David Hebblethwaite Reviews...

New blog

2009-01-07T22:53:00.001Z

I have set up a new, integrated blog at Follow the Thread. This blog will stay online, but will no longer be updated. Please update your bookmarks!

Premonitions: Causes for Alarm, ed. Tony Lee

2009-01-06T22:33:00.000Z

Latest issue of the horror & SF magazine anthology from Pigasus Press. Possibly the longest review I have written to date, now online at The Fix.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

2009-01-06T22:26:00.002Z

DH now reviews DVDs too! This movie is about a date resulting from an ad that reads "Misanthrope seeks misanthrope..." Read the full review at VideoVista.

Interzone, issue 218: October 2008

2008-10-18T16:58:00.001+01:00

Issue #218 of Interzone is described as a “Chris Beckett special,” and contains an interview with Beckett and three of his stories. This led me to think over how much of Beckett’s work I’d read previously. Although his name was familiar from reading Interzone over the years, I could recall only one of his stories with any clarity. But the interview piqued my interest, and I looked forward to the following three tales...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Interzone
Hannu Rajaniemi

The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian

2008-10-15T22:16:00.001+01:00

After their failed rebellion against him, the Just King bound the Dukes and their heirs to remain within the walls of their homes - literally so, for invisible barriers prevent them from ever stepping outside. But there may be a way: rumour has it that all the Dukes have their own secret power and that, should a Duke or Duchess discover all the others' secrets, he or she would break the curse. So the Dukes (unable, of course, to travel themselves) have taken to sending out emissaries charged with unearthing these secrets...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Vera Nazarian
Norilana Books

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

2008-09-19T11:05:00.005+01:00

Walter Tevis's 1980 novel Mockingbird is a quiet, meditative piece; less of a story, really, than a portrait... In this future, machines run everything, and humans keep themselves to themselves - literally, because privacy and individuality laws demand it; and they spend much of their time in a drugged stupor anyway. Those who've had enough can always immolate themselves...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Walter Tevis
Gollancz

The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson

2008-09-19T11:05:00.002+01:00

Every major city has its own Zodiac troop, a dozen people with extraordinary powers of strength, healing, and more besides; they are the Light, whose mission is to maintain peace and battle their Shadow counterparts. Joanna Archer learns that she is the First Sign of the Las Vegas Zodiac troop, and may be destined to lead them in the ultimate battle against the Shadows. There's one thing, though: the Tulpa, the supernatural entity who leads Vegas's Shadow troop, is Joanna's real father...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Vicki Pettersson
HarperVoyager

Lone Star Stories, issue 28: August 2008

2008-08-30T23:45:00.003+01:00

...A marvellous trio of tales.

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Lone Star Stories
Hal Duncan
Jo Walton

Small Voices, Big Confessions, ed. Chris Lee Ramsden

2008-08-20T21:20:00.003+01:00

Small Voices, Big Confessions is an anthology of fiction by members of the EditRed online writing community. The stories are diverse in subject and setting, though unfortunately with correspondingly variable quality.

The name most familiar to readers of this website will probably be Aliya Whiteley, who contributes one of the book's most enjoyable stories, Fate, Freddo and the Number Four. Sylvia is an actress who has just moved to London and is determined to get her big break. Today she's auditioning for an advert which features Freddo, a polar bear with a hatred of the number four – and the audition will change her life in more ways than she could possibly imagine. Typically of Whiteley, this story combines a humorous surface with a serious heart, and doesn't compromise on either.

Several of the pieces in the anthology are very short, but do their jobs well. For example, Eoin Beckett contributes The Truth, In Brief, Glimpsed Through the Rocks of a Half-Finished Bourbon, an intense character study of two people at a party that has greater impact than its two-and-a-bit pages might lead one to expect. In contrast, Matano Lipuka's Look Who Just Dropped In, about a mother's remains being returned to Kenya, is more amusing, with a satirical bite.

Not all the stories are entirely successful, however. Interfaces (a love story) by Bernadette Klubb is about a couple in love who, unknowingly, attract the attention of fairies when out walking. Whilst some of the prose is beautiful, I found the conclusion unsatisfying and the fairies themselves quite irritating. Tom Sykes' Super Fly Tipper deals with a firm which, as the title suggests, is involved with illegal waste-dumping. It rattles along quite nicely to begin with, but the ending introduces an element that hasn't previously been hinted at, and undermines the story as a whole by being too daft for its own good.

One thing that's quite common throughout Small Voices, Big Confessions is a strength in creating voice and viewpoint. Potting Soil by Teri Davis Rouvelas is about a woman who leaves sacks of soil outside her door for reasons that the narrator can't fathom – but we readers can guess. The tale is pleasingly humorous, and the distinctive narration feels more like the voice of a real person than a fictional character. And Aoife Mannix effectively portrays a child's-eye view of the adult world in The Costume, where the relationship between young Jimmy's parents has broken down – but the boy doesn't really understand, and is more concerned with his Hallowe'en costume.

Reading this review back, I suspect I've underplayed the proportion of less successful stories in Small Voices, Big Confessions a little. But then, it is an anthology that you'll have to cherry-pick from to find the best pieces. Rest assured, though, that they are there – and are worth seeking out.

Small Voices, Big Confessions edited by Chris Lee Ramsden. EditRed paperback, 216pp, £8.99 plus P&P.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:
EditRed
Matano Lipuka
Aoife Mannix
Tom Sykes
Aliya Whiteley

Banquet for the Damned by Adam L.G. Nevill

2008-08-17T17:59:00.002+01:00

Struggling musician Dante Shaw has his hopes pinned on a planned concept album based around a book on the occult written by reclusive academic Eliot Coldwell. With his friend and bandmate Tom in tow, Dante travels up to Scotland,accepting an invitation to work as Coldwell's research assistant at the University of St. Andrews. Coldwell proves reluctant to discuss his work with Dante, but is keen for the young man to meet his wild and beautiful associate, Beth -- leading Dante to suspect he has been lured to the town under false pretences...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Cone Zero: Nemonymous Eight

2008-08-15T22:09:00.002+01:00

Cone Zero is the eighth instalment of Des Lewis's 'megazanthus' (magazine/anthology) Nemonymous—the idea of which, if you're unfamiliar with the series, is that full writer credits are not given until the following issue, leaving the current stories presented anonymously. And what stories they are: there are so many good ones, I'm not sure where to start...

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

It is also my hundredth published review!

Further links:
Nemonymous

ChiZine, Issue 37: July-September 2008

2008-08-02T21:35:00.002+01:00

A sense of uncertainty floats through the stories of ChiZine #37: uncertainty over where we are, who (or what) we’re reading about, why certain things are happening—and the characters aren’t always much clearer about these matters than we are. The potential is there for some wonderful tales; unfortunately, that potential is not quite fulfilled overall...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
ChiZine
Nadia Bulkin
Richard Larson
Leslie Claire Walker

An Alternate History of the 21st Century by William Shunn

2008-07-26T17:37:00.002+01:00

In his afterword, the author cautions against the natural human tendency to look for patterns in everything. And, indeed, anyone trying to fashion a single, coherent future history from the six stories in the book will be disappointed. Nevertheless, the tales do comprise an interesting set of snapshots of where we might be heading -- or (as Cory Doctorow's introduction reminds us) where we are now...

The full review is available on SF Site.

Further Links:
William Shunn
Spilt Milk Press

Interzone, Issue 217: August 2008

2008-07-02T18:42:00.002+01:00

Advance publicity in several forum posts heralds issue #217 of Interzone as “not so Mundane this time,” following as it does from the Mundane SF special issue. And it’s quite right: only two of this issue’s stories are Earth-bound, and those two are outlandish enough that they’re far away from Mundane SF. Whether this contrast with issue #216 is deliberate, I don’t know; but I do know there is a lot of good stuff to be found here...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Interzone
Karen Fishler
M.K. Hobson
Paul McAuley
Suzanne Palmer
Jason Sanford
Paul G. Tremblay

The Fade by Chris Wooding

2008-07-01T20:55:00.002+01:00

Orna, a member of the elite Cadre, is bonded for life to the Clan Caracassa. Orna's people, the Eskarans, are at war with the Gurta; as the novel begins, she is in battle. Tricked by the Gurta, Orna's husband is killed, and she is captured and taken to the prison-fortress Farzala. At first despairing and aloof (which gains her the nickname of "the fade," a kind of apparition), she gradually forms relationships with a small group of her fellow-prisoners and formulates a daring plan to escape...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Chris Wooding
Gollancz

Diet Soap, Issue 2: Sex and Gender

2008-06-23T19:51:00.003+01:00

Diet Soap’s website—and, indeed, the magazine itself—suggest that it’s meant as a provocative publication. Well, I have to admit that I didn’t find issue #2 to be quite that; but it does have some good stories that make telling points about the subject of sex and gender...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Diet Soap
Stephanie Burgis
Ginnetta Correli
Chelsea Martin
Katherine Sparrow

Abyss & Apex, Issue 26: Second Quarter 2008

2008-06-03T17:04:00.002+01:00

This was my first encounter with Abyss & Apex, a generalist speculative fiction webzine that seeks to publish “powerful stories with emotion that resonates in our minds and hearts long after the first reading” and “stories that stand out from the norm even in a genre that pushes the envelope of normal.” With the five stories of issue 26, I would say they haven’t quite hit that mark...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Abyss & Apex
Andrew S. Fuller
Laura Anne Gilman
Larry Hodges
Vylar Kaftan
Lawrence M. Schoen

Light Reading by Aliya Whiteley

2008-06-02T21:01:00.002+01:00

Prudence Green and Lena Patten are best friends, brought together by their marriages to officers in the Royal Air Force. Their husbands are currently away on duty, and the two women are dissatisfied with their lives back home on the base. Excitement of sorts arrives in December 2004, when Pru finds one of the other RAF wives hanging, because her husband is having an affair - with Lena's husband. At which point, it may appear that Light Reading is going to be a run-of-the-mill potboiler...but it's not so...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Aliya Whiteley
Macmillan New Writing

Postscripts, Issue 14: Spring 2008

2008-05-22T17:13:00.003+01:00

PS Publishing must have one of the most diverse lists in the independent press; and their magazine, Postscripts, reflects that diversity: reading an issue is like reaching into the PS bran tub and pulling out a random selection...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Jetse de Vries
Rhys Hughes
Paul Jessup
Sarah Monette
Robert Reed
Jeff VanderMeer
Barry Wood
PS Publishing

Something Wicked, Issue 6

2008-05-07T21:07:00.001+01:00

On my personal world map of fantastic fiction, South Africa is one of the areas marked “here be dragons,” because I don’t know what else to put there. If the same applies to you, here to amend that is Something Wicked, South Africa’s only quarterly magazine of science fiction and horror (so here there be no dragons after all)...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell

2008-05-07T21:04:00.001+01:00

Simon Lester's old university tutor commissions him to write a book expanding his thesis on forgotten film stars. The actor who particularly captures Simon's interest is Tubby Thackeray, a professor who became a music hall comedian and then a silent movie clown, but who has now been effectively written out of cinematic history. It becomes clear why when Simon eventually tracks down some footage of Thackeray's highly disturbing films...

The full review is online at SF Site.

The Unblemished by Conrad Williams

2008-05-07T21:01:00.001+01:00

In a London pub, photographer Bo Mulvey is approached by a random stranger offering him a map to the secret "house of flies." Mulvey accepts, but all he receives for his trouble is a few lines of nonsense. He may think at first that he's been taken for a ride, but then the map invades his vision, and begins to change him...

The full review is online at SF Site.

Tales from the Secret City by Cryptopolis

2008-04-18T20:35:00.002+01:00

Cryptopolis -- a writers' group based in Austin, Texas -- offers us an anthology of ten stories by its members, each introduced by another contributor. The book is elevated above the status of back-slapping exercise by actually being pretty good, yet at the same time, it's frustratingly not good enough to be much more than pretty good. It seems that three of the stories go the extra distance to become something quite special; the other seven are interesting, but stop a little short...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Patrice Sarath

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

2008-03-31T22:38:00.002+01:00

Charlie Asher owns a second-hand goods shop in San Francisco. As the book begins, his wife Rachel has just given birth; she dies soon after of a blood clot in the brain. Later, Charlie begins to see certain objects glowing red; he discovers they are 'soul vessels' and he has become a 'Death Merchant', charged with collecting the soul vessels of people about to die...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Christopher Moore
Orbit

Another blog

2008-01-15T19:06:00.000Z

I've started a personal blog elsewhere, called Reading by the Moon. I'll still be updating this blog with snippets of the reviews, though.

The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass by Vera Nazarian

2008-01-15T18:58:00.000Z

Far in the future, when the distinctions between 'fantasy' and 'science fiction' are meaningless, the Pacific Ocean has dwindled to a (relatively) small body of polluted water, and the human population is concentrated in two cities on the edge and floor of the basin. Humankind has itself evolved beyond primitive old homo sapiens - but has also lost the ability to reproduce. So the species perpetuates itself by growing a female with the old DNA, who will become the Queen of the Hourglass, destined to mate with the Clock King. Liraei is the current Queen of the Hourglass, and this novella follows her life from 'birth' until...

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

Further links:
Vera Nazarian
PS Publishing

H2O by Mark Swartz

2008-01-06T16:08:00.000Z

The year is 2020, and clean water has become a scarcity. Chicago has weathered the 'hydro crisis' reasonably well, though its society has still been reconfigured, with all the major utilities controlled by three giant public-private partnerships. Water is the responsibility of Drixa, and it's an employee of that corporation - an engineer named Hayden Shivers - who makes a discovery that could solve the world's water-supply problems: a Maltese moss whose properties defy conventional physics; if you filter water through it, a greater volume of water comes out. The new product, dubbed 'H2O', is, Drixa insists, just ordinary water; though the protest group ICE-9 (led by the daughter of Drixa's CEO) is not convinced. As the novel begins, Miyumi Park, Drixa's head of human resources, offers Hayden Shivers the post of chief engineer - and he becomes a pawn in an elaborate game of power played out by more parties than he could ever have anticipated...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Electric Velocipede, Issue 10

2007-12-01T20:32:00.000Z

I can offer no great introduction to Electric Velocipede; this issue was my first time. Initial impressions: it looks pretty unassuming, though the cover is no less attractive and striking for that; using the back cover as a space for the subscriber's address is a nice touch, too. The stories fit broadly into a region that I'm not sure even has a name... "Literary weird"? Don't know if that's a real term, but I trust you get the gist of what I mean. On to the fiction...

The full review is available at SF Site.

Further links:

Robert Freeman Wexler

Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen

2007-11-24T22:46:00.000Z

The questions of what we do with life and what we have to show for it reverberate throughout the novel. The particular life we follow is that of Margrethe Thiede, who lives in a small Danish fishing town. As a child, her head is full of fairy tales, and she views the world through that lens...but she also senses (even if not quite conciously) that reality doesn't necessarily work that way...

The full review appears in Issue 3 of The Small Press Review.

Further links:
Norvik Press

New Writings in the Fantastic, ed. John Grant

2007-11-20T22:30:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of John Grant's attitude to fantasy, which is that it should not be funnelled into narrow marketing categories, only to be diluted in the process; but should instead be let free to do whatever it wants and generally be, well, imaginative. I'm all for that, so naturally I was interested in reading a big anthology (41 stories in 360 pages of small, close-set type) edited by Grant and intended to embody those very principles...

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

Further links:
John Grant
Geoffrey Maloney
E. Sedia
Kim Sheard
Naomi Alderman
Gary McMahon
Edd Vick
Vera Nazarian
Derek J. Goodman
Greg Beatty
Andrew Hook
Paul Pinn
Pendragon Press

Cynnador by Patrick Welch

2007-11-17T17:30:00.000Z

The first 40 pages comprise a prologue and thirteen "preludes" before the main story starts. These preludes are a series of vignettes introducing Cynnador and its people: some are more directly related to the main story than others; some characters in the vignettes appear later in the book, others don't, and some characters in the main tale are only referred to in the preludes. What emerges is a picture of a mysterious city that somehow looks after itself, a place in which magic is difficult to cast, but that has some magic of its own...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Patrick Welch
Twilight Times Books

Animal's People by Indra Sinha

2007-10-15T20:15:00.000+01:00

The novel is set in a city named Khaufpur, which is fictional but has experienced a similar catastrophe [to Bhopal]. It is narrated by a nineteen-year-old boy whose spine was destroyed by the gas, such that he must move around on all fours—he's taken the name 'Animal' to reflect what he sees as his nature. There are demands for the chemical firm (known only as 'the Kampani') to face justice, but it has thus far refused even to send lawyers to Khaupfur. Now Elli Barber, an 'Amrikan doctress', arrives in the city to open free clinic—but is she all that she seems? Could she actually be working for the Kampani?

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

Further links:
Indra Sinha
The city of Khaupfur
Simon & Schuster

On the Overgrown Path by David Herter

2007-10-12T22:59:00.000+01:00

Janáček is the protagonist, though the tale itself names him only as J______. He begins on a train, carrying his notebook, in which he transcribes the notation of any interesting sound he hears. During an unscheduled stop at an unfamiliar village, J______ hears a beautiful song and races off to find its singer. He fails, but the distraction causes him to miss the departing train. Staying at the village, he comes across the body of a young woman who was wounded horrifically – and discovers that there may be more going on than meets the eye...

The full review appears in Issue Two of The Small Press Review.

Further links:
PS Publishing

The Man Who Was Loved by Kay MacCauley

2007-10-12T22:48:00.000+01:00

We first meet Marin as an infant at the San Barnabo Redentore Shelter for Foundlings. Sister Clara recognises something in him: could he be her own child, the one she abandoned? Believing so, she takes him from the shelter to raise herself.... As Marin grows, he discovers that people see in him who they want to see, which sometimes even leads to his own physical appearance changing in sympathy. This naturally leads to... various adventures.

The full review appears in Issue Two of The Small Press Review.

Further links:
Telegram Books

Stealing Magic by Tanya Huff

2007-09-25T20:58:00.000+01:00

This short story collection is really two collections, one telling of the wizard Magdalene, the other chronicling the adventures of the thief Terazin. The two "books" are bound back-to-back in a single volume. The telling is bright and breezy (a world away from the stilted, formal prose of so much fantasy of that ilk), the tone generally light; as the author writes in the afterword, "there should always be room for a few laughs."

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Tanya Huff
EDGE Publishing

So Far, So Near by Mat Coward

2007-09-14T16:38:00.000+01:00

Mat Coward's stories...treat the fantastic as the most natural thing in the world, to the extent that you might not even notice at first; and, when you do, your attitude might be like that of the character who finds a dead ghost sitting on his toilet: 'you shouldn't be surprised. . . at what life chooses to throw at you. One ghost, two divorces, one imminent bankruptcy.' When you put it like that, why should encountering a ghost be so notable?

The complete review is available online -- about halfway down the page -- at Serendipity.

Further links:
Mat Coward
Elastic Press

Snow Patrol's Final Straw: A Consideration

2007-09-12T21:58:00.000+01:00

DH diversifies into music!

Laura Hird has been inviting contributors to write short articles about music that is significant to them. I've taken up the challenge, and chosen to write about the album that introduced me to Snow Patrol, 2003's Final Straw. You can read my thoughts on it at the New Review.

Further links:
Snow Patrol

Gold by Dan Rhodes

2007-09-12T21:46:00.000+01:00

...I can't recall the last time I was so compelled by a book in which ostensibly nothing (and yet so very much) happens. Gold is a quiet and unassuming book but – fittingly enough – it is also, when you look closely enough, a book that gleams and sparkles.

The complete review is available online at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Dan Rhodes
Canongate

Fired! by Annabelle Gurwitch

2007-09-12T21:37:00.000+01:00

Annabelle Gurwitch certainly wasn’t laughing when Woody Allen fired her from one of his productions; but she was buoyed up by hearing friends’ tales of being fired – and now here’s a whole book of them, along with further anecdotes sent to Gurwitch through her website...

The complete review is available online at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:

Annabelle Gurwitch

Simon & Schuster

GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 1

2007-09-08T22:55:00.001+01:00

Here is a magazine that means business. Not only does the very title imply quality, this issue weighs in at almost 200 pages, with no less than thirty contributors listed at the back. One can’t accuse its publishers of skimping on content! (Or on production values, as this is a handsome volume indeed.)

As for what the magazine actually publishes… Well, the postcards enclosed with the review copy say, ‘Greatest Uncommon Denominator encompasses and transcends genre and literary fiction’, a statement that manages to be both hopelessly vague and entirely accurate. There is diversity of approach, be in no doubt, but also a unity of sensibility in the magazine, a sensibility that might be described as taking a step or two away from reality. This results in some wonderful flights of imagination, but it can also make the job of reviewing trickier. An examination of the first two stories will show you what I mean.

Issue 1 of GUD opens with Electroencephalography by Darby Larson, in which Dean stumbles across a box of mechanical components, as you do; and decides to build himself a robot servant, as you do – and the point is that, in Dean’s world, you do, because this is the kind of dream-logic world where a dead body only needs a clockwork energy converter attached for it to return to life, so of course you’d build a robot. Anyway, Dean’s great idea doesn’t work out quite how he anticipated; and, unfortunately, the ending of Larson’s story doesn’t quite live up to the beginning – but I can’t really tell you why I think that; it’s just how it feels. Then you’ve got Arrow by Nadine Darling, whose protagonist wakes up with a very visible indicator of love – namely, an arrow through the heart. Again, the author does an excellent job of convincing us that yes, this could happen in the world of the story; but, this time, the ending works. And I don’t know why I found Darling’s ending satisfying and Larson’s not – I just did. I can’t put a finger on it, any more than I can explain to you how clockwork robot servants or arrow-pierced hearts could ever be accepted features of contemporary life. Whilst that’s fine for the stories (that first imaginative leap being part of the unspoken contract between writer and reader), it’s not acceptable for a reviewer to go, ‘Um, yeah, kind of like that, but dunno why.’ Yet that’s just the kind of reaction I repeatedly found myself having. So you see the problem.

All right, let’s start with some of the stuff I definitely liked. Steven J. Dines contributes Unzipped, the powerful and subtle tale of a soldier returned from Iraq and trying to deal with the death of a child that he witnessed out there and feels he should have prevented. I didn’t realise what Dines meant by the ‘ball’ that wasn’t a ball until I turned the page – and it knocked me for six when I did. A top-notch character study. So is Aliens by Jordan E. Rosenfeld, set at a restaurant out in the desert where people have a tendency to see UFOs. But who needs little green men when, as Rosenfeld shows, the staff and customers of the restaurant are such misfits themselves – and, by extension, any of us could be a metaphorical ‘alien’, given the right circumstances.

Though some tales in GUD depict extraordinary events, others introduce you to characters with odd ways of thinking. Take Mike Procter’s Item 27, whose narrator is working through a list of ambitions and has reached the one about killing someone. When it comes down to it, though, he’d really rather get someone else to do the deed – he just needs to hire them. Procter’s brief tale is quite amusing and, for just a short time, makes the protagonist’s thought processes seem entirely reasonable. Experiment: Love by Brian Conn is less playful in tone and (naturally) about love rather than killing, but it too puts you most effectively in the mind of another – two people, in this case, who have an unusual take on love (they’re splitting up but, one says, if they meet again years later, their cells will remember each other even if they themselves don’t).

So those are some of my personal highlights from this issue. Then there’s the stuff that I like, but belongs more in the second tier for me. An example is Max Velocity by Leslie Claire Walker: giving birth has become a matter of being buried in the ground while our baby eats you, so Fan isn’t too happy about being pregnant, to put it mildly. Fortunately, she is rescued from her fate; unfortunately, she then ends up… This story was a little too odd, even for me, but it’s compelling all the same. Sean Melican’s In the Dark is the similarly well-written tale, told in epistolatory form, of a researcher visiting a moon whose alien inhabitants insisted he allow himself to be blinded beforehand. I loved the way Melican handles the different voices, I loved the particularly mysterious aliens – but I didn’t quite get the ending. A shame, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

GUD magazine is not all about fiction; there’s poetry and art in there too, but I have less to say about them, as I don’t have the knowledge to critique them in the same way. Of the poetry, I particularly enjoyed Timothy Gager’s Moving Boxes, which poignantly compares packed-up items to a past relationship; and Cami Park’s Sisyphus of the Staircase, whose title neatly sums up its central idea. I also found the imagery of The Intrigue of Being Watched by Rusty Barnes, comparing sex to the sea, most evocative. I’m afraid I really can’t offer a useful opinion on the artwork, but I do like the way the magazine’s structure encourages you to appreciate the art in its own right, rather than as an adjunct of the fiction – which is not to say that the juxtaposition of art and fiction won’t sometimes make you look again with new eyes.

Of course there are pieces in this magazine that I didn’t really get along with, but I don’t want to dwell on them too much; I think it’s quite clear that this is the sort of publication whose contents really will inspire different reactions from different readers. But there’s enough quantity and variety between the covers to convince me that there’s something here for everyone – and, even if you don’t necessarily like what’s over the page, it will always be interesting. Let me just mention one final contribution: towards the end of the magazine is Mad Dogs by Christian A. Dumais, the only piece labelled as non-fiction. Dumais is an American teaching at a university in Poland; this piece chronicles his night out drinking with some visiting Secret Service and Air Force Two staff, a night which ends with him sitting in the apartment of two Polish lesbians. You’ll have to read the essay to find out how he gets there; but what’s great about this piece is that it makes real life seem just as strange as the fictional realities depicted in the rest of the magazine. So that’s GUD, a magazine that builds its own fantastic aesthetic from a diverse range of building-blocks, even the real world.

GUD Magazine edited by Julia Bernd, Sal Coraccio, Kaolin Fire and Sue Miller. 5x8, 196pp, US$10/print and US$3.50/PDF (see website for other subscription rates and non-US prices). Published by Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing, PO Box 1537, Laconia, NH, 03427 USA.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:
Darby Larson
Nadine Darling
Steven J. Dines
Jordan E. Rosenfeld
Brian Conn
Leslie Claire Walker
Timothy Gager
Cami Park
Rusty Barnes
GUD Magazine

Ugly Stories for Beautiful People by James Burr

2007-09-08T22:30:00.001+01:00

Ugly Stories for Beautiful People feels like a book in its own little world. I don’t mean to suggest that its stories never joined the party – a glance at the list of previous publication credits will reveal that they did – but there is a certain sense that this book stands to one side, that it’s doing its own thing, as it were. Part of that sense comes from the cover, which is striking in its minimalism, and quite unlike any recent book cover I’ve seen, from either the independent or mainstream press (not to mention a fine example of how attractive even a home-made cover can be).

More than that, there’s the intent of the collection itself. To quote the covering letter that James Burr sent with the review copy, ‘[t]he stories are generally inter-linked and were conceived of as a whole – hence the lack of contents page… I want people to read them in a certain order; long story after short; humorous after grim.’ Whilst I’m not sure that having a contents page would spoil the way we experience the book, Burr achieves his aim, as the book feels complete in itself: there is a rhythm to the way the tales are arranged, and they are indeed linked – not by setting or characters (except in one instance); but by a general theme, which may be broadly described as people coming (or refusing) to perceive that reality is not as they thought.

Sometimes this happens quite literally, as in Life’s What You Make It, where a woman’s happy, comfortable life is intruded upon by what appear to be experiences from another version of her life, one with much more hardship. Which life is real, and which illusory? I’ve read my fair share of stories in which someone’s life is literally rearranged around them – you probably have, too – but I don’t remember reading one as thrilling or disorientating as this.

At other times, the theme is exhibited in a more mundane (though not necessarily pedestrian!) way. An example is Blue, one of the book’s longer entries. It follows Kate, working as an English language teacher in Barcelona, and her encounters with a mysterious group of tattooed individuals. The story takes a while to get where it’s going; but, when it does, it proves an interesting character study: the tattooed group are frustrated at people whom (they believe) don’t see the suffering in the world, and their aim is to redress that in a rather direct way. Burr’s examination of the morality of this view is pleasingly nuanced.

Sometimes the theme is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, as in The Dada Relationship Police. The stability of another life is under threat, this time that of Matt, who begins to receive strange phone calls and notes signed by the titular ‘police’, telling him that his partner is cheating on him and his relationship is over. And this is not quite a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least not totally. The ending may raise a smile (as it did with me) but, if it does, the smile will be wry.

Interspersed with the longer pieces are shorter ones, which are generally more humorous. Perhaps the funniest is It, a shaggy dog story in which people literally disappear up their own backsides and the world is saved by Tom Paulin. If this sounds too silly, I can only urge you to give it an even break, because it’s highly amusing. It also has a serious point to make to anyone who has ever strung a sentence together (a point that this reviewer has taken – so he hopes!). Also pulling off that mix of humour and seriousness is Mutton Pie, about a man’s encounter in a pub with an older woman. The tale refers to ‘the self-delusions that we wrap around ourselves to make life more bearable’ – true enough. But it also suggests that those delusions may not be all that bad, not if they work for us – truer still.

The collection begins and ends with a story called BobandJane and its postscript, about a couple who are so very much in love (Burr’s prose conveys this superbly) that, yes, they don’t perceive reality as it is – and, at the very end, their bubble may just be starting to burst. Not just a neat story, it serves as a summation of the whole book, a book which covers a range of human emotion, precarious relationships and equally precarious realities (and there may not be much difference between the two); and whose intriguing constituent parts form a complete, intriguing entity.

Ugly Stories for Beautiful People by James Burr. Paperback, 276 pp, £11.99. Published by Corsega Press.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:

James Burr

A lick of virtual paint

2007-07-14T22:53:00.000+01:00

Since I hadn't altered the look of this blog since its beginning, over 18 months ago, I thought it was time to spruce it up a bit. So here's a new layout and a large number of links. I've tried to link to every author I could find on the web who is reviewed here (and a few others besides); any additions or corrections are welcome. More links will probably follow, and more reviews will certainly follow.

Welcome to the new DH Reviews; hope you like it.

Dawn by Tim Lebbon

2007-07-01T15:15:00.000+01:00

By the end of Dusk, the Mages Angel and S'Hivez had regained control of magic and brought a permanent twilight down upon the world of Noreela. Can they be defeated? And will the author end his sequence as well as he began it? No prizes for guessing the answer to the former question; you only have to look at this book's title. As for the latter...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Tim Lebbon
The world of Noreela
Bantam

Unnatural History by Jonathan Green

2007-05-21T22:33:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the Pax Britannia series, set in the latest of Abaddon Books' original shared worlds. It is 1997, and Victoria (kept alive by advanced technology) is about to celebrate her 160^th year on the throne; the British Empire still spans the globe; and Magna Britannia remains the 'Workshop of the World'. Jonathan Green co-created Pax Britannia, and Unnatural History is the first novel to be set in the world; so it's natural to expect this book to set the tone of the series.

The world presented within is, however, annoyingly inconsistent. In some ways, it's clearly meant to echo our own (there are mentions of anti-social behaviour and an Anti-Terror Bill, for example); but in others, it could never have been the same world (there are surviving pockets of dinosaurs and early humans). The technology can be more advanced than ours (robot policemen, space colonies) or stuck in the 19^th century (factories are still the same). Sometimes this is charming (I love the idea of mobile phones made of teak and brass), but equally it sometimes just doesn't make sense (given a hundred extra years, would the Victorians really not have learned to exploit any more energy sources than coal?). Green's extended Victorian Age feels more like a grab-bag of ideas that sounded interesting than a properly thought-out setting.

One could also be forgiven for thinking that the upper echelons of London society are all that's real in this world. Green comments early on that 'the more shameful aspects of Imperial life had continued to deteriorate' – there's still great poverty, infant mortality, disease, and so on. Wait, though, there's more: 'Great swathes of the British Isles were now nothing but blighted wasteland'. The author mentions these in a few paragraphs, but that's all; the rest of the country might as well be a utopia, for all it matters in the book. Surely these problems deserve addressing in more detail? (And if people think the situation is so bad, why aren't they trying to do something about it? After all, the real 19^th century wasn't short of social reformers.) I was also left wondering about the history of this fictional 20^th century: there's brief mention of other countries; but I just don't get the impression (however wrong I may be) of a coherent history.

Okay, so we don't think too hard about the setting; doesn't mean the book will be bad, and indeed it's not. Our hero is dashing government agent Ulysses Quicksilver, sent to investigate a crime committed at the Natural History Museum. Throw in a mysterious 'de-evolution' formula, a comely young maiden, and a dastardly plot to overthrow the existing order, and you have all the ingredients of a romp.

And a romp is what we get. It's all jolly good fun. Yes, I suppose the plot is pretty easy to figure out; and sure, the characters are painted in broad strokes rather than fine detail (I know that's the point in a romp, but it's always nice to have three-dimensional characters). But Unnatural History is saved by Green's talent for writing atmosphere and action. There are some wonderful scenes (Quicksilver's discovery of a bomb factory in the abandoned Underground springs immediately to mind) that make the book a compelling read.

Shared worlds tend to work better with the more freedom authors have, so we'll have to wait and see how Pax Britannia develops (though, having read the preview in the back of this volume, I'm optimistic). But they all have to start somewhere, and Unnatural History is a good start. No, it's not everything it could be: I'd like to know more about how this world works and where it came from. It also strikes me that there's a real horror at the heart of the setting, the horror of this period of profound change being reducing to something static and stagnant; Green refers briefly to 'a decaying, outdated system maintained for much longer than was healthy' (and of course the title may be considered a pun, as the alternate 1997 is itself a product of 'unnatural history'), but I wish there had been a greater sense of this horror in the texture of the novel. Still, Unnatural History is an effective romp, and there's no harm in that.

Unnatural History by Jonathan Green. Paperback, 336 pp, £6.99. Published by Abaddon Books and available in all good bookshops.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:
Abaddon Books

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, ed. George Mann

2007-04-16T18:45:00.000+01:00

Solaris Books is the new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Games Workshop's publishing arm. This anthology is their "book-sized calling card." It's heartening to see a company with Games Workshop's clout investing, as it were, in the field; so one wants to wish Solaris well -- provided, of course, that they publish good fiction...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Stephen Baxter
Mike Resnick
David Gerrold
Eric Brown
Adam Roberts
James Lovegrove
Mary A. Turzillo
Ian Watson
Keith Brooke
Solaris
Solaris editors' blog

Breakfast with the Ones You Love by Eliot Fintushel

2007-04-01T13:25:00.000+01:00

Sixteen-year-old Lea Tillim is a girl with a talent. Well, maybe "talent" isn't the most appropriate word. An ability, let's say. A power. The power to make people ill with a thought, even to kill them if she wants. But there's one boy who considers it a talent: Jack Konar, who says he is one of the God Tetragrammaton's Thrice Chosen, and is building a "spaceship" in a forgotten part of a Sears and Roebuck store, in readiness for the coming of the Meschiach. And he needs Lea's help...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:

Eliot Fintushel

Random House

Jupiter XIV: Thebe

2007-02-14T19:51:00.001Z

Jupiter was an unfamiliar publication to me, though it was clear enough that we would be in SF territory. I did think that two staples rather than one would make the magazine easier to handle; but of course it's the fiction that counts, so let's look at some (I must abstain from reviewing the poetry as I'm not confident about doing so).

First up is The Truth about Watermelon Seeds by Monte Davis (who also provides this issue's cover illustration), the delightfully odd tale of Vardiman Laneer, who lives out of his truck in the hope of finding a meteorite that he can sell on for enough money to patch things up with his beloved Birdie. His sole companion in this is his pet mouse, Gideon, who (unbeknownst to Vardiman) has been eating the seeds from a cosmic watermelon and undergoing a remarkable transformation. Davis writes engagingly and vividly (the atmosphere of Vardiman's truck is all too real!), and the result is a strange concoction that, nevertheless, works.

The Walking Distances by Thomas Lee Joseph Smith takes its protagonist (also a Tom Smith) to Canada, to visit an old writer friend, Kim, who has been hearing mysterious noises. Tom's speciality is writing about sounds that he has recorded; and Kim wants him to help her find out what's going on. What they discover is, naturally, rather unexpected... Actually, the solution to the 'whatdunnit' is probably less interesting than the character of Tom. Smith gives him a distinctive, jokey voice that does sometimes miss the mark ('They melted into the woods, like cheap margarine on hot corn-bread'), but, more often, hits it most effectively (as when Tom grabs something from the kitchen drawer and runs outside, only to find it wasn't a knife, as he was searching for).

Pretty much all the stories in the magazine are very good at creating an atmosphere through the unique viewpoints of their characters. In The Roots of Martian Civilisation, Robert Persons depicts an ancient Mars, where Trong, an archaeologist, is searching for evidence of the long-gone Sea Dogs. The author strikes a fine balance between alienness and familiarity; Trong isn't human, but we comprehend what he's doing well enough that his alien attributes become all the more striking (such as the way his species writes, 'a multimedia collage of up to a dozen sensual clues').

The final two stories in the magazine are also space operas, but more humorous – and, happily, both are genuinely amusing. In Jason Gaskell's Stranded, Jon Simmons is in a hurry to deliver his cargo to a client who doesn't like to be kept waiting; but a jobsworth guard won't let him through the wormhole, and Jon ends up – yes – stranded on a world he dubs 'Crapoid'. Gaskell's piece is daft, good-natured fun.

The title of Manda Benson's The Thirteenth Brigade refers to a bunch of cockroaches that have been engineered to aid humanity; they prove to be the ideal help to the crew of a spaceship who get into difficulties while trying to discover the cause of an earthquake that rocked their ship. Benson's story is perhaps not as consistently funny as Gaskell's; but it still has some good moments, and the ending is especially fine.

As I was coming to the end of this issue of Jupiter, I glanced back at Ian Redman's introduction; and something therein struck me as particularly apposite: 'put the kettle on, light the fire and snuggle into your favourite chair'. That sums up these stories: they may not break much new ground in science fiction, but they are superb entertainment.

Jupiter edited by Ian Redman, 19 Bedford Road, Yeovil, Somerset, BA21 4UG, UK. A5, 48pp, £2.75 or £10/4.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:

Jason Gaskell

Jupiter

I am the Bird by T.M. Wright

2007-02-08T09:41:00.000Z

It is difficult for a straightforward summary to do justice to T.M. Wright's remarkable I am the Bird, a novella in which nothing much happens, no story is told (in the conventional sense) and nothing is resolved as such - yet which is still a complete and satisfying reading experience...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Further links:
T.M. Wright
PS Publishing

The Turning by Paul J. Newell

2007-01-20T20:31:00.000Z

Our narrator is Lleyton Quinn, a forecaster of consumer demand by trade, whose help is sought covertly by Detective Sergeant Melissa Keller in investigating a series of cases in which people (more than one of whom is known to Quinn) have run away for no obvious reason. As the novel proceeds, it transpires that the runaways have been "turned" -- they have somehow come to stop caring about anything at all -- as Lleyton discovers first-hand when it happens to Keller. And, when he finds out who (or what) is behind the "turning," the implications for humanity will be...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:

Paul J. Newell

The Virnation puzzle

Appian Publishing

Extended Play, ed. Gary Couzens

2007-01-08T22:34:00.000Z

Gary Couzens takes to the decks for the third Elastic Press anthology, a set of nine tales at the longer end of the short story bracket, linked by the presence of music...

Read more at The Zone.

Further links:
Tony Richards
Chris T-T
Tall Poppies
Elastic Press

Remainder by Tom McCarthy

2007-01-06T21:11:00.000Z

The protagonist...does not reveal his name, and can’t remember much about his accident; but its lasting effects are all too clear to him: intensive physiotherapy has left him conscious of every little movement he makes, and he longs for the days when he could perform action without thinking – the days when he felt real. A settlement has left our man rich to the tune of eight-and-a-half million pounds, and he wonders what to do with it all. Then one night, at a party, he recalls in great detail a flat he used to live in, where he felt real in a way he doesn’t now. He resolves to recreate those surroundings – right down to the sounds, smells, and neighbours – in the hope of capturing that feeling once again. And he doesn’t stop there…

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
INS (Tom McCarthy)
Alma Books

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

2007-01-06T21:08:00.000Z

Eric Sanderson...lost his girlfriend in an accident whilst on holiday – and, thanks to a recurring disassociative disorder (according to his psychiatrist, Dr Randle), he keeps losing all memory of his self. When we join Eric, his disorder has recurred for the eleventh time; and, as he tries to make sense of life again, he receives a series of letters signed ‘the First Eric Sanderson’ giving a rather different explanation for his amnesia: that Eric is being hunted by a Ludovician, a ‘conceptual shark’ that feeds on human memories...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Steven Hall
Novel website
Canongate

Magnetic North, ed. Claire Malcolm

2007-01-06T21:07:00.000Z

This book collects together works produced between 2003 and 2005 as part of a live literature programme that took place in Newcastle Gateshead...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Andrew Crumey
Fiona Ritchie Walker
Julia Darling
Val McDermid
Chrissie Glazebrook
Charles Fernyhough
New Writing North

The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne

2007-01-01T16:17:00.000Z

Kyra is sent by the Heiress Veridi to the Broken Glass City where she must find a man named Eson and take from him a certain deed. Eson has inherited his family's hot springs in the northern mountains, and is in control of the electricity generated by them -- but more than that, the springs also grant him the power to bind others to himself through deeds like the one Kyra has been instructed to retrieve...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Dana Copithorne (Art Portfolio)
Aio Publishing

Urban Fantastic by Allen Ashley

2006-12-16T17:28:00.000Z

The author's work inhabits territory that the fantasy genre could usefully exploit/explore in the years ahead. If the first stage in the development of modern fantasy was ambiguity (is the fantastic element in the story real or not?), and the second stage was stories in which the fantasy is acknowledged to be real; then the logical next step is to put the fantasy to work -- and this is what Ashley does in his stories...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Allen Ashley
Crowswing

Macrolife by George Zebrowski

2006-12-01T16:33:00.000Z

Living on planets is a precarious business. You never know when some quirk of geology or a stray rock falling from the sky will put paid to your species; not forgetting evolutionary pressures pushing you who-knows-where, and sundry other ravages. So it's pretty much inevitable that a civilization wishing to survive in the long term (for the sake of argument, ours) must become space-faring. But what then?...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Pyr

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

2006-11-16T21:16:00.000Z

A new book by Neil Gaiman is always welcome but a short fiction collection is perhaps especially so, because it lets us experience a wide range of his work. Certainly, Gaiman’s remarkable talents are showcased to brilliant effect in Fragile Things. There are twenty-seven (or should that be twenty-eight?) pieces of fiction in the volume; let’s examine some of them.

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Neil Gaiman
Hodder Headline

Dusk by Tim Lebbon

2006-11-16T20:57:00.000Z

A man wearing a red robe enters the village of Trengborne and proceeds to slaughter everyone there -- all except two people, that is: Rafe Baburn, the young boy he's looking for; and Kosar, a former thief who hid when he saw the man approaching the village. Leaving Trengborne, Rafe falls in with the witch Hope and Kosar with his ex-lover, a warrior named A'Meer from the mysterious Shantasi people. The truth about the red-robed man becomes clear...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Tim Lebbon
The world of Noreela
Bantam Spectra

52 Projects by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

2006-10-21T21:19:00.000+01:00

Looking through the list of books available for review on Laura Hird’s website, I notice one called 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity. Sounds interesting and different, but is it the right kind of book for me? I normally stick to reviewing fiction, and have never really thought of myself as much of a creative person, so I’m wary... but then again, why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
52 Projects
Perigee

Triquorum One, ed. Christopher Teague

2006-10-21T21:14:00.000+01:00

This book grew organically, beginning life as a single novella, before gaining one and then two companions as Chris Teague received submissions that, he felt, worked well alongside each other. So, in Triquorum One, we have three tales which are all distinctive, yet are linked by the games they play with our notions of reality...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Allen Ashley
John Grant
Lavie Tidhar
Christopher Teague
Pendragon Press

Rabid Transit: Long Voyages, Great Lies

2006-10-21T21:10:00.000+01:00

Rabid Transit is a series of short anthologies published by a group of writers who call themselves the ‘Ratbastards’. It began as an outlet for their own work, then began to feature other writers; and has now reached this, its fifth instalment. The six stories in Long Voyages, Great Lies are loosely connected by themes of travel and escape. Let’s take a closer look at them...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
David J. Schwartz
F. Brett Cox
Heather Shaw
Meghan McCarron
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
Christopher Barzak
Alan DeNiro
Kristin Livdahl
Velocity Press

DH Interviews... Sean Wright

2006-10-16T20:52:00.000+01:00

My first interview is now online...

On mapping Jaarfindor:
"The stories that come from Jaarfindor can't be mapped out as a whole, perfect picture. Why? Because I'm in the process of discovering what lurks in the cities and countryside, in the deserts and oceans, meeting new characters in exciting and challenging situations. I'm an artist, and as such I'm obsessed to explore the weird space of my imagination, writing down what I find there, making numerous pen and ink sketches as aide-memoirs. I constantly surprise and worry myself. Every time I venture there I find myself asking a simple yet for me a profound question: are you certain you witnessed that? Much of what I write isn't easy to quantify or label."

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright

Jaarfindor Remade by Sean Wright

2006-10-16T20:50:00.000+01:00

Reality's walls have been breached, and the worlds of Earth and Jaarfindor have become fused. Life in the capital of New Jaarfindor, Queen's Lynn (formerly present-day King's Lynn in Norfolk), presents several challenges: humans rub shoulders with insectiants, and you never know if the person next to you is an android; the mysterious shamutants, living beneath the city, may (it is said) erase your memories if you're not careful; the air is so polluted that decontamination is compulsory whenever you enter a building; and nobody knows what's "Out There" beyond the fog...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright
Crowswing

Vellum by Hal Duncan

2006-09-24T20:48:00.000+01:00

'A burning map. Every epic... should start with a burning map,' says a character at the start of Hal Duncan's Vellum. Perhaps I'm reading too much into that comment, but it's tempting to see it as a call for the destruction of that most familiar epic-fantasy accessory. Certainly it serves as a warning that this unmapped and perhaps unmappable (in the conventional sense) fantasy does not play by the rules (at least, not by those rules)...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Further links:
Hal Duncan
Macmillan

Gift from the Stars by James Gunn

2006-09-20T16:56:00.000+01:00

Aerospace engineer Adrian Mast finds designs for a spaceship in the back of a remaindered book on UFOs -- designs that, to Adrian's trained eye, appear workable. Could the plans be of extra-terrestrial origin? Adrian is determined to find out and persuades the sprightly bookseller Frances Farmstead to help him track down the author of the mysterious book. Naturally enough, they manage to do so, and the plans are genuine...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
James Gunn
BenBella Books

The Ephemera by Neil Williamson

2006-09-04T09:57:00.000+01:00

The Elastic Press collections are a great way to discover new authors; but they also offer the chance to rediscover authors, to give shape to the styles and concerns of writers you've read maybe once or twice in a magazine, but whose voices have become lost in the din. My reason for wanting to read The Ephemera was Neil Williamson's superb contribution to The Elastic Book of Numbers (which, I thought at the time, was the only story of his that I'd read; though, as it turned out, there had been another). I wanted to find out what the rest of his work was like; I discovered that he has an intriguing and distinctive style that permeates the entire collection without becoming stale or predictable. Like to know more? Step this way...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Two books by Brendan Connell

2006-09-04T09:53:00.000+01:00

The Translation of Father Torturo:

The Translation Of Father Torturo is the tale of Xaverio Torturo, seemingly a model of spirituality - pious, learned, and athletic to boot. But he has a dark side: born into a family which has produced (to paraphrase his uncle) its fair share of criminals but no cardinals, Torturo has ambitions towards the latter (and beyond) - and has no qualms about dealing with those who stand in his way. Nor is he above dabbling in the 'supramundane', by stealing saints' relics and having them sewn into his own body - to what end, only he knows...

Dr Black and the Guerrillia:

In the novella Dr Black And The Guerrillia, the good doctor has travelled to San Corrados to study the religious customs of the Yaroa people. Naturally, things don't quite go according to plan, what with Dr Black having all his supplies stolen, becoming caught up in the coils of a snake, and being hauled in front of a firing squad by the local People's Revolutionary Army...

Read more at The Zone.

Shriek: an Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer

2006-07-23T17:11:00.000+01:00

This novel marks a return to Ambergris, the setting of Jeff VanderMeer's story collection City Of Saints And Madmen (though you don't need to have read it to understand and enjoy Shriek). One of the novellas in that earlier book took the form of a historical pamphlet, The Hoegbotton Guide To The Early History Of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek. This volume is presented as a biographical afterword to the 'Early History', written by Duncan's sister Janice after he has disappeared - or so she thinks, because Duncan has found her manuscript and made his own annotations...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Who Needs Cleopatra? by Steve Redwood

2006-07-23T17:08:00.000+01:00

In the not-too-distant future, the inventor of time travel (known only as 'N') is visited by three beautiful, but dangerous-looking, women from the Time Police. They claim to be historians, wishing to record for posterity the story of N's journeys through time with his (now deceased) travelling companion, Bertie. N isn't fooled by this ("If these women worked in the records department, then I felt sorry for any filing cabinets which happened to get in their way"), but has no option other than to play along for the time being. What follows is the tale of a romp through history, with all the twists and turns you'd expect (and some you wouldn't). However...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Strange Tales, ed. Rosalie Parker

2006-07-10T12:24:00.000+01:00

I wouldn't normally dwell on a book's packaging and presentation in a review, but I must make an exception for this, because the hardback edition of Strange Tales has obviously been made with loving care and attention. This volume is a beautifully presented object, right down to the thickness and smell of its pages (not that I make a habit of smelling books, but it's something that I couldn't help noticing). What's more, I gather that all Tartarus Press books are like this (I can't say from personal experience, as I've only set eyes on one other title of theirs before). In any case, its production values certainly lead one to expect great things from the book's stories.

Strange Tales appears to be something of a mission statement for Tartarus Press, comprising as it does 'fourteen new stories that represent, in our view, the very best writing in the fields of supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction; (says Rosalie Parker in her introduction). As the book's title suggests - and as its introduction confirms - it's also an anthology of 'weird fiction'. And, although we can all probably agree broadly on what that means, it can be quite a slippery term - as evidenced by the best two stories on offer here.

'Mr Manpferdit' by Tina Rath takes us to 18th-century London, where Dr Johnson and James Boswell are setting out to meet one Mr Manpferdit, who claims to be a centaur. Now, generally speaking, I don't care for stories where modern-day authors adopt an 'archaic' writing style, as Rath does here; but she tells her tale with great verve and humour, which made the whole thing highly enjoyable. And that's not to mention the marvellous ending... but that would spoil the story for you.

Dale Nelson's 'Shelter Belt' is a very different proposition: a subtle and evocative story about a young boy in small-town America whose mother falls in love. There is barely a hint of anything supernatural here; but be that as it may, 'Shelter Belt' thoroughly deserves its place in the anthology. These two stories are not the only good ones in Strange Tales, but they are the pieces I enjoyed the most; and they illustrate the diversity of the range of stories on offer.

Several of the pieces in Strange Tales tend towards quite a florid use of language, which is one thing that can put me off this kind of fiction: it often seems to get in the way of the storytelling. And these stories span the full range of success: 'The Descent of the Fire' by Mark Valentine and John Howard, in which 'The Connoisseur' investigates mysterious goings-on in a Shropshire village, didn't engage me at all. Quentin S. Crisp's contribution, 'Cousin X', the dark story of young Sasha and her enigmatic cousin, is more effective, but suffers from being overwritten in places. 'The Itchy Skin of Creepy Aplomb' by Rhys Hughes is also somewhat over-done, but its bizarre combination of formal language and slang forces the reader to approach the story on its own terms - and the story succeeds admirably. But I won't attempt to synopsise it; it's a story that truly deserves to be described as 'weird'!

Of course, judgements like these are more personal than most: someone else might like the use of language in a story that I dislike, or vice versa. The same goes for levels of gore in a story. There is plenty in a few of the tales in this book; and, once again, some are more successful than others. 'The Maker of Fine Instruments' by Brendan Connell tells the story of Willi, the pupil of one Charles Martens, who does indeed make the finest instruments - out of animals, that is. Connell makes his story compelling as well as grotesque, which is no mean feat. In contrast, Adam Daly's 'The Self-Eater', in which a man does exactly what that title suggests, is just unpleasant.

So, do the stories in Strange Tales live up the promise of the volume's appearance? As is so often the case with anthologies, some do and others don't. The best stories here are very good indeed; the worst don't have much to recommend them at all. That said, there are many stories in this volume which have something good (or more than good) about them; so, yes: Strange Tales is worth investigating for yourself.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Three Things About Me by Aliya Whiteley

2006-06-30T21:55:00.000+01:00

This is Aliya Whiteley’s first novel, after 2004’s superb novella Mean Mode Median, and a rather different proposition from that earlier work. In the little Devon town of Allcombe, seven people begin their training course at a bank’s call centre. They play a game as an icebreaker: each person says three things about her- or himself, but only two are true; the other group members try to guess which is the lie. We then follow the trainees to the end of the course two months later, by which time their situations have changed somewhat…

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh

2006-06-30T21:53:00.000+01:00

When stage magician William Wilson accepts a gig at a policeman’s retirement party in Soho, he doesn’t realize just how much trouble it will cause. The retiree, Detective Inspector James Montgomery, has an envelope in his pocket whose contents are of interest to the club owner, Bill Noon; Montgomery used them to blackmail Bill’s father – and, later, Bill himself. So Bill would very much like to know what’s in that envelope; would William be kind enough to steal it for him?

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

The Last Days of Johnny North by David Swann

2006-06-30T21:50:00.000+01:00

‘Publishing at the edges of reality and fantasy,’ says the Elastic Press website; and, indeed, Andrew Hook has shown a healthy disregard for genre boundaries, happily publishing mimetic fiction alongside fantastic tales, usually in the same volume. The Last Days of Johnny North stretches (pun intended) this ethos in a somewhat different direction: only two of the pieces could be considered fantasy (and even those can be rationalized); but what David Swann does is to make the mundane seem strange, even hallucinatory...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Scifantastic Vol. 1, Issue 3

2006-06-30T21:49:00.000+01:00

Scifantastic is, as its name implies, a magazine of science fiction, fantasy and horror; and the stories in this issue cover a pleasingly broad range (though leaning towards the fantasy/horror end of the spectrum). And there are plenty of them: eleven stories in the magazine’s thirty pages, plus a smattering of non-fiction. But does the quality match the quantity?

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Parenthesis, ed. Ra Page

2006-06-30T21:44:00.000+01:00

This is the second anthology from Comma Press to showcase authors with ‘no major publication behind them’ (the first was 2005’s Bracket). Unlike the previous volume, Parenthesis is (according the press release) intended to be an anthology of ‘experimental writing’. Now, I must be honest and admit that those are two words that usually send a shiver down my spine, as I imagine them to describe something horribly pretentious and incomprehensible. Doubtless this is unfair of me, and I certainly needn’t have worried about it with Parenthesis, which is a very welcoming anthology – though that doesn’t make it an easy ride...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

X and Y and Other Like Stories by Heidi Cyr

2006-06-16T21:00:00.000+01:00

"Is it love, or just another psychotic episode?" This question is posed on the back cover of this enigmatic little book, and it expresses the main theme of Heidi Cyr's first collection; you may find yourself asking it as you read many of the stories...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Rabid Transit: Menagerie

2006-06-01T15:29:00.000+01:00

This book is the fourth in the Rabid Transit series of anthologies. I'd not encountered the other three, so I wasn't sure what to expect; but the cover blurb promised that the stories in Menagerie "show different ways to break out of the conventions of the shopworn story." I was interested to see what the authors had come up with.

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Vandana Singh
Matthew Cheney
Dean Francis Alfar
Rudi Dornemann
Christopher Barzak
Alan DeNiro
Kristin Livdahl
Velocity Press

Singer in the Snow by Louise Marley

2006-06-01T15:25:00.000+01:00

The frozen world of Nevya experiences summer but once every five years, with the coming of a second sun known as the Visitor. The Nevyans are therefore dependent on quiru, the magical fields of light and heat generated by Singers. Mreen has just qualified as a Cantrix, and will shortly travel to the House of Tarus, where she will provide quiru for the inhabitants. Her quiru are exceptionally strong, such that a nimbus of light surrounds her constantly; but she is mute, though able to communicate telepathically (as can all Singers) and through sign language. A student Singer named Emle is assigned to go with Mreen and act as her interpreter for a time, before returning to Conservatory. Emle is highly talented, but frustrated that she cannot channel her Gift to produce quiru. Meanwhile, at Tarus, young stable hand Luke has his own problems, namely his stepfather, Axl. The hrussmaster is abusive towards Luke's mother Erlys, but she refuses to stand up to him. Luke fears for his sister Gwin -- and Gwin harbours a secret that could make those fears well-founded...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Louise Marley
Marley's blog
Viking

Twilight of the Past: A Rift in Time by Michael Parziale

2006-05-16T15:48:00.000+01:00

Our protagonist is one Newl Rift, who is (as far as I can tell) the leader of Guntra De, a nation at war with neighbouring Spero. Although, physically, he appears to be in his thirties, he is actually a hundred years old; and he can't remember his life before Guntra De. He also wonders what this war is really all about. Whilst travelling to the country's capital, Templis, he is set upon by a mysterious individual calling himself Lone Hybrick, who suggests that Newl might want to visit distant Melis. Newl follows this advice, accompanied by the rulers of Saetraz, Amate and Mishell Luminata (whom he doesn't entirely trust). Unfortunately for Newl, though, he is being expected...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Twilight of the Past
Michael Parziale
Nightengale Press

Genetopia by Keith Brooke

2006-05-01T19:21:00.000+01:00

In the distant future, the world is saturated in "changing vectors," bio- and nano-technological agents that alter those who come into contact with them in unpredictable ways. The clans of "True" humanity guard the purity of their genes jealously: babies showing signs of being affected are left out to die from exposure, and the purebreds want nothing to do with "Lost" humans. But there's a thriving slave trade in "mutts," individuals so drastically transformed that they are regarded as animals; though, having said that, any hint of difference can lead to someone being branded a mutt, as our protagonist discovers...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Keith Brooke
Pyr

Midnight Street issue 6

2006-04-06T17:41:00.000+01:00

The strap-line of Midnight Street magazine is 'Journeys into Darkness', and the stories Trevor Denyer has assembled in this issue each live up to that description, but each in satisfyingly different ways...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Further links:
Tony Richards
Jerry Oltion
Michael Lohr
Midnight Street

The Cunning Blood by Jeff Duntemann

2006-04-01T17:55:00.000+01:00

Peter Novilio is in trouble. Having fallen foul of 1Earth's anti-violence laws, his sentence is transportation to the prison planet Hell -- unless, that is, he accepts a mission from the Governor General of America, Sophia Gorganis. Hell's technological development was supposedly stalled two hundred years earlier, when Earth placed a nano-mechanism in the planet's atmosphere that would destroy all electrical conductors -- but now it seems that something strange is occurring on Hell...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Jeff Duntemann
ISFiC Press

New reviews in the New Review...

2006-04-01T14:57:00.000+01:00

Three reviews in the latest update to Laura Hird's website:

Moondust by Cleveland W. Gibson

Before I began properly to read Cleve Gibson’s story collection, Moondust, I glanced at the book’s first sentences: ‘“Incurably insane, me? Never, Doctor Leo Harper! I was clever enough to kill my best friend and get away with it.”’ A fine example of an arresting opening, I thought; if the rest of the book lived up to that standard, I was in for a treat.

Alas – and it’s no fun having to write this – I was sorely disappointed..

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon

When I was younger, I enjoyed dipping into books of ‘strange but true’ stories. It never crossed my mind at the time to question whether the stories actually were true, but it didn’t really matter; what was important was a reminder that remarkable things do happen – those moments when life takes an unexpected twist that makes you laugh, or cry, or rage, or wonder. J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand is almost a literary version of one of those books: a collection of one hundred very short stories (three pages long at most) that read as though they are told by a friend of a friend...

Mean Mode Median by Aliya Whiteley

This is the story of Edward and Anna St Clare, two siblings who have the ability to influence others with their words (whether through preternatural charisma or psychic powers is unclear). Edward works for his father James’s insurance firm; but not for long, because he keeps persuading customers they don’t really need insurance. John Dart also works for James, and lusts after Anna, a researcher for a TV quiz show. Anna learns from Edward that her father has been using her to secure John’s loyalty, so James can pass on the business to him. Angry, she decides to take revenge on them all – but, meticulous planner though she is, even Anna can’t predict the consequences…

Further links:
J. Robert Lennon
Aliya Whiteley
LBF Books
Hadrosaur
Granta
bluechrome

Wicked or What? by Sean Wright

2006-03-01T16:23:00.000Z

Our protagonist is Jamey O'Rooke, the fat kid at school, who was forever being bullied until a couple of strangers mistakenly handed him a mysterious object (whose nature is never revealed) that was intended for one of his tormentors. Jamey's best friend is Layla, who seems to be on his side but may have her own agenda. And, somewhere else entirely, an individual known as the Third travels across a strange landscape to join them, before it's too late...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright
Crowswing

Bisson and Yolen

2006-02-15T17:11:00.000Z

I have two reviews in the mid-February issue of SF Site.

Numbers Don't Lie by Terry Bisson:

In Numbers Don't Lie, Terry Bisson offers three tall tales underpinned by some suitably weird physics (which I assume is genuine, though it hardly matters). Irving, our narrator, has no head for science, so he can't understand how the Moon could be inside a mechanic's shed when it's clearly still in the sky; or why a previously deteriorating car seat cover is now improving by the day; or what's making planes and trains arrive on time all of a sudden. Luckily, his friend Wilson Wu is (amongst many other things) a mathematical genius, and he knows what's going on -- and he has the equations to back his ideas up...

The Pit Dragon Chronicles by Jane Yolen:

In this box set, Jane Yolen takes us to the desert world of Austar IV. Once a penal colony, the planet's economy is now based around its native dragons, whom the human settlers breed to battle each other in Pits. There is a two-tier social structure of masters and "bonders," the latter wearing bags which they must fill with money before they can buy freedom and become masters themselves. Our protagonist is Jakkin Stewart, a young bonder at the nursery of Master Sarkkhan (all descendants of Austar's original convict population have a double-K in their names), who plans to steal a dragon and train it himself...

Further links:
Terry Bisson
Jane Yolen
Tachyon Publications
Harcourt

The Elastic Book of Numbers, ed. Allen Ashley

2006-02-01T18:43:00.000Z

Here we have the second anthology from Elastic Press, following on from 2004's The Alsiso Project. Like its predecessor, The Elastic Book of Numbers is based around a single broad theme; as its title suggests, all the stories in the volume are connected to numbers in some way. The resulting tales are highly varied, as I hope to illustrate...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Neil Williamson
Charles Lambert
Jeff Gardiner
John Lucas
Allen Ashley
Elastic Press

Review Index

2006-01-09T18:37:00.019Z

Abyss & Apex
Issue 26, Second Quarter 2008

Ashley, Allen
The Elastic Book of Numbers (ed.)
Somnambulists
Urban Fantastic

Birtolo, Dylan
The Shadow Chaser

Bisson, Terry
Numbers Don't Lie

Bott, Claire
Time Hunter: The Clockwork Woman

Brooke, Keith
Genetopia

Brust, Steven
The Gypsy (with Megan Lindholm)

Burr, James
Ugly Stories for Beautiful People

Burton, David C.
Hell Cop

Campbell, Ramsey
The Grin of the Dark

ChiZine
Issue 37: July-Sept 2008

Cobley, Michael
Iron Mosaic

Connell, Brendan
Dr Black and the Guerrillia
The Translation of Father Torturo

Copithorne, Dana
The Steam Magnate

Couzens, Gary
Deep Ten (ed. with Sara-Jayne Townsend)
Extended Play: The Elastic Book of Music (ed.)

Coward, Mat
So Far, So Near

Cryptopolis
Tales from the Secret City

Cyr, Heidi
X and Y and Other Like Stories

De Pierres, Marianne
Nylon Angel

Diet Soap
Issue 2: Sex and Gender

Duncan, Hal
Vellum

Duntemann, Jeff
The Cunning Blood

Electric Velocipede
Issue 10

Faust, Minister
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Films
In Search of a Midnight Kiss

Fintushel, Eliot
Breakfast with the Ones You Love

Frost, Gregory
Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories

Gaiman, Neil
Fragile Things

Gibson, Cleveland W.
Moondust

Gibson, Gary
Angel Stations

Grant, John
New Writings in the Fantastic

Green, Jonathan
Unnatural History

Green, Mitis
The Ardly Effect

GUD Magazine
Issue 1: Autumn 2007

Gunn, James
Gift from the Stars

Gurwitch, Annabelle
Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed

Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts

Hemingway, Amanda
The Greenstone Grail

Hendrix, Howard V.
The Labyrinth Key

Herter, David
On the Overgrown Path

Hook, Andrew
The Alsiso Project (ed.)
Moon Beaver

Huff, Tanya
Blood Price
Stealing Magic

Interzone
Issue 217: August 2008
Issue 218: October 2008

Kaye, Marvin
The Dragon Quintet (ed.)

Jupiter
Issue XIV: Thebe

Lebbon, Tim
Dawn
Dusk

Lee, Tony
Premonitions: Causes for Alarm (ed.)

Lennon, J. Robert
Pieces for the Left Hand

Lindholm, Megan
The Gypsy (with Steven Brust)

Lone Star Stories
Issue 28, August 2008

McBean, Brett
The Last Motel

McCarthy, Tom
Remainder

MacCauley, Kay
The Man Who Was Loved

Malcolm, Claire
Magnetic North: New Work from North East Writers (ed.)

Mann, George
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (ed.)
Time Hunter: The Severed Man

Marley, Louise
Singer in the Snow

Midnight Street
Issue 6 (Winter 2005/6)

Moore, Christopher
A Dirty Job

Morden, Simon
Brilliant Things

Nazarian, Vera
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass
The Duke in His Castle

Nemonymous
Cone Zero

Newell, Paul J.
The Turning

Nevill, Adam L.G.
Banquet for the Damned

Nicholls, Stan
Orcs: The Omnibus Edition

Page, Ra
Parenthesis (ed.)

Parker, Rosalie
Strange Tales (ed.)

Parziale, Michael
Twilight of the Past: A Rift in Time

Pettersson, Vicki
The Scent of Shadows

Postscripts
Issue 14: Spring 2008

Rabid Transit
Long Voyages, Great Lies
Menagerie

Ramsden, Chris Lee
Small Voices, Big Confessions (ed.)

Redwood, Steve
The Heisenberg Mutation and Other Transfigurations
Who Needs Cleopatra?

Rhodes, Dan
Gold

Robinson, Neil
Oliphan Oracus

St. Clair, Jennifer
The Secret of Redemption

Scifantastic
Vol. 1, Issue 3

Secombe, Andy
The Last House in the Galaxy

Shunn, William
An Alternate History of the 21st Century

Sinha, Indra
Animal's People

Snow Patrol
Final Straw considered by DH

Something Wicked
Issue 6, Summer 2008

Svendsen, Hanne Marie
Under the Sun

Swann, David
The Last Days of Johnny North

Swartz, Mark
H2O

Teague, Christopher
Triquorum One (ed.)

Tevis, Walter
Mockingbird

Townsend, Sara-Jayne
Deep Ten (ed. with Gary Couzens)

VanderMeer, Jeff
Shriek: an Afterword

Welch, Patrick
Cynnador

Welsh, Louise
The Bullet Trick

Whiteley, Aliya
Light Reading
Mean Mode Median
Three Things About Me

Williams, Conrad
The Unblemished

Williamson, Neil
The Ephemera

Wooding, Chris
The Fade

Wright, Sean
Jaarfindor Remade
The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor
Wicked or What?
Interview with Sean Wright

Wright, T.M.
I am the Bird

Yamaguchi, Jeffrey
52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity

Yolen, Jane
The Pit Dragon Chronicles

Zebrowski, George
Macrolife

Blood Price by Tanya Huff

2006-01-07T13:01:00.000Z

I’ll be honest with you: sometimes it’s hard to keep a sense of perspective. These days, I have an in-built mistrust of epic fantasy, even though I know that, when written with care and skill, it can be just as good as any other kind of fiction. Likewise, it’s essential to have strong female protagonists; but that doesn’t stop me wondering whether one will tip over the edge and become a clichéd Feisty Series Heroine. And it’s the same with vampire stories, or – and this makes me even more apprehensive – stories in which strong female protagonists get involved with vampires.

Which brings me to Blood Price. It was first published in 1991. and so actually predates most of the stuff we might instinctively compare it to. At first glance, though, it still looks like more of the same old same-old: Vicki Nelson, PI, hears a scream in the subway but is too late to stop a man being brutally slain by something. Then she’s on the case, trying to bring an end to a chain of similar murders across Toronto – and she doesn’t mind treading on the toes of her former police colleagues. Meanwhile, also investigating the killings is one Henry Fitzroy, the vampirized bastard son of Henry VIII. Needless to say, his and Vicki’s paths cross in due course…

So far, so ordinary. But it would be unfair to describe Tanya Huff’s novel that way, because there’s more to it than that. For a start, the protagonists are not the ultra-glamorous individuals you might expect. Yes, Henry has the typical mystique of a vampire, but he also pays the rent by writing trashy romance novels. And Vicki had to leave the force because of her failing eyesight (one complaint: Vicki pushes her glasses up her nose seemingly every few pages, and it is highly irritating). She is also, unusually, a good deal taller than Henry. These are minor points, but they make Blood Price stand out from its competitors.

One other refreshing thing that Huff does is to use multiple third-person viewpoints, as opposed to the single first-person narrative that we find in most tales of Feisty Series Heroines. This technique does two main things: it takes the weight of the telling off the character of Vicki, and allows Henry to become a protagonist in his own right. And the characters themselves are nicely drawn: even Vicki’s bizarre quasi-relationship with Mike Celucci, a former colleague whom she can’t stand, comes across as believable in context. Only Norman Birdwell, the nerdy summoner of the evil spirit doing the killing (and no, that’s not a spoiler), comes across as a stereotype.

Huff’s storytelling is also appropriately brisk, peppered here and there with a few striking images, and a nice line in dry humour: ‘Even in an age of science, the dead were considered bad neighbors. Henry couldn’t understand why; the dead never played Twisted Sister at 130 decibels at three in the morning.’ It’s not going to set the world alight, but it does its job very well.

In fact, that’s Blood Price in a nutshell. It’s not a radical reworking of anything; it’s not going to change anyone’s perceptions; but it is a great supernatural yarn. There are four more books in this series, and if they’re all like this, it will be a series worth reading.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

SF Site reviews

2006-01-02T20:38:00.000Z

Here are links to all my reviews which have appeared on SF Site to date:

The Shadow Chaser by Dylan Birtolo

Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost

Time Hunter: The Severed Man by George Mann

The Secret of Redemption by Jennifer St. Clair

Further links:
Dylan Birtolo
Gregory Frost
Jennifer St. Clair
Inkwater Press
Golden Gryphon Press
Telos

The Zone reviews

2006-01-02T20:30:00.000Z

Here are links to all my reviews which have appeared on The Zone to date:

The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm

The Ardly Effect by Mitis Green

The Dragon Qunitet, ed. Marvin Kaye

The Last Motel by Brett McBean

The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor by Sean Wright

Further links:
Steven Brust
Megan Lindholm
Orson Scott Card
Elizabeth Moon
Tanith Lee
Mercedes Lackey
Michael Swanwick
Marvin Kaye
Brett McBean
Sean Wright
Tor /Orb
Brambling Books
Biting Dog Press
Crowswing

The Last House in the Galaxy by Andy Secombe

2006-01-02T20:28:00.000Z

Major Matt Fripp is on a mission to retrieve the Helian Cartogram, an ancient map of the universe. This he does, but the dastardly Gologons are on his tail, so he flees – accidentally travelling through a wormhole to the gardens of Hambledon Hall in rural Devon.

It's the perfect place (thinks Fripp's companion, General Glaak Raffin of the rat-like Argusians) for the peoples of the United Planets Federation to meet and plan to strike back against the Gologons. They just have to hide their existence from the hall's owners. And Fripp has to go back through the wormhole to find the Cartogram, which he lost on the way to Earth; but not without a quick detour to rescue his beloved Mariella from the clutches of Gulgus Filch, leader of the Gologons...

In these days when there seem to be so many unfunny genre comedies about, it is such a pleasure to read one by an author who knows what he's doing. Andy Secombe doesn't waste time on redundant exercises like trying to milk genre clichés for laughs; nor does he neglect to give us a good story. In fact, the story is one of the great strengths of The Last House in the Galaxy. This is one of those genre comedies where the jokes don't come thick and fast, but the tale has room to breathe. In particular, there are some neat action set-pieces, which is most unusual in comic SF and fantasy.

But don't let this make you think that Secombe has forgotten to put some humour in his book. There are some smart one-liners ('Their monitoring equipment is a lot less sophisticated than ours, which means it works.'), and some nice comic ideas. However, the jokes don't always work (after Fripp recovers from an anaesthetic, he has a habit of getting words wrong, a running gag which I found quite tedious), and there are no great belly-laughs to be had.

That's not the only problem with the novel. The characters sometimes seem interchangeable, and the flippant tone can mask serious issues: Fripp is afraid to see someone kill in 'a cold, calculated fashion' towards the end of the book; but thinks nothing of lopping off some heads a hundred pages earlier. Yet Secombe makes nothing of this. Still, The Last House in the Galaxy is a superior space romp and, if it never makes your ribs ache, it does keep you reading to the very end, raising chuckles all the while. I suspect that this is not the last we'll see of these characters, and their return would be welcome. Start reading about them now.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

Andy Secombe

Tor UK

Oliphan Oracus by Neil Robinson

2006-01-02T20:27:00.000Z

In 1995, Kate Wallis, a young scientist working for a pharmaceutical company, is accidentally exposed to an experimental longevity virus which results in her falling into a coma for 262 years. On waking, she learns from a computer in the military hospital in which she has been kept that the Western world was overcome by a plague of mental illness in the early 21st century. Now, in 2257, the forest has taken over outside and a simpler form of human society prevails. Kate falls in with the inhabitants of a small settlement named Streamside; most notably Keef, who is a 'television', able to create visions in the minds of other people; visions sent (so the Streamsiders believe) by Oliphan Oracus, who may be a god, of sorts.

What to make of Neil Robinson's début novel? On the one hand, we have a superbly depicted future society: with a few choice words, the author creates a convincingly alien culture from the ashes of our own. This comes through especially in the Streamsiders' speech, with its unusual abbreviations ('pologies' for 'sorry', or 'comp' for ‘comprehend') and striking transformations of twentieth-century terms (at one point, Keef says of Kate, 'She swallowed the Big Mushroom Cloud and she's been in Televisual Heaven for two hundred and sixty-two years'). On the other hand, we have to grapple with imagery like this: 'she found it as irritating and exhausting as attempting to tear open a litre carton of life-long orange juice.' Sometimes it feels as though one is reading two different books.

Oliphan Oracus is a very self-conscious novel: as narrator, Robinson often refers to what happens in 'science fiction stories' – for example, the hero travels to the future and proceeds to show the poor ignorant inhabitants how superior his (or her) time is. The implication is, of course, that this sort of thing is not going to happen in Oliphan Oracus, and indeed it doesn't; all Kate's efforts to introduce twentieth-century technology to Streamside fail. One of the novel's main themes is how Kate struggles to adapt to her new environment and lifestyle, and comes to accept that 'modern' technology is not appropriate for the society in which she now finds herself.

There are some problems here, though. For one thing, it is hard to believe that Kate would take almost the entire book to realize something the reader understood early on (perhaps even after reading the blurb on the dustjacket). Another problem is that Robinson's contention about 'science fiction stories' is flawed: there are a good number of time travel stories whose protagonists reject their own time (Jack Finney's Time and Again springs to mind). Factor in all stories which involve encounters with another culture (which is what Oliphan Oracus is at heart), and you find plenty more examples which undermine the idea that Robinson's novel is a radical departure.

Still, as I noted earlier, the life and society of the Streamsiders is vividly depicted; one gets the feeling that Robinson has a great love and respect for nature. Unfortunately – indeed, frustratingly – having created this society, he doesn't do much with it. There is not much human drama in the book, until near the end; and what there is feels awkwardly tacked on. Furthermore, the Streamsiders are not as sharply differentiated as they really need to be; too often, it's hard to see them as distinct personalities. The business of reading it becomes a great chore.

In the second chapter, Robinson writes: 'In the spring of 1995 Kate could never have guessed that she would soon find herself living the plot of a science fiction soap opera.' And a soap opera is what this book resembles: not only in its focus on relationships and its episodic nature, but most especially in its ending: there's no true sense of closure: the novel ends 'out of frame'. Now, this can be a very effective technique, if it's handled correctly, as characters set out for wider horizons that the reader only glimpses. But Oliphan Oracus just stops abruptly: it's a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying denouement, and a late guessing-game over the narrator's identity fails to make up for that frustration.

So, what we have in Oliphan Oracus is a well-realized future in need of the right vehicle to do it justice. Robinson's ideas would probably work better as a novella or a series of short stories; but as a novel, they are spread too thinly. It's a great disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Immanion Press

The Heisenberg Mutation and Other Transfigurations by Steve Redwood

2006-01-02T20:22:00.000Z

Now, I'd heard of Steve Redwood – I knew he had one novel already published, Fisher of Devils – but I hadn't read anything by him before I picked up The Heisenberg Mutation. Nor was I familiar with the publisher of this chapbook, D-Press; so I had no idea what to expect of the four stories in the pamphlet. What I got was a diverse bunch of tales with, as the title suggests, change (in all its forms) as a common theme.

The collection gets off to a fine start with 'Going Back', in which a young man named Simon Brent is goaded into raping Jenny Smith, a girl he's attracted to, on a drunken night out. In the aftermath, Jenny stumbles into the path of an oncoming car, and is run over. Wracked with guilt, Simon devotes his life to funding research into time travel, in the hope that one day he will be able to return to the past and change things. But, when he gets his chance, will he use it wisely?

The story is told in patchwork fashion, flitting back and forth between times and narrators, leaving the reader thoroughly disorientated, in a way that only great fantastic fiction can. Yet Redwood controls his tale superbly; if we need to read 'Going Back' more than once to understand it, that's because of our own inattentiveness the first time. Such a feat of storytelling would be remarkable enough on its own; but add to that Redwood's vivid imagery and skilful depiction of emotion, and you have something very special indeed.

After such a start, you wonder how the author is going to keep up the momentum. Yet, keep it up he does, with 'Off the Shelf', set in a future (or perhaps sideways) world where men borrow women from a Library staffed by the alien Blueskins. John William Smith is due to return Maria 8, who is in desperate need of a Service; but her memory would be erased in the process, and John doesn't want that to happen, since he has become attached to Maria. Trouble is, she has been reserved – by no one less than the Prime, who rules the city. So there is nothing for it but to run away...

This story asks questions about love and humanity, and is certain to leave you with plenty to think about. But... just when you think you have a handle on the story, Redwood pulls the rug from under your feet. It's a bold move but, as with the first story's unusual structure, the author is skilled enough to pull it off. Also like 'Going Back', this is a welcome reminder that science fiction and fantasy enable us to address concerns and tell stories in ways that mimetic fiction does not.

I mention this because it came to mind when I was reading the third story, 'The Solaris Effect'. Here, we meet Mike, who has convinced Jenny to come back to his flat on the pretext of watching the original film version of Solaris. In fact, Mike has been talked into a bet, that he can't get Jenny into bed before the night is out. The story chronicles their relationship until the next morning. All the elements I had come to expect of Redwood were present: the dialogue is sharp, the imagery evocative, the characters rounded; but I still came away feeling disappointed. It felt almost as though Redwood was relying on the dialogue to make up for a dearth of something else, even though there was nothing that seemed particularly to be lacking. With hindsight, the reason becomes clear: the previous two stories were so extraordinary that 'The Solaris Effect' felt lesser simply because there is nothing in it to give that sense of dislocation. Rest assured that, in fact, it is not lesser at all.

The final story in the book is, unfortunately, also the weakest. 'The Heisenberg Mutation' is the tall tale of the elderly – and fabulously rich – Charles Algernon Soames, whose fortune is so sought after by other people that he turns into his own Last Will and Testament. It's a marked change of pace from the previous stories, and one that is not entirely successful. The main problem is that it reads too much like sub-par Robert Rankin. This is perhaps a little unfair on Redwood, since it must be extremely difficult to write a story of this type and not sound like Rankin; but I'm afraid I didn't find it funny enough. Still, judgements on humorous fiction are always going to be highly subjective, and there are far worse authors to sound like than Robert Rankin. And, with the other riches on offer here, I think we can let this one go.

So, out of the four stories in The Heisenberg Mutation, two number among the best short fiction I have read in quite some time, one suffers only in comparison with those two, and one is not so good. A 75% success rate is good for any short story collection, even more so when the good stories are of such a high calibre as these are. I will resist the temptation to make a cheap pun about this book changing your life; but it is a very good read, and you should hunt down a copy right away.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

D-Press

Orcs: The Omnibus Edition by Stan Nicholls

2006-01-02T20:18:00.000Z

This volume collects together the three parts of Stan Nicholls' Orcs: First Blood trilogy - Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest - along with an associated short story, 'The Taking'. It is, put simply, a fantasy quest with the orcs as protagonists ('heroes' doesn't quite seem an appropriate word). Though it isn't quite as simple as that... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We follow the fortunes of the Wolverines, a thirty-strong band of (mostly) orcs in the service of the half-human, half-nyadd Queen Jennesta. The main personalities in the band are its commanding officers: Captain Stryke; his two sergeants, Haskeer and the dwarf Jup, who are constantly at loggerheads; and below them, two corporals: the elderly healer Alfray, and Coila, the band's only female member. They, along with the other 'elder races' (almost every standard fantasy race you can think of), inhabit the land of Maras-Dantia, whose equilibrium has been disrupted by the insurgent humans. Human activity has been 'eating the magic' of the land, changing its climate and causing glaciers to advance south.

The main trilogy opens in the thick of action, with a raid by the Wolverines on the human settlement of Homefield, where they have been sent by Jennesta to retrieve a message cylinder. After successfully doing so, the cylinder is stolen by kobolds; rather than face Jennesta's wrath, the Wolverines decide to chase after the thieves. They recover the cylinder, and rescue a gremlin names Mobbs, who reveals that it contains an 'instrumentality', one of five such artefacts which, when brought together, may somehow release the elder races from human dominion. By now, Jennesta has ordered search parties to be sent out to look for the band; and the Wolverines decide to hunt for more of the instrumentalities, with a view to perhaps using them to barter with Jennesta, or trying to tap into the objects' power in some way. In due course, Jennesta declares the band outlaws, charging her orc army, her dragon riders, and three human bounty hunters, to find them. And that's as far as I am prepared to synopsise.

The Orcs trilogy is an odd mixture of the subversive and the clichéd. Subversive, of course, because we're rooting for the characters who would be considered 'bad guys' in the standard generic fantasy milieu. And Nicholls gives a pleasingly complex portrayal of 'race' in his work: it certainly isn't a straightforward case of 'orcs good, humans bad'; and even the Wolverines can be bloodthirsty (though, since they have known nothing but war, is that so surprising?). Having said that, the nature of the quest Nicholls gives the Wolverines is highly traditional, perhaps even more so than most: the instrumentalities are standard-issue 'plot coupons' for the characters to collect; and the fact that the orcs discover the location of each instrumentality through hunches and chance encounters serves to highlight the mechanical nature of the plot.

And yet, far from being a weakness, all the clichés become something of a strength. They make the quest seem more like the plot of a fantasy game rather than a novel, which is entirely appropriate: arguably, the modern figure of the orc (and the many other 'elder races' of fantasy) owes at least as much to the gaming industry as it does to Tolkien. And it is only by winning the game (which they do, though not in the way you might expect) that the orcs can break free of its rules. Furthermore, Nicholls' main point, about fantasy's 'racial' stereotypes, is rendered all the more forcefully by the generic storyline. Anything other than a tradional quest would be out of place.

Amid all this talk about the subtext of Nicholls' trilogy, we should not overlook the fact that it's also a cracking fantasy adventure. The author's action sequences are superb, and the story moves along at a nicely brisk pace (it's nice to see that there are still some fantasy trilogies being written which have relatively short volumes!). Nicholls' characterization is also generally good: Stryke is a well-drawn reluctant champion, and the constant sparring of Haskeer and Jup is particularly entertaining. That said, some characters do remain caricatures: Jennesta, for example, never really rises above the level of a stock evil sorceress, which is a disappointment when many of the other characters are more rounded. Overall, though, the trilogy is well conceived and skilfully written.

'The Taking' is a short story that prequels the main trilogy, beginning as Coilla joins the Wolverines. The story both gains and loses from being uprooted from its original context and placed alongside its parent series. It loses because much of the first half of the story, which introduces the characters and the world, is made redundant; but it gains because we understand the significance of the relationships established here (for instance, we know how important Coilla will become to the Wolverines). The story itself, in which the band attempt to recover a stolen idol, is reasonably entertaining, but suffers inevitably from comparison to the main trilogy. It seems to have been included for the sake of completeness more than anything.

It's very pleasing to see all these stories together in one volume (though you may prefer not to read them all at once). The main trilogy especially is well worth reading, far more entertaining than many other trilogies, and at only a fraction of the length. It's a worthy addition to any fantasy fan's reading list.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Stan Nicholls
Orion / Gollancz

Brilliant Things by Simon Morden

2006-01-02T20:16:00.000Z

It's a risky move to name a collection something that suggests the stories within are great, because it also leaves the way open for obvious jibes if someone disagrees. Yet the responsible reviewer should resist such jibes. So I don't really want to say that the stories in Simon Morden's book are not 'brilliant things' but... well, frankly, they're not.

I was really looking forward to reading this. The jacket and accompanying press release are full of praise for Morden's work; and surely, I thought, as editor of Focus, the BSFA's fiction magazine, Morden should know a thing or two about what makes good science fiction. But there's no denying that reading Brilliant Things was a hard slog.

The main problem is Morden's use of language: these stories are full of cumbersome imagery and awkward turns of phrase. A typical example comes from 'Empty Head': 'Three computers, separate but together, white gloss cases diffusing the hot yellow light slanting through the open slats of the blinds.' Or, from the book's title story, set in the First World War: 'Stones and soil clattered out in a stinking cloud that bloomed and faded like a poppy.' This sort of thing highly distracting, and disrupts the reading experience.

It's a shame, too, because Morden's ideas are often good in principle, just not so good in practice. For example, 'A Forgotten Corner of Hell' is set in a wounded WW1 veteran's country house, where people start freezing to death after a relative of the owner comes to stay. It turns out that the relative has built a machine granting access to a 'forgotten corner of hell', and a demon is passing through the machine and killing people in this world. It's an interesting idea, but the story is again let down by the writing, both the specific ('Every panicked step he took covered a pace's worth of floor...') and the general; there's something artificial about the whole telling of the story.

The tales in Brilliant Things cover a lot of ground in terms of genre and setting, and some of them do hit the mark. 'Terra Incognita' is an atmospheric tale of 18th-century seafarers that rattles along nicely and raises a smile at the end. 'Whitebone Street' is mostly effective for its deadpan delivery of surprises, so I had better not say any more about it. 'The Northman's Shroud' is another interesting piece, in which some plainsfolk are cursed by the titular Northman, and permanent dusk subsequently descends. Again, I risk spoiling the story for you if I reveal any more.

In summary, then, Brilliant Things contains a few good stories, but there are also some of a considerably lower standard; and, sadly, the good stuff is in the minority. It's not a book I can recommend - and I say that with no small amount of disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Simon Morden
Subway

Moon Beaver by Andrew Hook

2006-01-02T20:15:00.000Z

Andrew Hook's first novel tells the story of Benny Henderson, who works for the Company, a giant concern which has practically taken over Norwich. Benny is happily in love with his fellow Company employee Louise – that is, until the dazzling Moon Beaver comes into his life.

The Company promotes conformity, and the security that comes with it; but Moon lives by a different philosophy: that of doing just what you want, a philosophy which has made her immortal (or so she claims). She whisks Benny away on an international odyssey to experience living, while Louise is left behind to puzzle over just who Moon Beaver really is.

And elsewhere, we meet Lou, an egg farmer who is one of Moon's previous acquaintances (companions? lovers?), and Christian and Alice, maker and reluctant star of pornographic films, who have their own encounters with the Company, and whose lives change as a result.

Moon Beaver is about the conflict between the desires of the self and the constraints of society, a conflict that we all experience at times. Welcomingly, Hook offers no easy answers: Moon's colourful individualism might seem infinitely preferable to the Company's drab conformity, but Benny recognizes that her self-gratifying lifestyle is ultimately hollow and unsustainable. The best answer (as so often) is to strike a balance between the two as well as you can.

The only grumble I have about Hook's presentation of this conflict is that the contrast between the Company and Moon isn't perhaps drawn as sharply as it ought to be. We tend to hear about the Company's oppressiveness rather than experience it first-hand; as a result, the Company tends to fade into the background instead of being a reality of the novel. Similarly, Moon Beaver herself doesn't leap off the page as much as her role suggests that she should. All this may, of course, be deliberate; but it does lessen the impact of the book a little.

But that should not detract from what is a fine debut novel. Andrew Hook is known for his short stories, but proves to be adept at the longer form. He does sometimes crack self-referential jokes (about this being a novel) that some readers may find annoying; but, on the whole, his narration is very good-humoured and likeable, with some arresting turns of phrase.

Moon Beaver is a thoroughly enjoyable ride; be sure to book your place on it.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Andrew Hook
Emperor's New Clothes Press

Deep Ten, ed. Gary Couzens and Sara-Jayne Townsend

2006-01-02T20:14:00.000Z

The T Party are celebrating ten years of their existence, and have published this volume to mark the occasion. Good for them, you might be thinking, but who are they, and why should we care? Well, the T Party is a writers' group based in south-east England, concentrating primarily on the fantastic genres (perhaps the only one in the region to do so, according to the introduction). And we should care because they write a mean story - and there are quite a few amongst the ten in this multi-genre anthology.

Roseanne Rabinowitz contributes one of Deep Ten's finest pieces, 'Be Positive, Be Very Positive'. At the age of eight, Hannah was sexually abused for the first time. She discovered that she could enter the mind of her rapist and experience his feelings during the assault. We now find Hannah following her ex-boyfriend, Steve, and using her ability to participate vicariously in both sides of his new sexual relationship. Rabinowitz draws her protagonist skilfully: Hannah's pain and obsession come across strongly, giving the story its great power.

'Ask ASE' by Martin Owton is another winner. ASE, or 'All-Seeing Eye', is a computer system that can run a household, keep an eye on the kids, and appear to its users as a holographic avatar. Mike has installed an unusual combination of ASE modules, such that his system begins to act rather strangely after his son, Thomas, dies after being run over. ASE appears to Mike as both his son and his partner Jane, who has left him. Like Rabinowitz, Owton delivers a rewarding character study that uses its fantastic elements to great effect.

David Gullen's 'The BDM' is about the legendary director Leopold Seraphim Mazurski and his ambition to create the ultimate cinematic experience: the Billion Dollar Movie. Mazurski's desire for his moviw to be as realistic as possible involves cosmetic surgery to turn his leading lady into a real Venusian amazon; filming a war between two groups of mercenaries hired solely for that purpose; and even creating life, in the shape of the alien god Y'golonac. Gullen tells his story with great skill: no matter how absurd events become, there's always a nagging feeling in the back of one's mind that, one day, something like this might actually happen...

Not all of the stories in Deep Ten are successful but, generally speaking, it would be unfair to describe any of them as bad; rather, they just don't work as well as they might do. Perhaps the clearest example of this is 'Closer to God' by Jon Jones, in which the unnamed protagonist is plagued by nightmares of a figure being stabbed to death. The main problem with this tale is that it does not lead up effectively enough to its ending, and is undermined by what appears to be a continuity error. However, with a little cleaning and polishing, 'Closer to God' could have been considerably better, and the same can be said of several other stories in the anthology.

Deep Ten is a mixed bag of stories, in terms of both genre and quality. That said, the quality definitely leans towards the upper end of the scale, and there is nothing irredeemably bad. It certainly has something for everyone, and is well worth a read. Here's wishing the T Party many more fruitful years of writing!

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

The T Party

Iron Mosaic by Michael Cobley

2006-01-02T20:13:00.000Z

Michael Cobley is best known as the author of the Shadowkings epic fantasy sequence; but this, his first short story collection, is more wide-ranging than that might lead you to expect. It contains stories from across (and beyond) the entire range of fantastic fiction, divided into fantasy and science fiction, with a bridging section of 'Scottish' stories. It certainly isn't possible to accuse Cobley of staying in a rut. Unfortunately, though, the stories in Iron Mosaic prove to be quite a mixed bag in terms of quality.

Let's start with the good stuff: the best story here is the non-genre 'Heartbreak (with Incidental Music)', a series of brief snapshots chronicling the life and death of a relationship. Beautifully told, I'm sure it will resonate with anyone who has been in love. 'Writing for a Dying' is the darkly humorous tale of a writer's ghost who wreaks revenge upon a paranormal investigator, with surprising (or perhaps inevitable) consequences. 'The Dance of Shiva' tells evocatively of a chase through alternate worlds to stop a criminal who brings disaster to the worlds he creates with a stolen artefact. These, and others, are all fine pieces of work.

However, I found much of the rest... not so much bad, as unengaging. For instance, in 'The Recondite Rebus', a king and his inner circle become trapped inside a deadly enchantment, and must solve a puzzle to escape. The story is told well enough, but, since the puzzle to be solved is pictorial, it's not really possible for the reader to join in, which would seem to be the point of this kind of story. I'm not going to list any more examples because, in all honesty, I can't pinpoint exact reasons for not liking particular stories. They just didn't 'click' with me, and it doesn't seem fair to criticize Cobley for that. Other people might like the very same stories for their own equally inexpressible reasons.

My comments so far might suggest that I am not interested in reading any more of Cobley's work. But that's not the case at all. Two of the pieces in Iron Mosaic are related to the author's other projects, and both make me want to know more 'Travelling in the Dark' is set in the world of Shadowkings, and does exactly what a good sword and sorcery tale should: the action sequences are gripping, and the atmosphere of a medieval world soaked in magic is brought effectively to life. If the trilogy is as well written as this, I am sure it is worth a read. 'A Turret in the Fury Eternal' is, Cobley hints, related to a planned future work. Again, its post-technological world is evoked superbly; and I look forward to exploring that world further in due course.

I can't deny that I found quite a lot in Iron Mosaic to feel indifferent about. Yet there is also quite a lot to enjoy, and nothing that I could fairly describe as bad. Those readers who are familiar with Shadowkings will discover many new sides to the author's work in this book. Those who (like me) aren't familiar with the trilogy may find themselves wishing to become so. All stand a good chance of finding something to like in Iron Mosaic. Read it: it's worth a try.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

Michael Cobley

Immanion Press

Hell Cop by David C. Burton

2006-01-02T20:10:00.000Z

A Hell Cop is someone who is hired to retrieve souls that have been mistakenly sent to the wrong destination from Purgatory. This novel is narrated by Getter, a Hell Cop of twelve years' standing, whose mission it is to rescue ten-year-old Brittany Hightower, wrongly sent to Hell for accidentally causing a car crash by distracting the driver, her mother. Of course, things don't quite go to plan, as Getter becomes caught up in a plot to take over Hell, and discovers that he may be destined to play a greater role in events than he imagined...

David Burton's Hell is a vast region of uncertain geography: souls undergo their punishments in one of its many discrete areas, and the only way to navigate the shifting paths between them is with a device called a Find, which Hell Cops carry. The different areas of Hell are populated by all sorts of nasties lying in wait for the unwary; and Getter spends a good deal of the book either fighting or escaping from some kind of monster. Burton has gone to town imagining all his monsters, and he comes up with some good ideas for the different areas of Hell - such as one section which is a giant tree; or the school that Brittany has been sent to, where the souls of bullies are tormented.

True, perhaps Burton's supporting cast - characters such as Sneaker, another Hell Cop, whom Getter takes a shine to; the Scotsman Gregory, whom he befriends; and the various demons that he falls foul of - are not drawn as sharply as one would like (they often seem to be there to drive the on plot more than anything). But the story fairly zips along, and it's great to see an author let his imagination run wild.

However, this is a book which could still be improved quite considerably. For one thing, Hell Cop's plot feels less like that of a novel, and more like that of an average computer game or role-playing adventure; too much of it seems to be taken up with running from one encounter to the next, which can become wearying. One reason for this, I fear, is built in to the very nature of the setting: by and large, Burton's Hell is not a place where people are living lives, as such; its locales are there to be travelled through; so perhaps any story set there would take on the same shape as this. Still, Burton is only introducing us to this setting here; if he writes more stories set in this Hell, he might explore the world more deeply.

It struck me that there is a strong moral dimension to the work of a Hell Cop, which Burton never really touches upon in this novel. Getter admits himself that he's not one for introspection (though he does open up a little), which is a shame, especially in a first-person narrative, and particularly so in the world of this story. Several times, Getter reminds himself not to interfere with or judge the meting out of punishments to the souls he observes, however much he'd like to. Yet, he does rescue Gregory from his predicament (for reasons he does explain eventually), and he does judge some souls as undeserving of their punishments. Even the very fact of being a Hell Cop can be seen as a sort of judgement. It would be pleasing to see more exploration of this.

The full mechanism of how misplaced souls are identified and retrieved is not fully explained in Hell Cop. It seems that the process is not infallible (there are hints that Brittany might have done something to deserve her place in Hell after all), and there is no mention of what happens to souls who are sent to Heaven by mistake. Both these areas would provide fertile ground for further stories, but it would have been nice to see something of them in this one.

I don't want to suggest that Hell Cop is a particularly bad book, because it isn't. But it is hard not to wish for it to be a little more ambitious. What we have here is an entertaining adventure story (though the typos are quite distracting), but nothing more than that. There is clearly potential here for a great story to be told in this world, and David Burton is surely capable of telling it; whether or not he will rise to the challenge of doing so remains to be seen.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

David C. Burton

Silver Lake Publishing

Time Hunter: The Clockwork Woman by Claire Bott

2006-01-02T20:08:00.000Z

This is the third in Telos Publishing's series of novellas relating the adventures of Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish. Honoré is a 'time-sensitive', able to perceive a person's timeline (though he cannot fully control this ability). Emily, on the other hand, is a 'time channel', able to travel through time when she comes into contact with a time-sensitive. In The Clockwork Woman, the pair jump back to the 19th century, and the home of Sir Edward Fanshawe, the inventor of many fantastic devices, including the mechanical woman of the book's title.

One of the most striking things about The Clockwork Woman, when compared to the first two Time Hunter titles, is how Honoré and Emily are made members of the supporting cast. This first-person tale is narrated by - and is very much about - the 'clockwork woman' herself. Originally created as a servant and plaything for Sir Edward, she finds herself going against her programming when she helps the time travellers escape after they have been imprisoned by the master of the house. Fleeing with Honoré (Emily having flown off separately on a glider), the woman gives herself a name - Dove - and is tricked into going to London, where she is sold to a brothel - and finds Emily in the same predicament. But Honoré is not far behind...

'Shared world' enterprises can be maligned for being unimaginative, formulaic and not willing to take risks. Quite often, such criticisms are valid; but there are always exceptions - and what an exception we have here. Admittedly, Time Hunter isn't your average 'shared world' because its canvas is so large; and you would expect Telos to be a cut above the rest anyway. But, even so, Claire Bott has produced something special in this novella.

The Clockwork Woman explores such themes as being human, freedom, selfishness, gender and coming of age, as well as being a superbly written adventure story - and all in the space of a 74-page novella. Who needs doorstops when you can read something like this? The previous two entries in the Time Hunter series set a high standard; but this one surpasses them. If the series maintains this quality, it will become essential reading. Mind you, on the strength of The Clockwork Woman alone, I'd happily argue that it already is essential reading.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Telos