Book Review: Ultramarines – The Second Omnibus / Writer: Graham McNeil / Publisher: Games Workshop / Release Date: Out Now

An omnibus is always a bit of a challenge when you have to review it; after all, you’re not just talking about one book, but many. Though this provides a nice way to get the series as a whole, some tales benefit from allowing the reader to rest between novels. This is especially a problem with action heavy tales featuring super humans doing amazing things; such stories are fun, but consume too much in one sitting and your head may spin. A lot like too much ice cream. This is a collection to take your time with and, unlike ice cream, won’t melt.

As you may be able to surmise from the title, Ultramarines: The Second Omnibus, is a book filled with tales of Ultramarines. These are Warhammer 40,000’s flagship heroes; huge noble warriors, clad in blue power armour. Dark Age style crusaders in space, but with a mix of Spartan warrior culture and an obsession with being the best warriors in the galaxy.

The three full novels in this collection are worth a look, if you’re a fan of the 40K setting and  Ultramarines in particular. Killing Ground is a spooky tale of heroism, superstition and violence; all things McNeil is particularly good at. The pace is a little slow at points, but the two main protagonists, Uriel and Pasanius, are likeable in a genetically altered killing machine sort of way. The next novel, Courage and Honour, follows on firmly from the first and racks up the pace. This is a violence filled tale of big men with big guns shooting things of all sizes. It is a tale deeply rooted in the concept of noble knights in space, and when things aren’t being shot at or hit with chainsaw swords, we get a glimpse at the culture of Ultramarines. The last full novel is Chapter’s Due, which picks up the pace even further and becomes a break neck tale of galactic warfare. Sinister villains and very big things blow up.  It’s a touch darker than the last two, but then it has to be as a lot of things die in it. Taken together, it’s a ripping journey of action, adventure and a lot of violence.

The omnibus also features the short story Eye of Vengeance. We reviewed the audio version of this tale (here) and it works much better as an audio than it does in black and white. Mostly because it’s a tale of big, heavy objects crashing into things and going boom. Still, it pads the Omnibus out nicely and it’s quite fun.

The last part of the Omnibus is a bit of an odd choice; Black Bone Road is a comic strip, reprinted from the Black Library’s now long defunct anthology magazine, Inferno. It is pretty content free, as far as these things go; Space Marines turn up and stop an occult menace by hitting it repeatedly. Sadly, the size of the comic strip art doesn’t really fit on the page (it’s been resized for the novel format), and that makes it cramped and not easy to read. Though I’d love to see more comic books with Ultramarines in them, this is not a top example.

Overall,  Ultramarines:The Second Omnibus is more of the same for the fans; there’s nothing wrong with the content, but by the time you’ve gone through the first Omnibus you’ll have already made your mind as to if you want more or not.  For £13, you do get quite a lot of story, and those who like these peculiar boys in blue will love it.

Book Review: Dead Winter / Writer: C L Werner / Publisher: The Black Library / Release Date: Out Now

The Warhammer setting is a marked example of the differences between supposedly high and low fantasy. High fantasy imagines a world of wizards and elves and suggests a place in which the filth and brutality of the dark ages aren’t relevant. It’s distant and removed from the raw origins of history, and rarely makes for a better tale as it lacks a realistic punch to carry move it along. Luckily, Dead Winter is firmly in the class of low fantasy. Set in a world filled with strife, disease and corruption, it’s a tale of greed and plague, and a cracking read.

It’s also a novel that features that classic hero of the low fantasy tale; the rat catcher. Oh, and rodents of unusual size, namely the Skaven. (The Warhammer setting has some surreal touches, and the insane and creepy Skaven are just the tip of the iceberg, trust me.) It’s not just rat catchers and their prey, however; Werner weaves multiple perspectives into the narrative and combined with multiple locations, it lends an epic feel to the book.

Many of the characters are engaging and sympathetic, though not necessarily likeable. Personally, I like to root for the villains myself, and I found I had a lot to root for in this book. Werner really draws the reader in, and though this is a novel light on action, it is so thick with character and plot that the key action scenes carry a lot of weight. Those who like their fantasy covered in dirt and blood will love this, though be warned, it is the first in a series and it could run for a while. I certainly hope so.

Book Review: Flash Gordon On The Planet Mongo / Writer: Alex Raymond / Publisher: Titan Books / Release Date: Out Now

Titan Books have really done it this time. Long established as the premiere publishing house for genre material, they’ve just published what must surely be the ultimate Flash Gordon book. And the even better news is that this is merely the first in a series that will become essential reading for fans of Golden Age science fiction as well as comic book fans. This, in a way, is really where it all started.

Buck Rogers was really the first of the comic strip sci-fi heroes, there’s no denying that, but Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon is arguably the more recognisable and the better remembered. This handsome volume reprints the strips published in Sunday papers from January 7, 1934 through to April 18, 1937. It contains nine complete stories published on fairly heavy stock paper to show Raymond’s magnificent artwork to its best advantage.

As should be borne in mind, the plots are fairly simplistic, given that Raymond had basically half a page of a broadsheet paper to tell each installment and readers keen to observe political correctness would do well to observe that the book also contains the warning that characters may have views or use language which some of today’s readers may find offensive, but these are archive stories, reflecting the opinions and attitudes of the times in which they were written. Thus, for example, Ming the Merciless, tyrant ruler of the planet Mongo is obviously an eastern stereotype. The real beauty is in the fine line work of Raymond’s graceful inks and his incredible eye for detail and realism.

In reading the opening strip, I was struck by how closely Universal Studios had kept to Raymond’s concepts, costumes, spacecraft and interiors when they produced the first Flash Gordon serial in 1936. The resemblance between actor Buster Crabbe and Flash Gordon is stunning. Speaking of the serials, The Witch Queen of Mongo, the fifth story in the book, introduces us to Azura, The Witch Queen of the Blue Magic Men and is the basis for Universal’s second serial, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars.

The book’s one flaw, and I might be overly critical here, is that some of the strips in the book seem to have been blown up to twice their size for formatting – a bit too much to show the art at its best. This is only evident in the strips between February 3, and May 26 1935. But it’s a small gripe when we get to see the golden age of science fiction and the dawn of comic strips as we know them today unfold in front of our eyes.

I look forward to the future volumes.

Book Review: The Lost Fleet – Beyond the Frontier – Invincible / Writer: Jack Campbell / Publisher: Titan Books / Release Date: Out Now

Invincible picks up right after the end of the last novel (which is just as well, considering Dreadnaught’s cliff-hanger ending) with the fleet stranded light years from home and surrounded by two hostile alien races. The systems on their ships are failing and Admiral Geary has to make some hard decisions to get his people home.

When I reviewed the previous book in this series, I was less than impressed with it, and said that I would not be bothering with any other books in the series. However, when Invincible arrived at Starburst HQ I realised that I was the only person able to review it, because I’d at least read the last book and had an idea of what was going on. I can’t say I was happy with my decision, but I saw it as “taking one for the team.” Suffice to say that I wasn’t looking forward to the experience.

It was then, a very nice surprise to find that Invincible is actually quite a good book. There is plenty of action, some very well described space battles and the plot moves along at a cracking rate. The internal tension between the characters is also well done, with the political intrigues proving as interesting as the large pitched space battles. That I ploughed through its five hundred pages in three days says a lot. This book was everything that I had hoped for in the series, but didn’t get with its predecessor.

That’s not to say that the book is perfect. The biggest problem is the decision to have Geary as the viewpoint character for the entire book. As everything is seen through his eyes, it means that we don’t really see inside other character’s heads, and so it can be difficult to connect with them and more than a couple seem to be rather flat and generic. This viewpoint issue also comes into effect in some of the action scenes, especially involving the Space Marines. We see and hear the battle unfold from the bridge of Geary’s flagship, where it would have been more fulfilling to see it unfold from the viewpoint of one of the Marines.

The other niggle is the way that technology works in the series as a whole. The author has gone for a realistic Newtonian physics approach which, while satisfying the serious science types, means that it takes some of the immediacy out of the fights, where the distances and speeds involved means that an action can take hours or even days to complete. I know that it’s realistic, but its taking it a bit far when you can have the crew of one ship fire a salvo of missiles, then go and have an eight hour sleep before they see if they hit the target or not.

That aside, this book has a lot going for it. Fans of the series will love it, and it will appeal to anyone who likes their sci-fi served with massive space battles, internal conflict and a touch of political intrigue. I’d never have believed it, but I’m actually looking forward to the next installment.

Book Review: The Art Of Prometheus / Writer: Mark Salisbury / Format: Hardback / Publisher: Titan Books / Release Date: Out Now

I think it’s fair to say that Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien franchise (sort of) with Prometheus truly divided people. People continue to debate it and argue about its merits even a month after its release. Being a Ridley Scott film and a science fiction piece, inevitably the film was visually stunning and the book The Art of Prometheus has to be equally stunning to look at to live up to the film.

As a visual companion the book works magnificently. Full colour pages, a great hardcover and the book is a must buy for fans of production art and storyboards. You also get a lot of pre-visualisation pictures which show just how detailed and how well thought out a lot of the concepts were. Much like the film it’s tied into though, it’s very nice to look at but lacks a little substance.

The book starts with a nice introduction by Ridley Scott where he outlines his reasons for going back to the well so many years after the first film made his name. Whatever you may think of the finished film, Scott’s reasoning is sound. More of this would have been welcome, but that’s pretty much all you get and it’s on to the artwork.

If you were baffled by the plot of the film, the book is a fairly neat way of re-living it and allowing some of the pieces to fall into place. The book goes through the film in sequence so initially there are some great pictures of the ship Prometheus and the interior. We then move on to the suits and vehicles. It’s surprising to learn how much was based on reality and practical application rather than just making something look cool, but the production managed both and you appreciate how much work went into this. It’s when we move into the more alien aspects where the book really kicks it up a gear. What’s surprising is just how well conceived and thought out the creature and set design really was. Also for fans who felt it was missing something you get some unused creature designs. Not only did they go back to look at the art design of the first Alien but they went further and tied things in to Earth based life forms and the story they wanted to tell. For instance the Engineers as they are known with their large forms and bald heads are based on classic Greek statues. A lot of the film was also influenced by the work of Erich Von Daniken where he theorised about civilisations before man so much of the set design related to ancient relics and statues.

For fans of the film this is a must by, for everyone else there are worse things you could have on your coffee table.

Book Review: DestinyQuest – The Legion of Shadow / Author: Michael J Ward / Publisher: Gollancz / Release Date: Out Now

Back in the ‘80s, the popular thing for young geeks-in-training to do was to not just read books, but read Fighting Fantasy books; non-linear novels where the reader had to choose the direction the story went in by making choices and turning to the pages those choices guided you to. Over years, videogames and the like sprung up to distract gamers from these odd little books, and they declined in popularity. However, the fanbase never really went away, and the appeal of a book that is also a game is still out there. Destiny Quest: The Legion of Shadow is part of the new generation of adventure game books, and a very welcome one it is.

Game books have certainly grown up – for a start, Destiny Quest is a beast of a book, coming in at an oversized 650+ plus pages, which may come as a shock to fans of the Fighting Fantasy novels as they were fairly slim volumes. The format has also changed; rather than dealing with a single, long running quest, the player chooses his quests from a map in the middle of the book. Should you fail in the quest, (perhaps by taking the wrong path or losing a battle) you can restart the quest whenever you wish.

The game elements are simple, but there are a lot of them. Essentially you roll dice to fight monsters and keep track of changes to your character. Various magic items modify your abilities, and skills and powers can be picked up during the game. If you actually play the game elements (rather than simply skipping past them, otherwise known as cheating), you’ll find that the character becomes very powerful quite quickly. The quest format means you can pick up and play, though (unlike other gamebooks) Destiny Quest lacks any sort of random number generator, so you may have problems playing this on the bus. It does feel more like a game than a book in parts, though this doesn’t make it any less fun.

That isn’t to say there isn’t an ongoing narrative; there certainly is, and it’s a rather fun tale of invading armies, magical powers and ancient secrets. It’s filled with nice touches; the fact that there is an in-story reason for your characters constant deaths (and if you play it properly, you’ll die a lot at the start). Despite being more game than book, the main plot is the sort of fun you demand from this sort of thing. It will make a great blast of nostalgia for the older gamer, and the younger geek may appreciate an exciting fantasy game that doesn’t require batteries or friends.

Book Review: The Masque of the Red Death / Author: Bethany Griffin / Publisher: Indigo / Release Date: August 2nd

Using a famous work by the great Edgar Allan Poe as a source of inspiration for a fantasy novel sounds like a daunting and high risk idea. Get it right and you’ve enhanced people’s enjoyment of a classic, but get it wrong and the work is simply going to wither when compared to the original.

Sadly, Bethany Griffin’s version of The Masque of the Red Death fails to achieve either. It’s not a disaster, but it cannot hope to compare to Poe. The plot revolves around a city in which people wear face obscuring masks in order to avoid becoming infected by a deadly disease. The main character, the daughter of the scientist who created these illness avoiding masks, spends most of her time in the Renaissance version of a Goth club, moping about until she stumbles into intrigue and mystery.

The main problem with this work is that neither the world the characters live in, or the characters themselves, are well realised. Bookshop shelves are filled with novels about spunky young heroines who find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of romance and conspiracy, and this book tells the same sort of story, making it one of many. The world is so poorly realised that immersion is impossible; in parts it’s too modern to feel like fantasy, and the fantasy elements seem only to exist to fill in gaps in the plot. This is a real shame, as the work it is based on is a masterpiece of creepy strangeness and terror.

What could have been a brave, clever and intelligent novel filled with interesting concepts of a world gone wrong is instead a dull, cliché ridden tale filled with the sort of boring, nonsensical characters cynically marketed to a young adult audience because they’re the ones who haven’t had the chance to read better books yet. There are some genuine sparks of talent here, but they’re mostly hidden behind a run-of-the-mill tale.

Book Review: Priests of Mars / Author: Graham McNeil / Publisher: The Black Library / Release Date: August 2nd

One of the things that allows the Black Library to produce so many books set in the same universe is that the Warhammer 40,000 franchise has a huge amount of scope. It’s an amalgam of sci-fi concepts and influences, and draws inspiration from some of the oldest ideas out there, mixing it up with a fresh yet dark perspective.  One of these re-mixed ideas is the notion that a technologically advanced society can remain fantastically powerful and capable of producing powerful machines, and have forgotten so much about science that the machines themselves are held in religious awe. These “tech-priests”, known in the setting as the Adeptus Mechanicus, are the main focus of Graham McNeil’s Priests of Mars.

These red-robed cyborgs have begun to appear more regularly in the Black Library books, and it’s about time. The notion of a trans-human society that venerates technology is one with great potential, and in the past, they’ve mostly been portrayed as slightly humourless, slightly creepy machines, rather than a complex society of beings that have developed beyond humanity and yet continue to stay part of it.  Priests of Mars changes this by delving straight into the possibilities of such a society in a strongly character driven way. We care about the half-human heroes, as well as their all too human companions. Various characters help throw the society of the Adeptus Mechanicus into sharp relief; one of the sub-plots involves the miserable lives of the unenhanced human beings who have to maintain the vast machines of the Mechanicus, and this contrasts strongly with scenes involving tech-priests talking about how their own cybernetic enhancements let them understand the cosmos in a sublime and yet wonderful way.

The main plot revolves around an expedition to the edge of the galaxy to investigate the perilous Halo Scar; a devastatingly dangerous part of space which may contain lost technology precious to the Adeptus Mechanicus. The expedition fleet is made up of all sort of interesting people drawn from the Warhammer 40,000 setting; we have a Rogue Trader (a sort of space faring privateer), elite soldiers from Cadia, (a world under constant threat that produces tough warriors) and of course, Space Marines.  For those who may be interested, they’re Black Templars, which are essentially holy crusaders but with even less of a sense of humour.

This is perhaps McNeil’s best work so far, though it’s only the first part of a series. Those who may have disliked his previous work may want to give Priests of Mars a look – it really is very engaging and a refreshing evolution of the writer’s already considerable talent. I look forward to the sequel.

Book Review: Nightmare / Author: Stephen Leather / Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks / Release Date: Out Now

Jack Nightingale, a jaded ex-cop now turned supernatural detective, becomes the lead suspect of a criminal investigation when the victim of a gang-land shooting starts calling out his name. The police are already interested in Jack from the events of the previous two books and a suspiciously large body count – people tend to die when Jack’s around. Quick to jump the gun, the cops haul him in for questioning, demanding that Jack admit to this latest murder. The fact that the guy isn’t actually dead yet is a mere detail to be conveniently ignored. But (and this shouldn’t come as any real surprise) they can’t pin a single shred of evidence upon our hero and the cops are forced to let him go. Although they haul him in from time to time, convinced he’s got something to do with it, somewhere along the lines. Jack, in turn, is haunted by the spirit of the dead girl, Sophie, who Jack once tried to talk down from throwing herself off a ledge and failed. Sophie, as it transpires, is entering the bodies of people near death and calling out Jack’s name. She needs help and only Jack Nightingale can save her. Armed with his detective skills, his ever-faithful (doormat) companion, Nightingale sets out to solve this new and intriguing mystery.

Nightmare is a fairly straight-forward read. It tends to be fast-paced, not too deep, and engaging enough to become likable. As an added bonus, Leather’s writing style is easy to absorb, and the novel can be read in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, early on the plot becomes repetitive with extended chapters taking place in a police interview room with what feels like a large slice of padding. These scenes, to be frank, are painful.

Which is a shame, because despite these flaws, Nightmare picks up a head of steam, makes for a good novel, and manages to deliver a couple of genuine shockers along the way. There’s a bit with a mirror that’s particularly scary.

Nightmare is a throwback to the gritty crime novels of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s; smart detective with a two packs a day habit running rings around bumbling detectives. With a flippant attitude to mask his fear of failure, support by the glamorous but ultimately unnoticed assistant, Jack devil-dodges his way through a ring of satanic influence in the hope of getting to the bottom of this particular tale.

Stephen Leather’s new novel makes for an entertaining read. Leather can tell a good story and provides the odd laugh (perhaps not intentional) from time to time. Nightmare may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it makes for a solid, engrossing read. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed and newcomers won’t have to read the earlier books to get a sense of what’s going on as Leather takes pains to bring everyone up to speed.

One to be recommended

Book Review: Turbulence / Author: Samit Basu / Publisher: Titan Books / Format: Paperback / Release Date: July 6th

Perhaps the barmiest way to stop a super-strong, invulnerable supervillain comes from Turbulence (which sounds like a cheap airport thriller but really isn’t), the new book from Indian author Samit Basu. True, the solution wasn’t used in the end, but it was still daft. One of the characters suggests talking to the supervillain’s mother and getting her to convince him to stand down. (It makes sense in context.)

The book follows Aman Sen, a young Indian lad who gets off a plane and realises that he can access anything with a wireless connection by thinking about it. Rather than using this as the ultimate in “discreet” browsing to watch some mind-blowing stuff, he gets together a superpowered team to fight an air force Colonel by the name of Jai. Jai’s the super-strong, invulnerable man mentioned above, who wanted to be the greatest warrior ever and got powers that could further that aim. 

Obviously they weren’t the only ones on that plane. Over 400 passengers were on the flight and all of them gained superpowers that on some subconscious level they’d desired for years. Fortunately, none of them seem to suffer from the “Claire Bennet Syndrome”, a made-up disease where a character has an awesome power and does nothing but complain about it. The ones with the good powers enjoy the living hell out of them and for the most part, the ones doing the complaining are the ones with the genuinely useless superpowers. To give you an example of a bad power, one character can control others by talking to them, which sounds great until you realise it’s only used once or twice intentionally and it doesn’t work one of those times.

As you may have noticed from the repeated use of the word “Indian” in this review and the presence of decidedly Indian names, there is a distinct air of the subcontinent coming from every page of this book. A large section of it takes place in India before the action moves to the exotic locale of… West London. It’s a bit disconcerting to be reading about superheroes knocking each other about in places that are so close to home but also strangely more exciting.

Had Turbulence been in any other medium, it would’ve sunk without a trace in a sea of such concepts. Because it’s a book, it uses the full power of the written word to take to the skies and give lesser books what for. It is somewhat self-referential, inventive and very clever. But most of all, it is fun. If you have ever picked up a comic book and enjoyed it, then this is a must-buy.