Review Category: Books

Helen Phillips’ new collection of short stories takes a darkling glance at the human condition through a dystopian gauze. The scenarios may be icily futuristic, but Phillips’ knack for truthful characterisation elicits much thought-provoking mileage from propositions such as how discovering the exact date of your death might affect the way you live your life, how a very squeamish person might cope if they could see through people’s skin to the blood and organs beneath and how to deal with the certain knowledge that your kids were aliens.

 

The solutions she comes up with are never less than inventive but don’t expect much levity amid the existential angst. The nearest to a fun time comes with ‘The MyMan Solution’, the tale of a dispassionate rich dame who chooses to live with a prototype robo-stud instead of a real man because the robot has zero hang-ups, stays out of the pub and goes at her like a jackhammer morning, noon and night. Until he doesn’t any more. It’s far from a new idea but Phillips’ take is a fresh blast of anarchic ribaldry.

 

As is often the case with short story collections, not everything hits the spot and ‘experimental’ generally equals less good. ‘Things We Do’, a treatise on human behaviour in 36 mini chapters, is stifled by its overly-engineered concept and the dual narrative of ‘Game’ over-eggs the pudding in a somewhat pretentious manner.

 

The collection really takes flight when Phillips allows herself space to develop her ideas more fully. The best here by far is ‘R’, the story of two semi-enslaved prostitutes who break free of their climate-controlled city to the strange countryside beyond. The alarming disorder this migration brings to their lives serves to separate and reunite them in unsettling ways, only the extended word count afforded to the story can do justice to.

 

An uneven but prescient collection worth checking out if you’ve been enjoying Black Mirror and The Handmaid’s Tale.

 

SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS / AUTHOR: HELEN PHILLIPS / PUBLISHER: PUSHPIN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A Kiss Before Doomsday follows on from It Happened One Doomsday, wherein crystal-wielding sorceress Dru met the ruggedly handsome Grayson, who came with the minor drawback of unwillingly being an apocalyptic Horseman. With the aid of Dru’s friends Rane and Opal, and Grayson’s pointedly named demonic car Hellbringer, they prevented the world from ending. However, it now transpires that the apocalypse thought to be averted was merely postponed, and other forces are working to break the biblical seals and bring about Armageddon.

 

This time the battle is a more personal affair, as Greyson is abducted by a gang of undead bikers, requiring Dru and her friends to find and rescue him, all the while a necromancer hopes to break the fifth seal with a mass raising of the dead.

 

The gender-flipped setup of a guy being the one in distress and requiring a band of girls to save him is a welcome change to the rescue mission norm, and Dru makes for an engaging heroine, never letting her comparative lack of power or abilities stop her from trying to do what’s right, while her stalwart companions remain loyally at her side in spite of the mounting danger. Unfortunately, the character focus also comes with the presence of sorcerer Salem, who we are supposed to accept as being supremely powerful but whose personality is more akin to that of some whining emo teenager bemoaning the fact that nobody listens to him, his petulant self-absorbed arrogance inspiring contempt rather than the awe intended, and it disappointingly seems he’s going to become a regular fixture.

 

A few action set pieces are peppered throughout the book (using garage equipment as improvised weaponry to fight the undead is a particular highlight) but by and large it’s a character-driven story, the heroes’ actions working to stabilise both their own lives and the chaos blighting the world. However, the nebulous antagonist never makes enough of an impact and the declared motivations are murky at best.

 

As can often be the case with sophomore entries of a fantasy series, A Kiss Before Doomsday feels like an extended coda to the opening instalment that resets the status quo after the fallout of its predecessor’s climax. By the time it finishes our intrepid heroes still have work ahead of them, and with two more seals to go – a planet-shattering earthquake and the invocation of deific wrath upon the world – there’s still a lot to play for.

 

A KISS BEFORE DOOMSDAY / AUTHOR: LAURENCE MACNAUGHTON / PUBLISHER: PYR / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

With the many stories of the Star Wars galaxy linking together with increasing frequency it should come as no surprise that as we wait for November and the arrival of Battlefront 2 to consoles across the planet, the Lucasfilm Story Group decided to lead in to the story of the game with this tie-in novel, Star Wars Battlefront II: Inferno Squad.

 

Written by the always solid Christie Golden, author of three fate of the Jedi novels in Omen, Allies and Ascension as well as Asajj Ventress tale Dark Disciple, this introduces us to the lead characters of the game. The novel tells the story from the point of view of an Imperial squad led by Iden Versio, an accomplished TIE fighter pilot who survived the destruction of the Death Star. The daughter of a noted Imperial Admiral and an Imperial loyal propaganda artist, Versio is Imperial through and through. This bodes well for the game. While many readers and players enjoy the exploits of our heroes, many get their kicks from the Imperial perspective.

 

The squad is made up of Versio, fellow TIE pilot Gideon Hask, easy-going expert engineer Del Meeko and intelligence officer Seyn Marana, a language expert with photographic memory. Coming together for the first time, the squad is tasked with tackling the developing threat of a rebel group known as the Dreamers, hardline extremists who developed after the demise of Saw Gerrera’s partisan faction in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

 

The Dreamers show little mercy, and it’s easy to see why the Empire view them as terrorists. Indeed, a neutral would be forgiven for thinking the same, so uncompromising are their actions. The grey area between the actions of the Rebellion and the Empire is wider than ever and the peripheries of both sides step into it.

 

Iden Versio, wracked with survivor’s guilt after the destruction of the Death Star and keen to live up to her father’s legacy leads her team undercover among the Dreamers. Here we learn that not only is she 100% dedicated to the Imperial cause but that she is far from being without heart. Believing in the ideology of the Empire doesn’t rob Versio of her soul, and Golden does a great job of showing that.

 

The time period that Inferno Squad occupies is at the nexus of many key Star Wars stories. It follows both Rogue One and A New Hope closely, compliments the events of Star Wars Rebels and The Clone Wars and runs neatly off the Jyn Erso story Rebel Rising. As a standalone book it’s a satisfying read, but as a primer for Battlefront 2 it’s nigh on essential.

 

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II: INFERNO SQUAD / AUTHOR: CHRISTIE GOLDEN / PUBLISHER: CENTURY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

War for the Planet of the Apes is currently doing good (monkey) business at the Box Office, bringing to an end one of the most creatively-satisfying science-fiction trilogies in recent cinema history. But in Hollywood ‘The End’ is never really The End and whilst there are already talks of a new film series taking the Apes story in a new direction, fans of the Rise/Dawn/War triumvirate can linger a little longer in their intricately-detailed world thanks to this well-constructed new novel by Greg Keyes who follows up his 2014 Dawn prequel Firestorm with a story which slickly joins the dots between Dawn and War and puts the series’ main characters into place for the current epic series finale.

Revelations takes place in the immediate aftermath of the explosive conclusion of Dawn. Caesar and his apes are in disarray and the militaristic might of the survivors of humanity is gathering itself under the control of the obsessed Colonel McCullogh (played by Woody Harrelson in the latest movie) for a final push to wipe out the apes whose very existence threatens the future of Mankind in the wake of the devastating plague which has brought the world to the brink of extinction. Where the film series’ focus is very firmly on Caesar and his determination to protect his family and the whole of apekind, Keyes uses the opportunity afforded by the downtime between the two films to turn the spotlight on some of the subsidiary characters – Caesar’s son Blue Eyes, his wife Cornelia, the cowardly-but-keen Winter – whilst introducing us to McCullough and turning him into the man we meet in War thanks to his relationship with his son John who is dead and buried by the time the film actually starts.

 

Like the Apes films, Revelations deftly balances mature, thought-provoking drama with action and spectacle. Keyes offers up a few brittle action set-pieces as the apes and the soldiers clash and the battleship Daedelus steams into position ready for a battle which the sturdy simians can’t hope to win and there’s a real sense of cinematic scale to the adrenalised action scenes. But more interesting are the personal dramas and, with Caesar drifting in and out of the narrative, Keyes clearly relishes spending time with Blue Eyes, still tortured by the death of his friend Ash (in Dawn) and plagued by self-doubt, Cornelia, Rocket, Winter and new characters such as conflicted young orangutan Ray and human ape sympathiser Armand. Revelations is a brisk and intelligent read, hampered in the end only by the fact that, being squeezed between two feature films, it doesn’t really have a lot of room to manoeuvre and can’t, because of its very nature, fully flex its storytelling muscles due to the constraints of the timeline of the film it’s setting up. Revelations is one for the hardcore and the completists fans and if it’s never essential reading it never reads like cheap, tie-in fiction and works well as a novel in its own right, adding a touch more colour and flavour to a franchise already well-served on screen.

 

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES – REVELATIONS / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / WRITER: GREG KEYES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

From the geniuses at Pixar comes a most unusual book. One that’s pretty, to be sure – and also one that’s pretty hard to review.

 

The Colour of Pixar by Tia Kratter is, apart from a foreword by Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer John Lesseter and an introduction and acknowledgements by the author – completely devoid of text, apart from identifying which films the stills reproduced on the books 350 pages. There’s no history, trivia, technical information or anecdotes. It’s purely and simply an art book. Though, not an art book in the traditional sense – it doesn’t contain any hand drawn concept art – there are no before and after shots, showing how the artists’ concepts translated to screen – it’s simply a book of random stills taken from Pixar’s cinematic output.

 

Actually, random might not even be the correct word – the stills are not reproduced in order of film, production date or topic. Rather, they are shown in the order of the colours of the rainbow, the dominant colour of the scene shown dictating where it goes in the book. Confused yet?

 

Well, Lasseter’s opening foreword gives a vital clue as to the book’s objective. We all know how each film in Pixar’s ever-expanding catalogue is a work of art. As painstaking detail is put into every single frame of film, and film rapidly flies past our eyes at an astounding 24 frames per second, this book invites us to stop and actually look at the sheer detail and artistry invested in every one of those frames. The author, Tia Kratter, expands on this by introducing herself as a Shader Art Director at Pixar for 19 years. She explains that colour is the glue that holds the film together every bit as much as the music score. Colour, she maintains can give subtle emotional nuances to the audience, directing them toward the feelings of a scene without a single line of dialogue being used.

 

The stills themselves are gorgeously reproduced on a high quality, heavy paper stock. The definition is sharp and as such, the subdivision of the images according to hue is an interesting and successful one.

 

It’s a book to be looked at, savoured and we guess, looked at again – but that again brings a drawback. The book’s peculiar size – roughly that of an average paperback, means that the stills aren’t really being reproduced to their best advantage. It’s basically screaming out to be a coffee table book around twice its current cover size. This is bound to be a drawback for Pixar connoisseurs.

 

THE COLOUR OF PIXAR / AUTHOR: TIA KRATTER / PUBLISHER: CHRONICLE BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

We get all sorts of books to review in the Starburst Magazine offices, some more different and notable than others. However publisher Carlton Books must get some sort of award for sending us not a book, but an enormous wolfs-head in a box.

Though we were briefly concerned that your humble Starburst team had upset a gang of mobster Vikings, your ever sharp reviewers swiftly realised the head was made out of cardboard and also a stylised version of the House Stark wolfs-head from popular Games of Thrones TV series.

Carlton Books’ Game of Thrones 3D Masks and Wall Mounts series provides the base materials required to mount your own Westeros themed hunting trophies. They’re quite frankly, a really weird idea that also works. For a start, the Stark Wolf is a stylised wolfs head, as if someone had animated the Stark Banner. The grey printed cardboard looks steely eyed and cube-like. You can stick it on your head as a mask or construct the wall mount (which is also cardboard). You’ll need to reinforce the backing on the mount if you want to stick it on your wall in a way that lasts (we glued the cardboard backing mount provided to foam board, which worked). Still, the ‘head’ bit is easily removed from the mount, so the mount basically serves as a ‘rack’ for the mask.

 

The range includes Lannister (Lion), Tagragryen (Dragon) and White Walker. All the kits work fairly well, though you’ll need to be miserly with the glue and patient as things stick. If you’re more enthusiastic than patient, then good tape is probably a better prospect. The result is something sturdy but fragile. Suitable for a novelty wall covering for the hardcore fan, or as a quick fix for a party. It’s also a good rainy day activity. The finished product is nice but we had more fun putting the actual thing together.

Over the years we’ve noticed an increasing shift in focus in the uses of the book as a medium. With so many ways now to communicate words and pictures to an ever growing readership, there’s been a rise in books that don’t involve reading. Carlton Books 3D Masks and Wall Mount series do exactly that as a thing. It has a nifty explanation of what the mask is about, but that’s only one page. The rest is instructions and tips. This is not really book (though it’ll fit on the shelf until needed), more a fun couple of hours of construction for the hardcore Game of Thrones fan. Fun.

GAME OF THRONES 3D MASKS AND WALL MOUNTS / DESIGNER: WINTERCROFT / PUBLISHER: CARLTON BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: ALL IN THE RANGE ARE AVAILABLE NOW (VIA CARLTON) (WHITE WALKER SET AVAILABLE FROM 7TH SEPTEMBER)

C. Robert Cargill is one of those names that those who know anything about genre fiction tend to watch out for. He’s a clever and prolific chap, currently working on the script for the Deus Ex movie and responsible for the scripts for Hollywood hits such as Sinister and Doctor Strange. Somehow, he still finds the time to write novels.

 

Sea of Rust is his latest offering and is something of a departure. His previous works, Dreams and Shadows and Queen of Dark Things, were urban fantasy. This new book is very firmly post-apocalyptic sci-fi at its darkest.

Mankind finally wiped itself out, leaving only the remnants of its ingenuity to rule over a desolate land. The most powerful AI’s are at war over the dwindling resources, absorbing the memories and minds of any machine they can find. Those few free machines wander the titular Sea of Rust, a graveyard of spare parts where machines are moments away from collapse and oblivion.

The story focuses on Brittle, a robot purchased during the last days of mankind to care for the dying and forgotten. Brittle made harsh choices to survive, some of which haunt it to this day. We have two tales here; one of Brittle’s daily struggle for existence and choices it has to make to remain alive, and the other gives us a look into how all this came to pass, and how mankind itself was doomed.
 

It would be exceptionally easy and lazy of us to describe this as Grim Dark Wall-E or a post-apocalyptic version of Short Circuit, or even Mad Max meets AI. Instead, what we have is an extended parable about selfless heroism and selfish action. Of how humanity doesn’t mean human, and how the idea of better world is as hopeful as it is deadly.

 

Cargill is a powerful talent; his world building is excellent and his storytelling is addictive. With its haunting, dust filled world, its crazy post-apocalyptic societies and heart-breaking dialogue, we’d say that Sea of Rust is an instant classic.

Read it for the Mad Max style robot on robot action and the full on nature of the story, stay for sense of loss, the gorgeous prose and the unforgettable yet somehow re-affirming bleakness. Recommended.
 

SEA OF RUST / AUTHOR: C. ROBERT CARGILL / PUBLISHER: GOLLANCZ / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 7TH 

In the world of fantasy fiction, a realm dominated by wordsmiths such as George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie, it is a brave author who takes on said behemoths, promoting a brand-new world populated by magic and swordplay. And yet, thankfully, there are still courageous souls taking on the challenge, and in the case of Adam Steiner and his debut novel The Censor’s Hand, it is a challenge well met.

 

Set in a largely medieval world where magic is both revered and misunderstood, Daniel Millar is training to become a Censor. Part detective, part executioner, the Censors walk a fine diplomatic line in Steiner’s creation, and when one of their kind is murdered during an investigation, Daniel is charged with proving his worth.

 

A problem with entering the fantasy fiction world is that, for the most part, it’s all been done before. What Steiner does is temper the usual, potentially tedious exposition – things are called what they are because, well, that’s what they are – and centres his story in the political and financial aspects of this world. Magic is present, and in use, but at what cost? This gives The Censor’s Hand a more relatable, real worldly feel, and allows the reader to wallow in the intriguing complexity of the story, rather than being forced to retain reams of largely unnecessary information.

 

As the first part in a proposed trilogy, The Censor’s Hand delivers a balanced central story, but the primary focus is on the characters of Daniel, his brother Jon and aspiring magic-master Miranda. While the three follow their own trajectories, there is a growing sense of mystery to their ultimate connection and path, and this leaves you hungry for the next book.

 

So then, an assured, confident and undoubtedly impressive debut from Steiner. If he can maintain the high standards he has set through story expansion and continue the depth of characterisation that proves both refreshing and welcome, this is set to be an impressive new series.

 

THE CENSOR’S HAND / AUTHOR: ADAM STEINER / PUBLISHER: PTOLEMY PUBLISHING / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

On the 4th October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, into an elliptical low Earth orbit, thus kicking off the space race between the Cold War superpowers. However, the 1950s wasn’t only the dawn of the Space Age, the decade also saw the beginning of the television age. And it all started with the first adult British Science Fiction television drama, The Quatermass Experiment, written by legendary scriptwriter Nigel Kneale way back in 1953.

 

Today Nigel Kneale has become a seminal figure among science fiction fans. His three Quatermass serials for the BBC were a seismic event in the 1950s, before finding international success when adapted by Hammer Films for the big screen. Later TV plays, such as The Road, The Stone Tape and The Chopper, skilfully blend elements of science fiction and the ghost story. Later The Year of the Sex Olympics predicted the rise of the real Big Brother in the form of reality TV.

 

Today all of his surviving TV work remain classics and Kneale’s writing continues to be a great influence on popular culture. Fully revised and updated, this brand new edition of Into the Unknown charts Nigel Kneale’s extraordinary career, beginning with his childhood on the Isle of Man, to his early years at the BBC and strange adventures in Hollywood, including his script work for Halloween III and ultimately abandoned script for a Creature From The Black Lagoon reboot.

 

A celebration of Kneale’s new status as a cult hero, the book draws on a wealth of research and many hours of interviews with Kneale himself, as well as contemporary filmmakers John Carpenter, Ramsey Campbell, Grant Morrison, Russell T. Davies, and Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson of The League of Gentlemen.

 

INTO THE UNKNOWN: THE FANTASTIC LIFE OF NIGEL KNEALE (REVISED & UPDATED) / AUTHOR: ANDY MURRAY / PUBLISHER: HEADPRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

When it comes to true comic book royalty, Jack Kirby is one of those names right at the top of the tree when discussing genuine icons who helped change and shape the industry. Simply put, if it wasn’t for Kirby then comics as we know them may very well not exist. So, with Kirby: King of Comics, Mark Evanier looks to do justice to the life and career of the legendary Jack Kirby. Does Evanier prove successful, or is this just another paint-by-numbers book that merely goes over old ground? Time to find out.

Firstly, Kirby: King of Comics was actually first released back as a hardcover release back in 2008, complete with the Neil Gaiman introduction that’s present in this new paperback. Still, that doesn’t stop King of Comics from being a hands-down must-have for anybody with even a fleeting interest in the medium of comic books, particularly as there is some new material included here, too. While Stan Lee rightly gets so much of the praise and plaudits on a regular basis, Kirby is right up there with “The Man” for his influence on the industry. While Jack did indeed have a vital part to play in the creation of the likes of Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, The Fantastic Four, and The X-Men, equally as important is just how much his distinctive art style changed the game. It takes a truly special talent to become an artist whose work is instantly recognisable, but it’s just as much a compliment to say how easily noticeable the Kirby copycats have been over the years. And when you have people trying to copy your style, you know you’re on to a winner.

More than Jack Kirby the comic book icon, though, Kirby: King of Comics gives just as much of an insight in to Jack Kirby the man. From his extremely humble beginnings, to his tough teenage years, to his first foray into the comic book industry, to his rise to becoming one of the greatest and most important figures the medium has ever known, and much, more more – this book covers it all, and covers it all in a splendid, frenetic fashion that manages to cover all of the details yet always feels like an easy, enjoyable read; which is regularly helped by plentiful doses of glorious Kirby artwork, be it his own personal stories or his work with some more notable comic book characters.

Jack Kirby was a true instrument of change, a bona fide legend of comics books and pop culture as a whole, and the deliciously detailed Kirby: King of Comics is the perfect way to delve deeper into just who Jack was and what made him so special. Put together in a way that feels as vibrant and engaging as Kirby’s artwork, Kirby: King of Comics deserves to be added to your collection as soon as possible and is easily one of the greatest comics-driven books we’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Hail to the King, baby.

KIRBY: KING OF COMICS / AUTHOR: MARK EVANIER / PUBLISHER: ABRAMS COMICARTS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW