thanks to a random occurrence, the world has dramatically changed. Many superheroes are celebrities but humanity itself is losing ambition, seemingly resigned to be lorded over by super-beings. However, someone is killing off these meta-humans one by one, and they have a plan…

Serving as a deconstruction of the superhero genre as much as a celebration of its various tropes, Resistance is a closer examination of the impact superheroes would have on reality. Despite the colourful science-fiction elements present – with nods to super sentai series and kaiju films – there’s a darkly cynical undertone. For everything weirdly wonderful the world offers, there is equally something darkly wrong and problematic which makes everyday life all the harder with every passing week.

Written in a format similar to light novels, it’s a book that readers can easily breeze through at a rapid pace without anything seeming underdeveloped. Furthermore, its sense of scale with heroes traversing entire continents never fails to emphasise the weight of events. This said, the book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. A lot of this territory has been trodden before by the likes of Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, and Kurt Busiek; while its concepts are never pushed far enough to offer much more than comic readers have seen in Astro City.

Despite this, Resistance is nonetheless a great tale and entertaining from beginning to end. It offers something different from the usual yarn, and is well worth a look for any science-fiction fan.

REVIEW: THE SCREAMING STAIRCASE / AUTHOR: JONATHAN STROUD / PUBLISHER: CORGI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

After accidentally burning down a client’s house on a routine operation, professional ghost hunters Lockwood, Lucy and George run the risk of going out of business until a wealthy industrialist miraculously turns up on their doorstep with a lucrative offer that could save their careers. Only problem, the assignment is to clear the most haunted building in the country, and it’s pretty much a suicide mission.

In a Britain suffering under the ravages of a ceaseless plague of ghosts that began some 50 years previously, the front line of defence is psychic investigation agencies that employ people born with various abilities allowing them to perceive the supernatural visitations. However, as people approach maturity their Talents begin to fade, and so the only people suited to properly combating them are children. When the story talks about the agents who have been killed battling ghosts, it takes a second to remind yourself this means little kids.

The standard state of affairs is for an older investigator whose Talents have waned to supervise the younger agents, but the central trio run an independent operation without adults, giving them the advantage of no interference but the downside of issues with getting people to take them seriously. Even though it’s clearly established that supervisors are just as prone to making fatal errors of judgement, any mistakes on their part are blamed on them being kids playing at being adults.

Although the series is called Lockwood & Co, it’s actually Lucy’s perspective from which the story is told. Her portrayal of herself is of a teenager self-assured but not arrogant – a dislike of girls with inflated opinions of their own appearance is evident – and in the first section of the book where George is absent, she comes off as very much the Watson to Lockwood’s Holmes. George’s dishevelled appearance is at odds with his meticulous attention to detail when researching the causes of hauntings, and he proves himself slovenly but reliable. Lockwood, however, remains somewhat inscrutable, seemingly in part by his own design. He intentionally keeps things from his colleagues to satiate his penchant for drama by revealing them at suitably theatrical junctures, while several moments intentionally allude to the obligatory mysterious past that likely involves, yes, dead parents. There is a very fine line between mysteriously enigmatic and irritatingly reticent, and Lockwood runs dangerously close to crossing it.

The story’s world-building is well thought out; big business is now industrial ironmongering that produces swords, chains and myriad other metallic implements to combat spirits, accompanied by the manufacturing of ghost-hunting equipment such as salt bombs and magnesium flares, and farming fields of lavender that wards off ghosts. The central areas of large cities are crisscrossed with open channels of running water to prevent spirits crossing, while at night incandescent lamps periodically light up the streets to discourage visitations. There’s a very Victorian atmosphere to the story – the use of swords and elemental incendiaries practically gives it a steampunk feel – and were it not for technological details anchoring it in the modern day you could easily imagine it being set around the turn of the last century.

The pacing of the story is a little off; the opening sequence could easily be half the length and is followed by a long section detailing Lucy’s backstory and how she came to join Lockwood and George that, while interesting to read, doesn’t add anything substantial to the narrative that couldn’t have been dropped in elsewhere. The book only really gets going once the intrepid trio reach the decaying halls of a country mansion and navigate the Gothic claustrophobia of its haunted rooms, twisting corridors, hidden passageways and the titular flight of steps. Things happen with enough speed and intensity that you need no incentive to keep turning pages, least of all Stroud’s annoying habit of ending chapters in the middle of a scene.

A decent start to a new series, The Screaming Staircase has its flaws, but is ultimately a satisfying read that can be enjoyed by those outside its young adult target demographic.

REVIEW: DARK SHEPHERD – THE ART OF FRED GAMBINO / AUTHOR: FRED GAMBINO / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: JULY 29TH

English artist Fred Gambino may have ditched acrylics and oils for 3D modelling, but as Dark Shepherd reveals, he’s gone from strength to strength as a concept-driven designer and storyteller. The presentation is high quality, if a little cramped, pleasing purists and offering an entry point for newcomers.

The forward from director John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Ant Bully) paints Gambino as a friend and collaborator. The introduction, from Gambino himself, is a funny and enlightening prelude to the chronicle of the man’s relationship with digital art.

A good half of the book is dedicated to Gambino’s brainchild Dark Shepherd; it goes into some depth, offering pages of screenplay at a time. The best sections, though, are those which let the text take a back seat and have the images speak for themselves.

The collection spreads to encompass many different branches of Gambino’s career, frustratingly so. Instead of keeping the focus on the titular project and a few related ones, it tries to make sure every aspect, no matter how small, of his digital career gets a look-in. Yes, it’s all interesting enough, but more of his promo pieces for BioShock would have been a welcome replacement for the two-page section ‘Advertising and Commissions’ or the underwhelming ‘Star Wars Visuals’.

‘Introduction to the Graphic Novel’ is perhaps the most exciting section of the book, leaving the reader wanting more of the story. ‘Speed Paints and More’ is the most impressionist side of his work and may just be the most revealing.

Dark Shepard is a beautiful but bloated book, more a collage than a collection. It’s one more for 3D modellers and Photoshop hobbyists than your average sci-fi fan. That’s not to say they won’t enjoy it, but those looking just for art might want to give this one a miss. Still, pictures of space suits, ships, battle-tech, planets and even robo dragons go a long way.

Now in its fourth issue, small press fanzine Exquisite Terror goes from strength to strength. Edited and published by Naila Scargill, it’s a magazine unlike many others on the market at the moment. Rather than being focused on a particular strand of the genre, Exquisite Terror takes a cerebral, thoughtful look at various areas of interest, occasionally outside the cinematic medium.

As if to hammer home the eclectic nature, issue four features interesting and engrossing essays on such diverse topics as Dracula, The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and incorporating veganism and feminism into screenwriting.

The pieces on Bram Stoker’s vampiric creation don’t follow the usual, well-worn path, focusing as they do on historical facts, cases of real vampirism and the real ‘Dracula’s Castle’, Bran Castle in Transylvania. In The Bloodlines of Dracula, James Gracey argues that it was not only the infamous Vlad the Impaler who influenced Stoker to create the character of the Count, but also several folktales from the author’s homeland, Ireland. It’s a fascinating and informative article on a familiar subject.

Screenwriter Ed Pope’s essay on his script for the upcoming short film The Herd (starring Pollyanna McIntosh and recently crowd-funded on Kickstarter) delves into the procedure used to write a film in which women are used in the same way as cattle, milked-and-all. The film itself looks as if it could be controversial and thought-provoking viewing, and having this little background is invaluable.

Even an old subject like Chain Saw is given a fresh perspective.

To top it off, there’s also a brilliant interview with cult Deadbeat at Dawn director Jim Van Bebber, which is immensely entertaining.

A final unique aspect of Exquisite Terror is rather than peppering the pages with seen-them-all-before movie stills, many of the articles are illustrated with beautifully realised black and white drawings. This artwork alone is worth more than the £2.95 price tag. You can purchase the magazine (and the previous three back issues)  from their website. Well worth checking out.

THE SEVERED STREETS (JAMES QUILL 2) / AUTHOR: PAUL CORNELL / PUBLISHER: TOR / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Paul Cornell’s latest book, The Severed Streets, is the follow up to 2012’s London Falling. It continues the efforts of DI James Quill and his team to deal with the occult side of London. It also tells of their growing understanding of the possibilities of the Sight which allows them to see a side to London not visible to ordinary people.

This time the challenge is not only riots on the streets of London but also what appears to be Jack the Ripper. Paul Cornell does a better job of rounding out the characters in Quill’s team than the first novel, while still retaining his ability to shock. He also only reveals enough of how the occult world works to tell the story and no more. In contrast to Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, there is no casual mixing of worlds or a mentor-like figure; Quill’s team need to find things out for themselves. The horror element is still present and some of the prose is excellent. One thing that readers may find challenging, however, is the way the story brings a real world character into play in the story. There are also a few nods to Doctor Who, though none of these get in the way of the storytelling. The plot brings in more sinister forces in government and the intelligence service and avoids revealing the motives of Quill’s boss Rebecca Lofthouse. This is all guaranteed to hook in the reader and there is a strong sense of darker things to come.

The story has a good balance of action and tension, with some decent twists, though an astute reader will spot one of these without too much effort. Despite some reservations, this is an entertaining story and we look forward to the next release.

REVIEW: LOST IN TIME AND SPACE – AN UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO THE UNCHARTED JOURNEYS OF DOCTOR WHO / AUTHOR: MATTHEW J. ELLIOTT / PUBLISHER: HASSLEIN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Lost in Time and Space: An Unofficial Guide to the Uncharted Journeys of Doctor Who – to give it its full fifteen word title – is a solid, 350 page guide to everything we think we know that the Doctor did when we weren’t watching.

If you pick this up and flick through it casually you might miss the point. This isn’t a guide to 50 years of the show with odd facts or curious connections, this is everything unseen. Take an example: prior to the episode Logopolis, the Doctor sees a hydrazine steam generator and visits the uninhabited rocky world of Kolkokron. The reason we know this is that in Logopolis neither Turlough nor Tegan recognises the machine that the Fifth Doctor will identify in episode one of Frontios. The Tractator Gravis is dropped off on Kolkokron at the end of the story.

What this means is we have a study of every transmitted episode of the show along with several books and Big Finish audios that suggests when a whole range of off-screen events must have happened. The book is succinctly written and keeps interest with a clean prose style and several touches of humour throughout. Although it can be read from cover to cover, it is as much fun to dip in and out. It might have benefited from an index but that is really a minor criticism. I also wonder what happens when fandom gets its teeth into the text and starts to debate the detail of some of the assertions. This can only be good for future updates to the text.

This is one of those books that would clearly have sold well in 2013 ahead of the anniversary and will instantly need updating as every episode is transmitted. Release in 2014 does mean it has had time to tie off the Eleventh Doctor. This also means, as Alan Barnes says in the foreword, that we can look forward to the incalculable number of future editions that Matthew J. Elliott will be forced to write. It is already difficult to conceive just how hard this was to write and the author has created a job for life with this treatise of Time Lord meanderings.

As essential books for every Whovian go, this is a good contender for a top 10 slot.

REVIEW: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S THE JEDI DOTH RETURN / AUTHOR: IAN DOESCHER / PUBLISHER: QUIRK BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Concluding the trilogy retelling the original Star Wars films as if they were a series of plays by the great Shakespeare himself, The Jedi Doth Return proves to be a definite improvement over past books.

While Verily, A New Hope emulated many sequences of the plays, it was to the point of outright copying lines from Hamlet at times and often came across as tongue in cheek. Here however, the tale is consistently played far more straight-faced and is all the better for it, with an air of seriousness which makes the jokes all the funnier.

While it would have been easy to merely slightly alter Ackbar’s famous line, we are offered instead the likes of this: “Most vile, O trick of the Empire’s basest wit. A snare, a ruse, a ploy; and we the fools. What great deception hath been plied today – O rebels, do you hear? Fie, ‘tis a trap!”

This is a book you can truly judge by its cover, with everything you would expect from Star Wars written as a Tudor play, from soliloquies to R2-D2 playing the Shakespearian fool. This said, some scenes are distinctly uneven, with the chorus expected to provide description for the bigger details during battles. Furthermore, casual fans will miss some of the jokes intended for those with a greater awareness of the fandom and the (now dead) Expanded Universe, especially one priceless comment about midichlorians.

Still, despite this, it’s one well worth picking up if you are at all amused by the concept.

REVIEW: THE HOUSE OF WAR AND WITNESS / AUTHOR: MIKE CAREY, LINDA CAREY, LOUISE CAREY / PUBLISHER: GOLLANCZ / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

We’ve come to expect something unique from the Carey family. Their previous work, The City of Silk and Steel was refreshingly different and their latest offering carries on this fine tradition by being delightfully odd. It also has the same sort of set-up as the last book, it combines an unusual setting with an excuse to tell multiple tales from different perspectives, all weaving into one another to form a single powerful narrative.

In 1740, Europe is on the brink of war. A small company of Hapsburg soldiers garrison themselves in an old and dilapidated mansion house called Pokoj, handily located on the Prussian border. The local village is filled with resentful and suspicious villagers and the soldiers themselves are hardly the most charming of gentlemen. Everyone is tense as war could come at any moment and much of the story focuses on a young camp follower called Drozde whose skills include puppetry and getting what she wants. Her other talent is the power to see and communicate with the dead, something that is more of a curse than a blessing.

The story is thus steeped in history; each ghost has a story to tell and these provide snapshots of different moments in time. The narrative is therefore not just limited to the 18th century and these elements of well-defined exposition add an additional thrill to the over-arching plot. Though it lacks the exotic flavour of The City of Silk and Steel, this is made up for with subtle horror and extra special creepiness.

Sadly, the Carey’s insistence on delivering a history lesson with every tale softens the impact of the narrative. Each individual element is deliciously creepy and sombre but the story as a whole suffers from the constant jumping about. It’s hard to care too much about many of the characters when you know that they’re already dead. The two main living characters, Drozde and a rather hapless soldier called Klaes, are interesting enough but both seem just a little too flawed and a little too strange for the reader to care that strongly about them, making it feel like something critical is missing.

Overall this is a fine example of what the Carey’s are capable of, yet it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. It is by no means bad, it just doesn’t sparkle as brightly as it could do. Fans of 18th century ghost stories and those who enjoyed The City of Silk and Steel will not be disappointed, however.

REVIEW: THE CHILD EATER / AUTHOR: RACHEL POLLACK / PUBLISHER: JO FLETCHER BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Rachel Pollack is better known for her work on the Tarot as well as her short (and highly controversial) run on classic DC comic book Doom Patrol. Her Tarot books are widely regarded as some of the best in the field and her forays into fiction have mostly been set in a world of magical realism.

The Child Eater is a bold new step for Pollack in the sense that much of it is high fantasy. The book follows the journey of two boys. one is called Matyas and lives in a world of magic and strangeness. The other is called Simon and lives in the real world. Both are afflicted with strange gifts that not only define who they are, but also imperil their very existence, and both are haunted by the wails of lost children. The titular Child Eater stalks both boys, and together they must work out how to defeat a monster that seeks to feast on their very essence.

The novel is rich with metaphor and subtlety. For example Matya’s main goal in life is to learn how to fly, whereas Simon’s abilities mark him out as an outsider, making him desperate to be accepted. Much of the magic revolves around the Tarot and those familiar with the cards will be able to derive a great deal of meaning from key scenes and sections.

This is a slowly paced novel, Pollack’s gentle and graceful writing is engaging and addictive but it is also very gradual. The relationship between Simon and his father, Jack, is also particularly well done and moving and makes this work feel deeply personal in places.

The Child Eater is not the monster adventure story that the title might suggest; it is a multi-layered tale of growing up and self-discovery that also happens to have a horrific supernatural terror as its central focus. This is a book for those who like to take their time with a novel and absorb multiple meanings, casual readers may well find themselves bored. If you’re inclined to the occult and like your stories gentle yet deep, then you’ll adore The Child Eater.

REVIEW: DOCTOR WHO – TALES OF TRENZALORE / AUTHOR: JUSTIN RICHARDS, GEORGE MANN, PAUL FINCH, MARK MORRIS / PUBLISHER: BBC BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who constantly divides opinions, but one area where it’s certainly not lacking is scale. The Time of the Doctor, Matt Smith’s swansong, saw the Time Lord defending the town of Christmas in a nine-hundred-year siege. Of course, the episode itself only lasted an hour, and so much of this conflict occurred off-screen. It’s these narrative gaps that Tales of Trenzalore, an anthology of four stories, aims to fill. Released as an eBook earlier this year, Tales is now available in paperback.

First off is Justin Richards’ Let it Snow, in which the Ice Warriors plot to kill the Doctor by messing with the town’s weather. It’s the weakest of the lot, the main problem being that it takes its time building up to a blindingly obvious twist that anyone can see coming from five pages in. Once the reveal finally happens, the story continues to surprise no one, with a generic Doctor-vs-evil-plot climax remarkable only for a use of the sonic screwdriver actually related to sonic energy.

Next up is George Mann’s An Apple a Day, in which the carnivorous Krynoid turns Trenzalore’s plant life against the town. The herbaceous horror hits all the right notes, particularly a nasty body horror sequence in which a man turns into a plant. The story’s weakness is the child companion placed alongside the Doctor; seeing the ageing hero through young, admiring eyes is a great idea, but young Theol’s loss of his father is only brought up towards the end – an opportunity for character development missed out on.

Strangers in the Outland by Paul Finch sees Autons terrorising the people of Trenzalore. Though little is made of the weirdly irrelevant detail that they’re disguised as the Doctor, they’re not to be messed with, depicted here as brutal plastic thugs, and the story leads to a very action-centred crescendo.

In Mark Morris’ The Dreaming, by far the highlight of the volume, the mysterious Mara infects the minds of Christmas’ citizens, leading them to bring it into physical form via an occult ritual that would look genuinely scary on screen. Morris captures the voice of the Eleventh Doctor significantly better than the other writers; here he’s at his most elderly, still playful yet capable of intimidating rage, and there’s much-needed complexity added to his relationship with the villagers.

Overall, what we have here is a mixed bag. While the first three stories aren’t without charm, they all feel Who-by-numbers, and more bolder stories like The Dreaming would be appreciated. If you were a fan of The Time of the Doctor, this light reading will flesh out its world for you, but, like giving a Krynoid a sausage roll, it’s insubstantial, forgettable flesh.