Review Category: Books

THE ART OF DEATH STRANDING / AUTHOR: KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Video game concept art books have become a tradition for most major releases. There is no better way for a games company to squeeze even more cash out of their easily exploitable fans than releasing a bunch of stills they had lying about the office anyway. Thankfully, some of these tomes prove to be more than just cash grabs and instead provide a thorough insight into a game’s artistic development over the often lengthy production period. The Art of Death Stranding maintains the streak started by the conceptually gorgeous Metal Gear Solid art book series by being a worthwhile product for mega fans of Death Stranding’s utopian-apocalyptic aesthetic.

Each of Death Stranding’s characters are portrayed in highly detailed drawings, with some pieces showing unused designs and outfits. Some of these are drawn by long-time Kojima collaborator Yoji Shinkawa in his distinctive sketch-like style, which is a plus for long-time fans of Shinkawa’s work on the Metal Gear series. There is also general concept art on weapons and vehicles, giving greater perspective on the tech present in the world of Death Stranding, as well as the creative development of some of the concepts in the game.

However, these insights are only visual, with annotation relatively barebones, often describing only the apparent contents of the artwork without giving any insightful information. There are some nuggets of gold in there, but overall this is a sorely missed opportunity, as more vision into the game’s world and development would have elevated this significantly.

The highlight of the book, however, is definitely the drop-dead gorgeous concept art for the game’s environments. Whether it’s the brutalist, Blade Runner-esque architecture of Capital Knot city, or the rolling bayous of the American wastelands, every single landscape piece in this book is worthy of framing and hanging on your wall. The amount of effort put into these pieces is beyond belief – they are all a marvel to look at.

Overall, The Art of Death Stranding is a worthwhile purchase for those looking for more of the game’s distinctive world design, even if the lack of meaningful annotation holds it back from being completely recommendable.

DON’T GO UPSTAIRS! / AUTHOR: CLEAVER PATTERSON / PUBLISHER: MCFARLAND / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A good creepy house is an essential component to any self-respecting horror film. It doesn’t even have to be infested by demons or the lair of a psychopath. Used carefully, it can exude dread on its own merits, simply by panning across its walls, zooming into its windows and suggesting that something unpleasant lurks within the strange angles connecting ceiling to flaw. Don’t Go Upstairs! is an engrossing tour, room-by-room, of the standard house in a horror movie, taking each living (and dying) space and pairing them with the films that have used those spaces to their best deadly advantage. Interested in bathrooms? So were Squirm and Hands of the Ripper. Curious about kitchens? Take a peek at Poltergeist and Scream. And don’t even get us started on attics, conservatories, and outdoor spaces…

The problem with books about films is that they usually cover the same ground and tend to read like a laundry list of plot points and spoilers. Author Cleaver Patterson largely manages to avoid that, mainly because focusing on a room and using it as the nexus to tell the film’s story means we get to look at each individual plot synopsis from a slightly different angle. It’s also refreshing that he doesn’t make the obvious choices – Psycho is mentioned, but Patterson homes in on the cellar rather than the iconic bathroom. The Exorcist is namechecked, but for its hallway rather than the easy choice of Regan’s bedroom. But what especially delighted us were some of Patterson’s very welcome off-the-wall suggestions: La Belle et la Bete, although not a horror film per se, boasts one of cinema fantastique’s most disturbing dining rooms, and it’s great to see The Uninvited, Images, and especially the wonderful The Ballad of Tam Lin finally getting some well-deserved love. Patterson also throws in one or two movies that were completely unknown to this reviewer, and it’s a measure of his writing that I’m keen to track them down and correct that oversight. There’s an enthusiastic foreword from David McGillivray, a critic and screenwriter who’s probably best known for penning the Pete Walker frightfest House of Mortal Sin and Norman J. Warren’s Satan’s Slave, and a closing interview with Road Games director Abner Pastoll about the importance of the house as a film character. It’s an interesting conversation that made us wish more interviews could have been peppered throughout the book. Of course, we can always think of rooms and films we wish had been included and if there’s ever a Don’t Go Upstairs 2! we’d suggest the kitchen/tracheotomy in Full Circle, the creepy hallway leading to an operatic Hell in Lords of Salem, and the dark, decaying apartment in Possession, where Isabelle Adjani’s octopus lover awaits, but isn’t that the other pleasure of reading books like this? Like a good movie, they fill you with fresh ideas and leave you wanting more. Don’t Go Upstairs! is a must-own for diehard horror fans, and it’s illustrated with some very nice black and white movie stills as well.

THE CITY WE BECAME / AUTHOR: N.K. JEMISIN / PUBLISHER: ORBIT / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 26TH

Every great city has a soul, and the soul is a mortal guardian who has been entrusted to protect the metropolis at its time of direst need. But there’s a catch, because the guardian isn’t even aware of their responsibility until the moment the city needs their help. In the case of New York City, there are six souls – six guardians – one for each of the five boroughs, with the sixth necessary to unite them. The problem is, none of the five know each other, and none of them realise their destiny until they’re under attack from the Woman in White and her vicious tentacular minions. If they can’t join together, New York City will be destroyed.

Manny has only just arrived in Manhattan, and he’s forgotten his real identity. That’s why he’s instinctively named himself after the borough he must protect, in the same moment that he stops a gigantic semi-transparent creature from decimating the Williamsburg Bridge. Bronca (guardian of the Bronx) had a slightly more surreal encounter with the shape-changing enemy, courtesy of an intra-dimensional bathroom stall. Queens was none the wiser until something very nasty emerged from the bottom of her neighbour’s swimming pool, and she suddenly found herself breaking all the rules of time and space in a bid to save her neighbour’s unsuspecting grandchildren. Brooklyn has had a similar close call, when the Woman in White’s spiderlike servants homed in on her daughter. But Aislyn, otherwise known as Staten Island, has a whole different bunch of problems, not least the fact that – like the borough whose soul she’s become – she is a renegade, and there’s every chance the Woman in White has already turned her against the other guardians. Will the other four boroughs be able to find her in time, and then will they be able to find the sixth guardian, who is already badly wounded from an earlier battle with the metropolis-devouring evil? And, if they find him, what sacrifice will they have to make to keep New York City safe?

N.K. Jemisin is the first author in history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, and we wouldn’t be surprised if The City We Became nets her a fourth. If it does, the accolade will be well deserved. The City We Became isn’t just a fascinating concept populated by wonderful, immediately recognisable characters and interspersed with some tense and mind-bending action sequences, it’s also so exquisitely written that it flows like street poetry, vibrant with the energy and rhythms of the city where it’s set. On the surface, the idea of a city made flesh and blood could sound a little bit hokey, but Jemisin dispels that notion from the very first paragraph. The City We Became is exciting, inspiring, deeply emotional, and incredibly beautiful. It’s not only a love letter to NYC, but the entire genre of eldritch science-fiction. We’ll be surprised if we read a better book this year.

THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES / AUTHOR: GRADY HENDRIX / PUBLISHER: QUIRK BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 7TH

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is one of those novels with a smashing premise. We begin in the late ‘80s, where a band of housewives have discovered the joys of getting together to talk about books, namely true crime and murder mystery fiction. Patricia Campbell is our main protagonist and as the book opens, and we get a good idea as to how horribly busy her life actually is. It’s very busy. Even though everyone pretends it isn’t.

Patricia’s friends are all a bit different, but they are essentially a gaggle of privileged middle-class white women who live in somewhere that’s almost certainly South Carolina. They find tales of crime and misery thrilling but when it all becomes a little too close for comfort, they do everything they can to ignore it. As the story progresses throughout the ‘90s, their safe little community becomes all the more sinister. Monsters lurk not in the shadows, but by simply talking their way into society.

The pacing is steady throughout, as is the tone. And that’s actually part of the problem here. They are key scenes where it feels like it’s all going to kick-off and transform into a slightly different sort of story and it just doesn’t. Though there is genuine threat throughout, the real villain here is soul crushing mundane day-to-day life. As this is a book where the main characters are women, it also goes without saying that one of the biggest obstacles they face is the patriarchy, by which we mean the everyday sexism that pervades normal life as to be almost invisible). Hendrix doesn’t preach, he just blends supernatural terror in with the ordinary. There’s plenty here that just feels all too real. This makes for some incredibly unnerving scenes and some rather graphic moments of horror and cruelty. Though the book is pitched as ‘bad-ass housewives take on evil’, it’s not really that. This is a tale of the rot setting in and corrupting all that one holds dear. It’s a story of abuse and survival and though gripping, it’s not exactly fun. It is however, thrilling.

Grady Hendrix is monstrously good, and is the master of the cunning and mesmerising narrative. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is not the journey you may expect it to be, but it is striking and powerful. There are also quite a few ‘cute’ touches that remind you that the entire thing is set in (mostly) the ‘90s and if you lived through that time, it’s very easy to imagine the world these characters live in. Strange, evocative and engaging, if you’ve not read Hendrix’s work yet, we advise that you start here.

AUTHOR: ZACK JORDAN | PUBLISHER: HODDER & STOUGHTON | FORMAT: HARDCOVER | RELEASE DATE: MARCH 24TH

Sarya the Daughter is the last human in the cosmos, the last of a species which acts as a universal boogieman. It makes sense then, that her adoptive mother would be hell-bent on keeping Sarya’s identity a secret from the thousands of alien species with whom they cohabitate. How did she end up here? Why are the humans so despised? How did she survive? These are questions without answers for Zack Jordan’s protagonist.

A series of catastrophic events result in Sarya going on the run and finding herself aboard a dead bounty hunter’s ship with an android, a rebellious spacesuit, an impossibly intelligent, mute fluffball, and a six-legged death machine. Accompanied by this rag-tag crew, she travels the galaxy on a quest to find someone (or something?) with the answers to her questions.

As this strange, massive space-opera unfolds – think The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets Luc Besson’s Lucy – The Last Human takes readers across the universe, across centuries of history, encountering alien species of every shape and size, and letting us glimpse at a world order rather different from our own. The unifying force to these disparate elements is the Network, an omnipresent, incomprehensible intellect that controls the cosmos – it allows for interspecies communication, acts as a peacekeeping force, regulates technology, provides faster-than-light travel and information transfer.

Would you trust an authority you cannot understand, whose motives you could never comprehend? What if it were to offer you that same power? The Last Human explores metaphysical ideas of free will, of perspective, of identity, intelligence, morality and order; ideas of such enormity that they may leave readers with their head spinning. The scale of the novel’s philosophical themes reaches ambitious heights in its third act, presenting Sarya with impossible choices and unbearable consequences as it speeds towards a thoroughly unsatisfying end – denying the reader any closure proves the boldest and finest decision made by Jordan.

The novel’s best quality, its ambition, also works to its detriment. Some themes, such as the book’s exploration of intelligence and social hierarchies, though fascinating stay only superficially explored. For the same reason, the story at times loses its anchor (Sarya’s pain, desires and motives) as it gets lost in its own ideas.

The Last Human is nonetheless a fascinating and rewarding read, rich in world-building, magnitude and philosophies.

A COSMOLOGY OF MONSTERS / AUTHOR: SHAUN HAMILL / PUBLISHER: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Noah’s father was a horror fanatic, and building that homemade haunted house had become an obsession for him. Noah’s mother hadn’t been so sure but she played along, and the haunted house eventually became so successful that it turned into a family business. Even while he was dying, Noah’s father was making plans to expand the attraction into an entire nightmarish city, and the sketches he drew were so heavily detailed that you’d almost believe he’d been there. Perhaps he had. But, through it all, Noah’s mother and father never forgot the beast they’d seen before they were married. The robed creature with glowing orange eyes that seemed to be pursuing them…

Noah barely knew his father. Maybe that’s why his Friend came to visit him – a robed beast with glowing orange eyes that he doesn’t tell anybody else about. Even when he suspects the beast may have something to do with the disappearance of his sister, Sydney, he still says nothing. Because Noah loves the beast, and when the beast reveals the beauty inside he loves his mysterious Friend even more.

But as more of the townspeople begin to disappear and a group called the Fellowship of the Missing suspects Noah knows more than he’s telling them, how will he be able to keep his secret safe? What sacrifices will he have to make, to protect the ones he loves from the one he loves?

A Cosmology of Monsters is a twisted coming-of-age story that’s effective because it’s so achingly human. In fact, for the first two thirds of the novel, debut author Shaun Hamill barely puts a foot wrong. It’s only when Cosmology turns into a lycanthropic fairytale, with a pivotal encounter that reads like a jarring comic book beat ‘em up, that the story threatens to slip into a less satisfying groove. However, the quality of the writing remains strong throughout, so maybe our small misgivings can be put down to reader preference. As a slow-burn fantasy that’s also a joyous celebration of the horror child inside all of us, A Cosmology of Monsters definitely hits the mark.

SIXTEENTH WATCH / AUTHOR: MYKE COLE / PUBLISHER: ANGRY ROBOT / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 10TH

Military science fiction is a bit of broad church. Sometimes it just means ‘shooty death in space’, other times it’s actually about how real-world-style military operations would work in a space-faring society. Sixteenth Watch is an example of the latter type; a relatively hard-nosed look what happens when you take the USA’s Coast Guard (a military service) and apply its principles and methods to the Moon.

Set in the near future, the US is experiencing a cold war of sorts with its closest lunar rival, the Chinese. Both nations are mining for Helium3, an element vital to power generation. Our hero is Jane Oliver, a decorated and experienced ‘coastie’ who is nearing retirement when she’s called to serve on the Moon. She has a complicated past; her previous assignment on the Moon ended in tragedy, changing both the face of US lunar operations and Oliver’s own life forever.

As the novel opens, tensions between the US and China are rising, in part to the different ways the two nations handle their lunar operations.  Matters are getting steadily worse, partially because the US Navy lack the subtle touch of the US Coast Guard when it comes to border patrol. Alas, public perception wants the Navy to handle things, making war almost inevitable. A plan is hatched; Jane comes out of semi-retirement to train the next generation of Lunar Coasties. The catch is that it’s all tied into a reality TV show.  Turns out that watching young, physically fit people go through military training and compete against other military types makes good TV in the future. Jane’s job is to win the TV show with her new team, and thus get the public support the Coast Guard desperately needs.

Cole’s writing is highly detailed; you can tell that the author has intimate knowledge of the US Coast Guard. This does make the story a little dry in places as the reader gets a lesson in US Military process. There are bits of this novel where it almost salutes at you (and it’s a crisp and perfectly executed salute). However, the central premise is a lot of fun and the actual story is suitably nuts, so you keep reading. The characters are well drawn; Wen, Jane’s closest ally, is especially fun. It’s also nice to see the Navy as ‘sort-of’ villains here.

Sixteenth Watch is one of those novels that you really want to see turned into a Netflix series so you can binge it and pour the whole thing into your brain. It’s fun, if a little dry.

AUTHOR: ALISTAIR REYNOLDS | PUBLISHER: GOLLANCZ | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There are two things that tend to be a solid sign of a good time when it comes to modern sci-fi: space pirates and the name Alistair Reynolds on the cover. Bone Silence is the third act in Reynolds’ Revenger Universe series, though much of the impact is lost simply due to it being the third in a series. For those unfamiliar with the books, this is far-future sci-fi with a hard edge. It’s millions of years in the future. The current galactic ruling body is called The Congregation, a haphazard coalition of thousands of worlds. Between the stars, battles rage, trade happens, and pirates profit.

One of the appeals of the series is that it’s full of neat ideas; for example, Quoins are these weird alien artefacts that have become a de-facto currency in The Congregation. They, of course, have a sinister secret, and much of the plot of Bone Silence deals with the consequences of using weird, poorly understood things as the basis for your economy. Another is the use of strange alien skulls as communications devices.

The previous books focused on one perspective; Fura in the first book and her sister Adrana in the second. Bone Silence brings the two Ness Sisters together, and we follow both these scoundrels as they try to escape the inevitable consequences of their own actions. It wouldn’t be a story about pirates without treasure of course, and in this case, it’s an ancient thing that will either fix everything or doom everyone. It’s also nice to see how the characters have matured over the series, and yet, in many ways, haven’t changed.

They are, of course, being pursued by a dogged and intrepid enforcer of the law. Because despite this being weird far-future sci-fi, it’s also a high-seas style adventure. You can practically hear the sea shanties at times. There’s plenty of cunning deception, outright violence, and twists and turns all the away along. Alistair Reynolds guarantees damned good fun, to say the least.

It isn’t entirely smooth as a read. The change in style from the previous two books is a little jarring, and though it works well as a novel in its own right, it isn’t a strong sequel to the previous two books. Trilogies should be greater than the sum of their parts, and Bone Silence lets down the over-arcing vibe of the series. But the price it pays for this is by being a really entertaining read on its own.