Review Category: Books

REVIEW: AUTHORITY / AUTHOR: JEFF VANDERMEER / PUBLISHER: FOURTH ESTATE / RELEASE DATE: MAY 6TH

Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation was a master class in affecting, unsettling and hallucinogenic storytelling, resembling multiple genres but fitting into none of them. The second in The Southern Reach trilogy is a far different beast. The narrative is surprisingly comfortable, given its strangeness, and in many ways it’s more of an accessible read.

Authority is set, for the most part, inside the heart of the clandestine Southern Reach and answers questions lingering from the previous novel. Knowing what became of the biologist is both joyous and disturbing. With Authority, the reader is able to see things from a more concrete, tangible position, it no longer feels like an outsider looking in, but rather the reader is the insider looking out.

The novel presents a more immediately recognisable environment, whereas Annihilation had an otherworldly feel. Area X could have sprung up anywhere, the biologist’s flashbacks offering no definite location; Authority is more obviously cemented in America, contextualising the story and giving the reader a handhold onto the narrative, a vantage point to take in the struggle between the other and the familiar.

Control is very much the reader’s champion, leading them by the hand, a link between what the reader understands and the nebulous Area X. He’s a palpable character, yet like all aspects of the novel he is oddly removed. The characterisation is deftly done, Control, Grace, Whitby and co are damaged but not so far gone as the women from Annihilation.

The text is visceral, saturated with paranoia and reminiscent of J.G. Ballard. The novel functions on the power of suggestion and indeed that’s where most of the horror comes from, like a magician’s sleight of hand. The pages describing an incident with some rabbits and camera footage are particularly unpleasant.

The novel has a cut-up quality, a composition style favoured by David Bowie and William S. Burroughs, which gives the impression that the novel can be rearranged at will, read in multiple ways, like an unsettling choose-your-own adventure.

Authority is a work of sublime beauty and darkness, one takes neither the side of Area X nor those investigating it; instead it’s a study in change. Jeff VanderMeer is one of the finest contemporary American authors and the third and final Southern Reach novel is sure to be quite spectacular, though you may want some light relief in the meantime.

REVIEW: STAR WARS – MAUL – LOCKDOWN / AUTHOR: JOE SCHRIEBER / PUBLISHER: CENTURY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

“Wham!” is how author Joe Schreiber kicks off his latest foray into the Star Wars Expanded Universe. With a sound effect. From the ’60’. In a medium where casual consumers often base their purchasing decisions on first impressions, it is certainly an aggressive decision.

Lockdown marks Schreiber’s third contribution to the EU, and it’s one that spins off both thematically and tonally from the galaxy far, far away in a manner that may be jarring for some: make no mistake, this is not your typical swashbuckling adventure story. No, this is a story for the new generation of younglings, younglings who’d rather read about blood and guts and alien warriors being ripped in half, than about that one time that guy did the Kessel run.

Maul is an inherently cool character, arguably the Fett of the prequels. And, much like Boba, so much of his appeal comes from that same mystique; Maul shows up, does a backflip and then kills some fools with a sweet dual sabre, before pulling his hood back up and returning to the shadows. The more you delve into the character the more you remove that power. And yes, the irony of his appeal being a double-edged sword cannot be overlooked.

The dialogue reads like a hundred little Annie Skywalkers. And in a galaxy rife with lasers and mystical powers, why on Earth is something described as being “bulletproof”? But, if you can get past that, you will be presented with a brutal yet intimate tale that adds another dimension to everyone’s favourite prequel-Sith.

REVIEW: ALIEN / AUTHOR: ALAN DEAN FOSTER / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 30TH

Reissued by Titan Books to mark the 35th anniversary of the seminal movie, the novelisation of Alien by ridiculously prolific sci-fi/fantasy author Alan Dean Foster skilfully preserves its sense of bleak isolation, foreboding tension and relentless terror.

You all know the story: the skeleton crew of a commercial space craft unwittingly bring a hostile alien aboard that begins to stalk them through claustrophobic corridors and pick them off on by one. However, while Alien is doubtless first and foremost a space-set horror film, in Foster’s hands the story is transformed into hard sci-fi while maintaining the atmosphere of primordial fear. Details the film skips past (how the Nostromo traverses light-years in the space of months; the mechanics of space flight; the practical layout of the ship; the physical enormity of the mining refinery the ship is dragging; the functionality of the alien’s biological necessity to be immune to its own acid; speculation of what kind of people the space jockeys were) are effortlessly incorporated without seeming like appended afterthoughts. Likewise, rather than appearing as jarring departures, the expansion of the basic plot is seamlessly integrated into the recounting of the film’s events. The only real problem is that the text jumps between character perspective with alarming regularity and little more than the occasional ellipsis to warn us, and as such keeping up with whose viewpoint is being presented takes some focus.

The film’s script was written with the idea that each of its characters could be played by anyone, meaning the crew are only described the most general of physical terms, with their attitudes to their tasks and responsibilities aboard the ship and their position in its more clearly defined hierarchy forming much of their development. The story twists hold up when read with advance knowledge, such as thoughts from Ash’s perspective remaining consistent with his later reveal as an android without actually giving it away, and Dallas easily being the most prominent character for most of the book, thus preserving the film’s suckerpuch of his early departure after the alien is loosed. Within the context of the tense nightmare, even the transferred cinematic tropes that have become somewhat clichéd since the film’s debut – such as the Final Girl and It Was Just The Cat – don’t come off as such (while relevant in the film, the lack of character description negates Black Guy Always Dies and English Guy Is Evil).

Foster seems to have been working from an early version of the screenplay, as the book includes a number of sequences and exchanges absent from the theatrical film (and in some cases, shot and then later cut), most significantly Ripley’s discovery of Brett and Dallas’ bodies, the latter still alive and trapped in a transmuting cocoon, begging her to kill him. Also, one scene describes a dark shape on Kane’s lungs after being brought back aboard with the facehugger attached, foreshadowing his fate; another where the alien is almost ejected by opening an airlock, but is startled into safety at the last second by an alarm set off by Ash; and further exploration into just how much the Company knew about the situation the crew were being sent into, thereby amplifying their inhuman, profit-driven calculation.

Most surprising is how effective the generic descriptions of the alien itself are. Although lacking the iconic imagery of H.R. Geiger’s chimeric nightmare, the alien manages to remain a terrifying threat by evoking the fear of the unknown. A creature so defiant of natural laws and utterly incomprehensible by any stretch of human knowledge or understanding, its very existence is almost as abominable as its actions. The “purity” of its motivations mark it as the ultimate apex predator, an entity without the emotion to be threatened or the intellect to be reasoned with, only the biological imperative to propagate itself regardless of what stands in its way.

While three and a half decades of sequels, prequels, crossovers and endless pop culture references might have diluted much of Alien’s original shock factor, even in text form the primal dread conjured by its events and themes is as timeless as the cold and empty darkness from which it spreads.

REVIEW: BLOOD KIN / AUTHOR: STEVE RASNIC TEM / PUBLISHER: SOLARIS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Michael Gibson has returned to his Virginia home and now looks after his elderly grandmother, Sadie. Weak as she is, Sadie has a story she must tell her grandson; a recounting of her life in the 1930s, a tale of ghosts, empathic powers, and a sinister snake-handling uncle. As Sadie’s story is told, Michael feels himself drawn in by her words, and begins to understand how her past is important to his future.

Like Michael, anyone reading Blood Kin will also find themselves fascinated with Sadie’s story. Hers is a world of the Southern Gothic, where everyone in the small town nestled in a valley knows each other – chances are, they’re all related in some way. Being a young girl about to enter adolescence, Sadie attracts unwanted attention from various men (including her own father), but it’s her uncle, the preacher, who is the greatest terror. He seems more demon than Man of God, surrounded in an aura that demands fear and respect from all; he can also sense Sadie’s burgeoning powers, and appears to want them for his own foul purposes.

Steve Rasnic Tem’s writing is sublime. The Southern-style dialogue and narration border on the lyrical, and it’s worth reading some passages out loud just to roll the tongue around the words. An atmosphere of unease permeates Sadie’s history, brilliantly evoking the fear and worry of her everyday existence; the threat of violence is extremely unsettling, filling even the most mundane encounters with suspense.

The first half of the book creates the atmosphere and builds the tension slowly but surely, also introducing us to a potential threat in the present. Just what is it that lurks in an iron-bound crate buried deep under Kudzu vine, and why is that vine now growing at an impossible rate, threatening to engulf everything? We find out, of course, but it’s layered very gradually until the final third of the book, which will have the reader turning pages until the very end. Based on what has gone before, the finale feels like it’s over too quickly, but we’re ultimately left with the satisfaction of having read a well-written and gripping novel.

REVIEW: THE ART OF IAN MILLER / AUTHOR: IAN MILLER / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Role-players in their forties will doubtless be familiar with the work of Ian Miller, an artist whose work graced the covers and pages of many magazines and supplements. His distinctive pen-and-ink drawings (often looking more like etchings) are instantly recognisable as his work, the detail within each pulling the eye of the reader into it for a closer inspection. Titan Books have pulled together over 150 pages of Ian’s work, combining notes from the man himself to produce a lavish and colourful portfolio.

It’s a beautiful tome, with each page demanding full attention from the reader. Often, art books can be read with a few glances at each page, but not this one. Miller’s style grabs the attention from the outset and never lets go – here is a book that can be read in one sitting, but will demand that you return to it later, many times, for a full appreciation of the artist’s work. While Miller’s words seem few, they are always insightful; for the most part, he lets the art do the talking, as befits a book of this type.

The book covers Miller’s four-decade career without reducing it to a collection of White Dwarf covers (although a couple of memorable ones are there), ranging from dragons that look like they could breathe fire out of the page, to background sketches for films such as Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards and covers for Lovecraft novels. Especially of interest is Miller’s work for The City (a book on which he worked with the late James Herbert) and the intricate architecture of Gormenghast. The art is grouped into categories, the last of which – Dreams & Nightmares – is a tour de force of images that are both beautiful and haunting.

Fans of Ian Miller won’t be disappointed with this collection, and even those who’ve had only a passing acquaintance with his work will find it fascinating. It’s a fitting tribute to the artist; the publishers and all concerned deserve a round of applause for giving Miller the care and appreciation his work richly deserves.

REVIEW: GAMES CREATURES PLAY / AUTHOR: CHARLAINE HARRIS, WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER, JAN BURKE, JOE R. LANSDALE, CAITLIN KITTREDGE, BRENDAN DUBOIS, DANA CAMERON, SCOTT SIGLER, ELLEN KUSHNER, BRANDON SANDERSON, MERCEDES LACKEY, SEANAN MCGUIRE, ADAM-TROY CASTRO, LAURA LIPMAN, TONI L.P. KELNER / PUBLISHER: JO FLETCHER BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

As the title and lengthy author rundown would suggest, Games Creatures Play is an anthology of supernatural short stories, revolving around the concept of the games and sports in which otherworldly entitles participate.

Ghosts form the largest proportion of tales, featuring varyingly in seven of the collection’s fifteen stories: as deceased baseball players marked for exorcism by freelance monster hunters (Scott Sigler’s The Case of the Haunted Safeway), damned souls playing a desperate game of hide and seek with their tormentors (William Kent Krueger’s Hide and Seek), cursed Native Americans challenging unwary hikers to a bloody lacrosse match (Brendan DuBois’ On the Playing Fields of Blood), reanimated spirits summoned into a boxing bout with living contenders (Joe R. Lansdale’s Dead on the Bones), a young fencer haunting an upper class girl’s school (Ellen Kushner’s Prise de Fer), a drowned girl trapped in a frozen pond freed by two skaters (Laura Lipman’s Ice) or dead gamers playing a real-life round of capture the flag on city streets (Brandon Sanderson’s Dreamer).

Anthology editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner both went for witches, bookending the collection with, respectively, In the Blue Hereafter, where magic is exercised to manipulate a high school softball game, and Bell, Book, and Candlepin, featuring a cursed bowling alley.

Less standard sports also feature, most notably in Seanan McGuire’s Jammed, a supernatural murder mystery involving a roller derby league of humanoid mythological creatures (although it won’t do much to enlighten those who know little of the sport beyond roller skating girls in fetish gear with bad pun nicknames racing around a track while battering each other); while in Dana Cameron’s The God’s Games, a wolf man must prevent a murder at a 5th Century Olympics by winning the pankration (akin to an ancient Greek equivalent of MMA).

Stakes are raised a couple of times when the Devil himself makes appearances: he features in Mercedes Lackey’s False Knight on the Road, where a moonshine runner gets sucked into a drag race with Old Nick on a desolate mountain road, and Caitlin Kittredge’s The Devil Went Down to Boston, where the youngest daughter of a low level criminal family of Irish immigrant fae gambles with Lucifer to free her brother from the death sentence he placed on himself after stealing from a dangerous gangster.

Mixing things up are Adam-Troy Castro’s Hide and Shriek, a deadpan and blackly humorous Lovecraft parody featuring a trio of childish Elder Gods wiling away the aeons with a game of hiding themselves where unwitting humans might discover them after uncovering the right clues, and Jan Burke’s Stepping Into the Dead Zone, which fuses the myths of changelings and the events of Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig with the rules and logistics of navigating a new primary school and the violence, exclusion and degradation of dodgeball.

Being mostly fantasy writers, many of the authors choose to set their tales in the universe of one of their ongoing series (or in the case of Charlaine Harris, a non-canon crossover), but the stories are all standalone entries with no prior knowledge required to enjoy them. Indeed, in the case of False Knight on the Road, it’s only if you’re unaware of what the Serrated Edge series features that the story’s twist even works.

From bleak violence to self-aware metafiction, the tales vary wildly in tone, and with so much variation in the games featured, even if some of them don’t appeal to you there’ll be something completely different within a few pages.

REVIEW: ZOM-B MISSION / AUTHOR: DARREN SHAN / PUBLISHER: SIMON & SCHUSTER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The seventh instalment of the ZOM-B series is mostly dedicated to world-building which, considering it takes place in a London not that far removed from our own (with the obvious addition of zombies), is quite a risky thing to spend an entire book doing. Fortunately, this is one of the aspects of the book that really works. Shan has included a line or two about the wildlife and lack thereof which makes complete sense and makes us wonder why we didn’t think of it before.

We’re also starting to get an idea of what’s to come in this series and get a feeling of who’s doing what and why. We almost feel bad for the characters who’ve been through hell, as it looks like the answers to those questions will be surprisingly mundane; their efforts might well be for naught. An organisation from the real world makes a surprising reappearance, and it will be interesting to see where the story goes based on this.

In fact, the most interesting thing in the book is the fate of Mr Burke. We hope this gets wrapped up soon while the mystery is still potent, as by 2015 the younger crowd might well have forgotten who he is and why his fate matters.

All things considered, this is an improvement on the last book. The plot of this one has at least stuck with us (which, as we said in our review of the last book, is a lot more than could be said for much of the series) and for once we’re looking forward to seeing what the eighth book will have to offer. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a string of hits.

Review: The Burning Dark / Author: Adam Christopher / Publisher: Titan Books / Release Date: Out Now

Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland has one last mission before early retirement: decommissioning the U-Star Coast City, a semi-deserted research outpost orbiting a toxic star on the edge of Fleetspace. Arriving to find the station Commandant missing, Fleet communications plagued with interference, and a hostile skeleton crew haunted by insidious shadows and disembodied whispers, Ida becomes increasingly isolated and paranoid. He reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune into a disturbing signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. Is the transmission just a random burst of static from the past or a warning of an undying menace that threatens to devour humanity s future?

Adam Christopher’s The Burning Dark is essentially a haunted house story set on a space station, which will immediately draw comparisons to the movies Alien and Event Horizon. But if you like these films (and let’s face it, who isn’t a fan of Alien?), then we think it’s safe to say you’ll enjoy Christopher’s latest offering.

The story itself is hardly original but its blending of ghost story, conspiracy theory, revenge thriller and Japanese folklore work remarkably well. Christopher also captures the boredom and claustrophobia that the station personnel have to cope with. It’s particularly tough for the marines who are used to combat conditions, so when retiring war hero Ida Cleveland is sent to sign off on the decommissioned station he falls victim to one marine’s frustration. But that soon becomes the least of his worries.

Crew members vanish, communications and environmental systems inexplicably fail, shadowy figures wander the corridors and unknowable secrets are whispered in the dark. The building tension and mounting paranoia is expertly realised by Christopher. Rather than focusing directly on the horror he uses the literary equivalent of subtly suggesting that something much worse is occurring out of shot.

There are some wonderfully sinister moments in this well-paced tale, which often makes it uncomfortable reading, such is the atmosphere that Christopher evokes. If there are any flaws, then it’s that the marines are pretty much stock characters that you’ll have seen in countless war movies, and that the alien bio-mechanical spiders that Earth is at war with barely feature, and why does it take Ida so long to realise that strange occurrences are, well… occurring?

Although this is the first volume in The Spider Wars series (with subsequent volumes no doubt focusing more on Earth’s arachnid enemy), The Burning Dark has a very definite beginning, middle and end and so can be read as a standalone novel. One thing’s certain. You won’t listen to static the same way the next time you manually tune your radio.

Review: Lovecraft’s Monsters / Author: Ellen Datlow / Publisher: Tachyon / Release Date: Out Now

Horror icon H.P. Lovecraft may have been a virtual unknown during his time as a jobbing writer in the early 20th century, but his influence has since grown to levels of true cultism. This is evidenced in works such as Lovecraft’s Monsters, an anthology which shows that his Old Ones aren’t going anywhere fast.

Where many Lovecraft-inspired short stories are content to merely imitate or pastiche the great man’s work, Lovecraft’s Monsters heads in a different direction. Editor Ellen Datlow has collected a series of genre-bending tales which do a little more than simply copy that which came before. With an all-star host of names such as Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale and Kim Newman bringing their considerable talent to the table, it’s a varied and eclectic collection, more than worthy of the mighty Cthulhu.

There are eighteen entries here, most of an impressively high standard. It opens, unsurprisingly, with Gaiman’s Only the End of the World Again, which also happens to be the least good story in the book. A grisly werewolf tale, it boasts typical Gaiman wordsmithery, but lacks his usual wit. A shame, since his Sherlock Holmes pastiche A Study in Emerald proves that he can write Cthulhu well. Still, the only way from there is up, and the rest of the stories just keep on getting better. Brian Hodge’s lengthy The Same Deep Waters as You is the best of the lot, although there’s serious competition throughout.

Kim Newman’s A Quarter to Three is short but sweet, while there’s poetry in Gemma Files’ Haruspicy and Jar of Salts. Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley provide the book its most memorable and ambitious story in Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole. A Frankenstein sequel and Cthulhu crossover, it sees Victor’s creation wander (literally) into Lovecraft territory during his post-Frankenstein travels. Inventive, soulful and exciting, it would make a great full-length novel or movie. But since we can’t even get a Mountains of Madness adaptation off the ground, you’d be better off not holding your breath for that one.

There’s a lot to love in Lovecraft’s Monsters, an anthology which is both faithful and inventive at the same time. Unafraid to take risks and snazzily illustrated, this collection is proof that the Cthulhu cult remains as strong as ever.

Review: Age of Shiva / Author: James Lovegrove / Publisher: Solaris Books / Release Date: April 10th

James Lovegrove’s Godpunk series has been consistently fresh, interesting and exciting so far. The standalone novels each deal with a particular pantheon of gods brought into the modern day. Lovegrove blends the mundane with the magical and stays a step beyond the usual urban fantasy fare by simply using the premise of gods walking amongst as one of many elements, rather than relying on centuries old legends to carry a novel. Age of Shiva continues in this fine tradition by mixing the ten avatars of Vishnu with the thoroughly modern concept of superhero teams.

The tale is narrated by an interesting character called Zak Zap (known as Zachary Bramwell to his mum). Zak is a comic book artist who gets forcibly invited to work for a trinity of billionaires in a mysterious complex in the Maldives. To his delight and surprise, he gets the job as the lead costume designer for a superhero team based on the Hindu faith. As this is a world much like ours, you can imagine that someone who draws funny books for a living is more than a little bit suspicious of the whole set-up and wackiness ensues.

Zak is a very sympathetic and witty sort of chap, and the author uses him as an excuse to litter the book with fun little pop culture references. Everything from the Hulk to Watchmen gets a nod and the book is littered with amusing footnotes. Whereas Age of Voodoo was a spy thriller with supernatural elements and Age of Satan was a whistle-stop tour through classic British horror movies, Age of Shiva is a love poem to both comic books and the Hindu faith. The core idea (the Dashavatara as the inspiration for a superhero team) works really, really well and Lovegrove has clearly made a careful study of the rich lore surrounding them. The narrative is careful not to alienate those who don’t know their Vamana from their Varaha and one of the key characters of the story also doubles as a handy source of cultural knowledge.

As always, Lovegrove’s style is easy going and draws you in quickly. As the tale is told by a very unreliable narrator, there’s plenty of room for the reader’s imagination to soar between the gaps and this adds a further comic book feel to the entire affair. The tale does suffer from feeling like it could go on for a lot longer than it does and those more familiar with Indian mythology may see one or two of the twists and turns coming. Overall though, this is a fine addition to one of the best series in urban fantasy available today.