Blood Price by Tanya Huff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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