Review Category: Books

Review: By Your Command – The Unofficial and Unathorised Guide to Battlestar Galactica / Author: Alan Stevens, Fiona Moore / Publisher: Telos Publishing / Release Date: Out Now

In the late ‘70’s, it was almost as impossible to ignore Battlestar Galactica as it was to be oblivious of Star Wars. It was the most expensive TV series of its time, a space opera that brought together elements of war and betrayal, mythology, religion and legend with a touch of the then-fashionable Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods theories and suppositions. Or… it was a weekly chase across space featuring a ragtag fugitive fleet of bedraggled humans trying to evade and avoid extinction by a race of chrome plated malevolent robots.

Either way, it was bold, brash, and eye catching. It arrived on our cinema screens in “sensurround sound” (essentially, bigger sub woofers around the cinema) long before ITV could afford to show it – and then it was gone, after only one season that had an intriguing open ending. Then it came back a couple of years later as Galactica 1980 in a handful of cheaply made episodes with all but a couple of the regular stars missing. What happened?

Finally, the whole story of the original Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980, from conception to casting, filming and broadcast is examined and told in a book that needs to find its way on to the shelves of discerning fans of TV sci-fi. By Your Command is exactly what it says on the cover – an unofficial guide to the classic series, now fast approaching 35 years old.

Don’t let the word “unofficial” fool you in to thinking that this volume is anything less than an absorbing and insightful account of the rise and fall of one of the most heralded series to air on American television whose premiere showing of the first episode was watched by an estimated 66 million people. The story behind the series’ downfall and cancellation is as intriguing and cynical a tale of self sabotage as any I’ve read from Hollywood in a long time.

Full and detailed synopsis of all episodes including the unfilmed scripts are given here, along with production notes and examinations of the various themes explored, such as world building, colonial politics, and religious metaphors. There are some fascinating anecdotes and observations – who knew that particular two word rebuttal can be seen written in the city lights as the Cylons make their initial attack on Caprica?

This is volume one, with a promise that the next volume will cover the more recent reimagined series and that’s great news. If it’s written in the same style with the same attention to detail as this, I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I’m going to watch the 1978 series on DVD with a fresh insight.

Review: Poltergeeks / Author: Sean Cummings / Publisher: Strange Chemistry / Release Date: October 4th

Strange Chemistry Books is a brand new, YA fantasy and science fiction imprint and in October they release Poltergeeks by Sean Cummings.

Fifteen year old Julie is a witch, just like her mother and has magical powers just like her late father. Only her best friend Marcus knows her secret and when an old lady is propelled out of her home into their path, how could they just walk past?

Exorcising the poor old lady’s house and freeing it of the spirit that threw her from her home is only the beginning in a chain of events that changes Julie’s life forever. The evil spirit of a witch hunter general is out to get her and after a paranormal attack at her high school, Julie feels completely out of her depth and calls her mother for help. As her mother attempts to control the evil spirit, she is overpowered and a spell pushes her into a deep coma, with only days left to live.

To save her mother Julie must unleash powers she never knew she had and trust people who may not deserve trusting. She’s got the biggest fight of her life coming but is she prepared to face her enemy?

Poltergeeks is absolutely everything you could possibly want in YA fantasy. The strong, sassy and sarcastic female lead has just enough insecurities to make her lovable and relatable. The writing style flows easily and pulls you in to keep you turning the pages as quickly as you can. Add ghost Dads, animated corpses, deception and a talking dog with a sprinkling of teenage angst and you’ve got the whole package. And the icing on the cake? Well I thought I’d guessed the twist at the end but that was a decoy for an even bigger twist, brilliantly done! This is a great, fun read and I am already looking forward to the follow up.

Review: Blood’s Pride / Author: Evie Manieri / Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books / Release Date: September 13th

The debut novel by Evie Manieri, Blood’s Pride is also the first book in the Shattered Kingdoms trilogy. We were hooked right from the prologue. Manieri paints a picture of a calm Shadari settlement suddenly ruined by the appearance of a fleet of ships and flying creatures. This marks the arrival of the Dead Ones, tall humanoids with an ice cold metabolism lending a bluish tint to their appearance. The Norlanders (to give them their actual name) quickly set about wrecking the settlement as the Shadari wait for their spiritual leaders, imbued with powers that could easily rid the settlement of the Dead Ones, to act. Only they don’t. Instead they throw themselves off a cliff to their deaths.

From such a strong opening we had very high hopes for Blood’s Pride, though sadly we quickly realised we were doomed to disappointment. The rest of the novel takes place a generation later, with the Shadari now slaves to the Dead Ones who have turned the settlement into a mining outpost. The cast of characters is a generous one and Manieri juggles them well, every character having their own agendas and impact on the plot. The issue we have is that the characterisation is left drastically wanting. Pretty much everyone in Blood’s Pride reads alike as Manieri uses the same style of speech for every character, yet occasionally adding a more idiolectic bit of dialogue that forces you out of the novel.

In addition, it seems like the only way two characters can say goodbye in Blood’s Pride is dramatically. We lost count of the number of times Manieri had characters in an emotional, lingering goodbye, where, just as one character is walking away the other one shouts their name. A little more effort in fleshing out the characters would have gone a long way to making it the debut novel it is so close to being, a problem made all the more frustrating when you read the most interesting character in Blood’s Pride: the Mongrel. Her aloof nature and questionable loyalty really goes a long way to keep you wondering where she’ll take the plot next.

This brings us to the highlight of the novel, the plot. Manieri clearly has a talent for intricate plots as she gradually reveals what really happened a generation ago, when the ashas left the Shadari to their subjugation and committed suicide, and why that means the second book, Fortune’s Blight, is likely to be much better than the first. Despite our gripes about the characters, we’re still looking forward to Fortune’s Blight and, as such, we would still recommend Blood’s Pride to fans of fantasy.

Black Static is a bi-monthly horror magazine offering fiction, features and reviews. The price, a reasonable £3.99, isn’t too scary, but what about the rest of it?

The highlight of #29 is Sunshine by Nina Allan. This exceptional short story recounts the developing attraction between a reclusive, philosophizing bloodsucker and a girl he meets in a train station, a relationship which brings unexpected and unwelcome consequences. A thoughtful demythologizing of fanged fiends, it’s in the same vein as Suzy McKee Charnas’s The Vampire Tapestry and marks Allan out as a name to watch.

Chopda by Baph Tripp is a creature shock story about a tourist who ends up in a bug-infested city. It’s hallucinatory, sometimes sick-making stuff, but Tripp’s snappy, mile-a-minute prose speeds you along nicely. At only four pages long, Horseman by Renee Carter Hall – the tale of a melancholy widower delivering a foal, only to discover that it has scales and fangs – is one of the shorter fictional pieces in the magazine, but it punches above its weight, delivering a powerful pay-off.

The remaining two stories are rather less successful. Supposedly a playful poke at Jaws and its imitators, Ray Cluley’s Shark! Shark! is overly tricksy and written in a chummy style which quickly gets annoying. Tim Lees’ The Counterweight describes a teacher wasting away under the mysterious spell of a pupil at the adult education college where she works. Here, the prose is very evocative, but as the pupil in question is balding and called Barry, he hardly makes for a seductive, or convincing, homme fatal.

Turning to the non-fiction, it’s puzzling to note that the lengthy book and film sections are handled by only two writers, Peter Tennant and Tony Lee. This is fine in the case of the books, which are reviewed by Tennant with great aplomb. His surveys of chapbooks and novellas are especially useful as horror lends itself so well to these shorter forms. But Lee’s film reviews are another matter. He pens an excitable, tortured kind of prose packed with slang and jargon, and slogging through a large quantity of it is likely to bring on a headache and a lifelong aversion to the word “trope.”

A browse through the rest of the issue won’t do much to soothe your migraine, as it offers little in the way of eye candy. The illustrations are precious few in number and reproduced in muddy greys, a fact which doesn’t stop the magazine trumpeting the illustrators’ names with such gusto you would think the whole thing was illuminated by hand on vellum. Some good moments, but Black Static didn’t leave me with quite the buzz I was hoping for.

Review: The President’s Vampire / Author: Christopher Farnsworth / Publisher: Putnam Adult / Release Date: Out Now

The President’s Vampire is the follow up to Blood Oath, Christopher Farnsworth’s debut novel. It tells, or continues to tell, the story of Nathaniel Cade, an ancient vampire sworn to protect the Presidents of America, the nation itself and its people against all enemies, even those of a supernatural persuasion…

It’s an interesting premise, but one that is sadly squandered in the opening chapters by a bizarre (bordering along the lines of ludicrous) battle between Cade and Osama Bin Laden – yes, you did read that right.

Cade’s enemies for this sequel are a race of man-snakes ingeniously called, um, Snake Heads, and Osama has been injected with a virus derivative that causes him to mutate into the aforementioned snake-like ones and go toe to toe with the President’s vampire, kung-fu style.

It’s a sorry start, to be completely honest. If the fight was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek then this would have been a perfectly acceptable beginning to a darkly humorous novel, but we are expected to take this at face value and consider The President’s Vampire as a set horror/action adventure, and as such the novel falls flat on its arse from the opening hook.

Oh dear springs to mind. In this second outing, Cade is pitted against the ruthless Snake Men who transform their victims into instant converts in mere seconds. Cade is partnered with Zach Burrows, his human handler, in their desperate search to stop the outbreaks and get to the real villain of the piece. Trouble being, the villain of the piece is telegraphed from the beginning and would in fact have only been more obvious if he painted ‘Villain’ onto his back and jumped up and down shouting, ‘No, really, it’s me.’

But despite being a crack team called in to handle cases deemed too weird for normal folk, Cade and Zach utterly fail to see the blaringly obvious until far too late.

The President’s Vampire makes matters worse by a series of grand posturing from the central characters that take up the next chunk of the book. Eyes begin to glaze. Yet, The President’s Vampire could have been saved by efficient use of prose and multi-dimensional characters that struggled and suffered through each chapter to a tear-jerking conclusion.

Nah, why bother, Cade never really gets into trouble with his superman style vampiric abilities. He’s practically unstoppable. Zach Burrows (the human handler) is left to take up the slack and make mistakes that, considering his position in the hierarchal system of things, smacks of gross incompetence. The women are defined by their sexuality in a quite frankly offensive manner and the remaining supporting cast are as lifeless and flat as a sun-baked rock.

To put it bluntly, there’s nothing new on offer. Christopher is a screen writer and this novel has already been optioned by producer Lucas Foster – the man behind Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Law Abiding Citizen, among many others. Foster says: ‘It always starts with the character for me. Cade has an amazing history, a great attitude and a great set of powers. He is a complete movie figure.’

And this is the problem: The President’s Vampire is written with a film option in mind. It feels like it’s been made for the market and comes across as soulless and as uncaring as its main protagonist.

Review: Blood and Feathers / Author: Lou Morgan / Publisher: Solaris / Release Date: Out Now

The current trend in urban fantasy fiction is for tales about the war between heaven and hell, now that the market for stories about blood-sucking teenage dreamboats seems to have become exhausted. This is not a bad thing however; there is a vast wealth of lore about angels and demons that will be familiar to most of the target audience.

Blood and Feathers draws upon the things that everyone knows about, celestial agents, and adds some entertaining twists. The tale focuses on Alice, a young lady who unknowingly has a little touch of the divine within her, and becomes embroiled in the war between heaven and hell. The tale starts off strongly with some nice physical horror and the promise of more to come. What we get is a character driven tale filled with mysteries piled upon mysteries. Morgan’s version of the angelic host is one filled with politics, bitterness and betrayal. Tired yet immortal warriors waging a seemingly endless war beneath the noses of an unwitting (and perhaps uncaring) humanity may be a cliché, but it also makes a good backdrop for a thriller.

Despite these strong foundations, Blood and Feathers doesn’t quite fulfil its potential. The main protagonists are engaging, but the author’s style isn’t quite strong enough to carry them forward. There are some great key moments, but overall it fails to deliver the sort of impact it promises at the beginning.  However, this is a debut novel and I do hope that subsequent books in the series (the next one will be called Rebellion) improve upon what could be a rather brilliant sequence of books. Lou Morgan has a very peculiar and slightly twisted vision of the world, and I look forward to reading what she writes next.

Review: Breed / Author: Chase Novak / Publisher: Mulholland Books / Release Date: September 13th

Alex and Leslie Twisden have it all: wealth, happily married, family town house passed down through generations in Manhattan’s Upper East Side – but they don’t have children. And despite trying every infertility treatment going they are still left childless. This yearning turns into a deep-rooted obsession and when they are informed of a doctor applying an experimental procedure they jump at the chance. Flying over to Slovenia, the couple are submitted to a painful and terrifying ordeal (big needles and sexually frustrated dog) that allows Leslie to conceive and the couple to reach their so desperately sought after dreams… but nothing is ever simple.

Fast forward ten years and the Twisdens have twins, Adam and Alice. The twins are deeply and unconditionally loved by their parents, but they are wrapped in secrecy in a degenerative lifestyle set to only get worse. The twins are locked into their bedrooms each night, listening to the violent and obscene sounds that come from their parents’ bedroom. Questions begin to arise that beg an answer. What happens to their pets? And what’s in the cellar?

Using a well-placed baby monitor, Adam listens in to his parent’s nocturnal conversations and discovers that despite their love for him and his sister, his parents actually want to eat him and are struggling to hold onto the remains of their shredded humanity.

Unable to stay in the house, the twins plot their escape and set into motion a series of dramatic and ill-fated events.

Breed is at times a dark novel, deceptively so. It lures the reader in with the Twisdens, a rich couple searching for a miracle, then out of nowhere thrusts horror into your face and leaves an unsettled feeling in the pit of your stomach. As the story descends into madness and animal ferocity, one can’t help but feel for the Twisdens every step of the way. The characters are multi-dimensional and the reader has no problems with rooting for them despite the slow reveal of their base natures.

Mixed in with the horror are moments of humour which balance well within the tale, and there are enough action scenes (for the most part) to keep the momentum going with a full head of steam.

Small criticisms lie in an early conclusion to a long-standing chase sequence and dramatic drop in pace which ultimately leads the final few chapters to feel drawn out before working back towards its heart-breaking conclusion.

Breed makes for a chilling horror from Charles Novak. Well worth the read.

Review: Seven Wonders / Author: Adam Christopher / Publisher: Angry Robot / Release Date: August 28th

Novels that carry a super-hero theme broadly fall into two categories; those that try and re-invent the genre under the mistaken and naive perception that people who read books are different from those who read comics, and those who embrace the comic-book vibe wholeheartedly and deliver a solid tale of weird powers and superheroism. Seven Wonders falls firmly into the latter category, the author’s glee-filled love of comic-books radiating from every page.

Imagine a world in which the super heroes had pretty much won; most of the brightly coloured defenders of justice have hung up their capes and gone into semi-retirement. All except the world’s premier hero team, the titular Seven Wonders, who are still defending the city of San Ventura from the awesomely powerful villain known as The Cowl. It’s a stand-off that has lasted for years, and when things start to go wrong, the result is a story that is both unique and yet a homage to all the things that we love about these sort of stories.

Like his previous novel Empire State, Adam Christopher takes both an interesting concept and clever plot and twists it round so many times that you’re never sure what will happen next. It’s compulsive reading at its best, and captures the spirit of classic comic books perfectly. It has just enough of an episodic feel to retain the vibe of its source material without being pretentious or confusing.

Capturing the true spirit of spandex-clad hero comics is not an easy task (just because something looks simple it doesn’t mean it is), and though the pacing is a little too fast in some places, Adam Christopher manages the task with style and panache. He evokes classic comic book writers such as Busiek, Moore, Morrison and Gaiman, and yet retains a unique style and sense of a world.

Comic book fans, especially those who like strong stories and the myth of the hero should take a look (and if you also happen to like weird Noir detective tales, you may want to check out Empire State as well).

Review: Justyce Served – A Small Start with a Big Finish / Author: Alun Harris, Matthew West / Publisher: Miwk Publishing / Release Date: September 5th

Having very little interest in the Doctor Who expanded universe beyond a mild curiosity (I’ve always considered the show first and foremost a television programme), Audio Visuals was something that completely passed me by at the time, and I’m probably therefore among the least qualified of people to review this book. Justyce Served, however, is a damn fine read, whether you’ve listened to the audio plays in question or not, and doesn’t require a foreknowledge of them any more than, say, a second Doctor era programme guide.

In fact, perhaps the finest thing about Justyce Served is that it serves as a snapshot of a time and a place, a reminiscence of something rather uplifting and hopeful, that while it might be long gone is still reflected in the wider Doctor Who universe today – especially as these unofficial audio plays were running in parallel with a television series that was, as it proved, dying. Back in 1984, Bill Baggs persuaded Gary Russell to join him in an adventure that would ultimately last for decades, in one way or another; and far beyond the four seasons comprising 29 unlicensed, unbound and amateur audio plays featuring their own, alternative Doctor Who (Nicholas Briggs), the groundwork that was laid by Baggs and Russell would eventually lead to the formation of Big Finish Productions, and feature any number of names that would go on to successes in the wider worlds of Doctor Who. If, during the 1990s, you read Doctor Who Magazine or the Virgin New Adventures novels – hell, if you’ve seen any story featuring the Daleks in modern Doctor Who – then you are acquainted with the work of the people who came together to produce the Audio Visuals plays between 1984 and 1993.

This volume exists as first and foremost an episode guide to these audio plays, with each story synopsised and accredited, and with the production process detailed through the accounts of the people who worked on them. But there’s so much more to Justyce Served than that (and beyond all the appendices detailing unmade plays, further projects and retellings of the stories under alternative circumstances, I mean); Alun Harris and Matthew West have tracked down pretty much all the major players in the life of Audio Visuals, and it’s clear from the testimonies they have given not only how much love they still have for what they accomplished, but also that the plays were a huge amount of fun to work on, and tremendously exciting too – even if at the time it was impossible to imagine where all this might lead.

The major players in the story are undoubtedly Gary Russell and Nicholas Briggs, but the personalities of Jim Mortimore and Richard Marson, John Ainsworth and Heather Barker – and others too numerous to mention – shine through. You can feel friendships (and the kind of friendships that would last a lifetime) being forged, and beyond that there’s an excitement and an inspiration about the scripts and their realisation that leads directly into what Big Finish would be able to produce a decade and more later – and are still producing today. From Russell’s foreword to Mortimore’s afterword, you can’t help but get drawn into the creative lives, as well as the relationships, of the main players. As a recollection of Doctor Who fandom in the late 1980s it’s unparalleled. An absolute must-read, in fact.

It’s also a huge and beautifully constructed book (and Robert Hammond’s delightful cover is the perfect example of that), clearly laid out (as all good programme guides need to be), but filled with photographs and drawings and other ephemera, the kind of bric-a-brac that thrust you right into the heart of what was being created and the method that was used in order to do so; if you’ve ever been involved in anything creative yourself, you’ll recognise the processes at work here, and further than that, Justyce Served will even make you feel like you’d been involved – or wish you’d been involved.  It’s that thorough and that evocative.

And in an odd kind of a way, it’s also a rather melancholy read. For while the spirit of Audio Visuals undoubtedly lives on, the period invoked and the creative energy that produced them are now a thing of the past. Justyce Served really makes you pine for the past, in quite an unexpected way.

It turns out that not being acquainted with the Audio Visuals stories wasn’t a barrier to my enjoyment of this book at all (indeed, it has instead made me determined to seek them out!). It’s a glorious story of a glorious endeavour and gloriously told, and makes for quite simply a glorious read – Justyce Served comes thoroughly recommended whether you have any interest in or knowledge about the subject it covers or not.

Indeed, the only problem is that it seems to have arrived a year early; the amount of devotion that has gone into this book’s production (which mirrors the devotion that went into the production of the Audio Visuals themselves, in turn reflecting the level of enthusiasm and dedication that goes into making – or even just being a fan of – the programme) means it would be the perfect volume for the show’s fiftieth anniversary year.

Orders processed through the Galaxy 4 bookshop or through Miwk’s own website will receive a free gift.

Review: Kill the Dead / Author: Richard Kadrey / Publisher: Eos / Release Date: October 5th

Kadrey’s Sandman Slim was a tasty cocktail of dark fantasy, urban humour, knowing pop culture references and thunderous action, and Starburst gave it ten out of ten. Sadly, the sequel, Kill the Dead, doesn’t have anywhere near the same perfect blend of ingredients. Uh, maybe Kill the Franchise would have been a better title…

The narrator and anti-hero of the Sandman Slim novels is James Stark. Enduring an eventful sojourn in hell and living to tell the tale, he returns to Los Angeles to wreak vengeance on the cabal of magicians who sent him there. In this book, all that’s in the past, and he’s working as an occasional hitman for a government agency as a way of supporting his ailing video rental business and keeping his severed head flatmate in cigarettes and tamales. But then Lucifer comes to the city of angels to get into the movies, and Stark is landed with the job of being his bodyguard. Just to complicate matters still further, some of LA’s most powerful magical families are being murdered in grisly fashion, and it looks as if the Prince of Darkness might be on the same hit list.

The joy of the first book was in watching the vengeful Stark go blundering around a recognizable, sharply-drawn LA. Here, the urban grit is lost as LA becomes a fantasy ground of vampires, necromancers and portals to other dimensions. A similar unwelcome mutation has befallen Stark himself, originally an impulsive, nihilistic ruffian whose main supernatural attribute was that whatever didn’t kill him made him stronger. In Kill the Dead, he turns gumshoe, patiently poring over clues and interrogating witnesses whereas before he would have hit them over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniels and asked questions later. His powers seem to wax and wane in an amorphous way, as though Kadrey no longer knows quite what to make of him.

The same tentativeness permeates the entire novel. Sandman Slim was bursting with colourful characters, but those that recur no longer carry the same weight, and the new ones verge on cliché – witness Brigitte Bardo, Czech porn star by day, zombie slayer by night, yawn… although to be fair she does provide some useful tips on how to kill a walker (rip out the spine to destroy the nervous system, in case you were wondering.) As for Lucifer, he made a memorable cameo appearance at the end of the first book, but casting him as a major player in this one leads to that whole familiarity-breeding-contempt situation.

Throughout, Kadrey constantly ups the ante in this way, with a consequent loss of nuance and mystique. There’s a lot of bustle and some funny lines, but it all feels a bit soulless and plastic. An author well-versed in the movies, Kadrey has delivered that most Hollywood of products, a sequel that tries too hard and lays it on too thick, thus burying a good idea.