I.E. Lester

New Review posted

2011-06-27T12:08:00.005+01:00

My review of Stefan Petrucha's Blood Prophecy is now live at New Myths - go check it out

http://www.newmyths.com/

Short Film Review - The A-Team

2011-04-29T13:08:00.000+01:00

Anyone of a certain age will have grown up watching programmes like the Six Million Dollar Man, Knight Rider and of course, the A-Team. They are cherished childhood memories. The problem is whenever Hollywood decides to revisit one of your icons and update it a feeling of dread grows within you. It did for me when I heard there was a new A-Team coming.

He backstory is updated, with the team’s framing taking place in the Iraq War rather than Vietnam. They are imprisoned separately in various security prisons, and in the case of Murdock a high security mental health unit. That is until they are broken out of prison to undertake a covert operation to…

To tell you the truth the plot is about the least important part of this movie. If you’re like me, remembering your 80s childhood self the things that are important are the characters, the silly, over-the-top, gung-ho actions and the implausible gadget-building. And they are all here.

Liam Neeson is excellent as Hannibal Smith, hamming it up to perfection and capturing that same glint in the eye George Peppard. Bradley Cooper captures Face’s vanity perfectly and Sharlto Copley is as mad as a bucket of frogs as Murdock. Even Quinton Jackson manages to almost make you forget the incredible Mr T (not quite though, that really would be asking too much).

Leave your brain at the door, you won’t need it, settle down and prepare to be entertained.

Book Review - A. Lee Martinez's Monster

2011-04-29T13:07:00.000+01:00

Monster Dionysus (great name) hunts demons and other mythical or paranormal creatures for living. He works freelance for the Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services. He has a succubus girlfriend prone to mad jealous rages, a trans-dimensional being in the form of a cut-out paper gnome. He works his magic using runes written on post-it notes and today he is blue. At least blue means he’s invulnerable – useful when fighting yetis.

Judy Hines is a normal, and works in an all-night convenience store, the Food Plus Mart, where Yetis have decided to raid the ice cream. Unlike her co-workers, she doesn’t cower in a corner hoping they go away. She calls Animal Control Services – a call that gets re-routed when she utters the word “yeti”, resulting in Monster entering her life.

Monster arrives, and with help from Judy (and his fortuitous invincibility) the yetis are soon captured or killed. And so, despite the loss of her place of employment Judy’s life should return to normal, the memories of the big-bad mythical killing machines fading from her mind. Problem is when she gets home she finds her closet is infested with trolls. Cue another encounter with a, now purple, Monster. And things are only going to get stranger.

This is a fantastic romp of a novel. It’s ideal for any fans of Christopher Moore – it shares the same madcap sense of humour and the absurd – as well as Pratchett or Simon Green’s Nightside series. Martinez has a zany way of looking at the world and great way of expressing his weirdness.

He also has a way of telling a truly bizarre story without it breaking too far from reality as to be unreadable. Monster may be a magic-user. He may fight demons for a living. He may have a demon girlfriend and he may change colour every time he sleeps, with the accompanying and often unknown to Monster associated powers and limitations (including Purple meaning he cannot smell anything).

But at his core, Monster’s just a bloke. His attitudes and behaviour resemble your average plumber. And the reactions of the normal folk he encounters in his day job, from petrified stupor through to outright denial, are very believably real. It’s no mean feat to have such a grounded, realistic feeling in a book as out there as this.

Plot wise too Martinez excels. He builds tension as the novel at a good pace progresses to its inevitably bizarre conclusion. He develops the antagonistic relationship between the two leads without muddying the waters with unnecessary details of side characters or overly elaborate descriptions of locations or monsters (the creatures, not Monster himself).

After all anyone who lives in the modern world knows what a convenience store or an apartment looks like. And any sf or fantasy fan will just understand what you mean when you say Troll – we don’t need to have three pages of text detailing their fur colour and fang length. Close on perfect this one.

Some more film reviews (Murky Depths)

2011-04-29T13:05:00.002+01:00

Have a new bunch of film reviews under consideration for Murky Depths. Films in questions are
- Saw: The Final Chapter (yeah I know a little late)
- Alien vs Ninja
- Prowl

Will try to get some more film watching in this weekend so I can keep up the pace...

..recovery is going well I think

A sale, a rejection and some submissions

2011-04-29T13:02:00.004+01:00

New Myths have accepted a review from me - for Stefan Petucha's Blood Prophesy. And turned down the review for A. Lee Martinez's Monster. 50% is an acceptance rate I'll take. And I'll post the Martinez review on here soon.

Oh and I've sent in another 3 articles to them - fingers crossed.

Murky Depths again

2011-04-27T08:55:00.002+01:00

Just found out another six short film reviews of mine will be appearing on the Murky Depths website soon.

These will be for -
The Bleeding
Burke & Hare
Devil's Playground
Husk
Let Me In
Little Big Soldier

You don't have to wait to visit them, go check out their site anyway - http://www.murkydepths.com/

A long pause so...an update

2011-04-18T19:54:00.005+01:00

Okay, if you read this blog (hey, someone might) you may hvae noticed a distinct lack of any activity whatsoever in recent times. Sorry! I'm afraid I've been a little unwell of late and really haven't been in the mood to type in blog entries - or to do much of anything to be totally honest. I finally gave in to the fact I was feeling like crap and went to see someone about it.

Result is I was diagnosed with severe depressive disorder - clinical depression in old money. It's fun let me tell you. (Yes, I'm lying) So I was put on pills to alleviate the symptoms. First citalopram and then fluoxetine. Neither of which seemed to do me much positive good and both of which came with a whole host of side effects that made me feel crappier.

I'm now off meds and trying to deal with things (unless doc advises I go on other meds - we'll see). I'm hoping to find enough strength to start getting my life back - and hopefully developing some new coping strategies for the things that bother me as they're not going away. My issues are private - I'm not going to bore you by oversharing. Suffice to say most of them are nothing new, it's just that the ways I used to cope in the past stopped working when I was ill at the start of the year.

So I'm on the hunt for new ways of dealing. (Wish me luck.)

Yesterday my wife told me to write a review. (A film review - I've not read a book this year.) So I did. It took a while, probably four times as long as they normally take. But I completed it. And submitted it (to Murky Depths).

Now I'm in the waiting period - to see if I can still pass muster. And I'm intent on writing another after this post. Typing words into this blog is meaning I'm actually typing. And I need to type to write reviews, so when the blank page proved a little too intimidating as I tried to write tonight's review (another film review) I thought I'd blog a little, hoping it would be easier and provide a simple way in.

It seems to be working. Now all I have to do is try to ensure I maintain the momentum I've gained with this blog entry.

So I'm going to just pass on some writing news - I do have some for pieces written before my recent mind-wobble started.

Murky Depths (http://www.murkydepths.com/) has a number (reasonably high number too - about 20) of recently newly published reviews of mine on their site. Just click on the link above and scroll down to find a link to the reviews menus on the left of the screen (or you can use their drop down menus at the top if you have IE). I would list the new ones but there really are too many.

Eschatology Journal (http://eschatologyjournal.org/) has published one of my stories (Again written last year) on their site. The story, "Chicken", can be found at the following URL http://eschatologyjournal.org/2011/03/23/chicken-by-i-e-lester

And they also published a story written by my wife, under her Carey Lester pseudonym. It's her first sale. "The Dance" can be found at http://eschatologyjournal.org/2011/04/09/the-dance-by-carey-lester/

They even managed the wonderful coincidence of posting it on my wife's birthday - an extra little bonus present for her - in addition to her waking up in a Venetian Palazzo (we hired an apartment there for the week). Finally I've just received news that New Myths (http://www.newmyths.com/) should be posting another of my reviews on their site (for Tim Waggoner's Dead Streets) in the next couple of days. And they want more from me - so I think I may have to try reading something. Maybe the new Lavie Tidhar novella from PS Publishing. I like his stuff. Yeah, that could re-ignite my reading desire.

Anyway - to reviewing...

Review - Tim Waggoner - Nekropolis (nossa morte)

2011-01-31T20:06:00.001Z

Long ago mankind was constantly warring against Demonkind. Then mankind started inventing things, thing that gave them a definite advantage over the vampires, demons, werewolves, ghouls and other paranormal creatures.

Rather than just wait for the inevitable, the demons decided running away was better than being dead and so left the dimension, setting up Nekropolis, a vast artificial realm ruled over by the Darklords.

Matt Richter is a cop from Cleveland, or rather he was. Two years prior to the start of this tale Matt had followed a suspect through a portal and ended up in Nekropolis surrounded by all the monsters he could ever have imagined. Not long afterwards he ended up dead. Still around, but dead - in short a zombie, although self-willed and with all of his cop instincts intact.

Devona Kanti is a vampire, daughter of a Darklord and keeper of his collection. One of the items, the Dawnstone, in the collection is missing, a powerful artefact that could kill her father. Devona hires Matt, despite his protestations of not being a detective, to track down the thief and return the Dawnstone before her father realises it is gone.

This book feels like the first in a series. It certainly has that world-building vibe going. Right from the off throws everything at you, one comedic twist on a horror trope after another. It's relentless. From its opening zombie cop vs. lycanthrope encounter, through a Wild Hunt, a yearly demon festival that feels a bit like Mardi Gras, darkly fantastic, and sometimes icky, takes on every day things like TV and internet, cyborg vampires, evil mages and so on.

I would normally have thought that so much scene-setting in a book of 400 pages would have left scant space for an actual story, but not here. All the while he's building his backdrops he telling a pretty decent noir detective tale that in many ways feels like a transplanted Bladerunner. It's impressive.

It's comical. It's endearing, odd for a story about zombies and vampires. It's suspenseful. It's damn good fun; that's what it is.

Matt Richter is a wonderful lead character. Waggoner plays his character straight. He may be a zombie but he's still a down to earth Cleveland cop with a strong sense of what's right and wrong. And much more importantly he's not superhuman - in many ways being a zombie has made him subhuman. His reflexes are slowed, his perceptions dulled and fate has placed him in a world of powerful beings.

He serves to ground us. In effect he's one of us in a totally alien world. He's the story's every man, determined to fight his corner. Add to that a need to maintain his decaying body and you just can't help rooting for the guy.

Okay - an old idea, now revisited - reviews

2011-01-31T20:01:00.002Z

A while ago I began posting reviews of books that had, for one reason or another, never been sold. It seemed to go well, I gained a couple of blog followers and got generally good comments.

Well the time I feel has come to revisit this idea in a slightly changd format. I was lucky enough to encounter a horror/dark fiction ezine called nossa morte when it launched in 2007. I sold to their very first issue. In fact I sold to every single issue they did - at least one review in each with three in one issue.

They are defunct sadly - been that way for more than a year now and the site is no longer on the net. So I thought I should recycle the reviews I wrote for them and post them here. Tonight I will (shortly) be posting the review for Tim Waggoner's Nekropolis, a sublimely brilliant comic dark fantasy.

19 Days - some boasts, some general

2011-01-30T19:26:00.008Z

Okay, it's been a while since my last post. I could claim one excuse or another for not posting to this blog more often. And in reality the reasons I would give are not just excuses but true.

I mentioned in an earlier post my mother dying over Christmas. This has left a lot of processing - sorting out her house, funerals, cancelling paper deliveries, chaning utilities etc. And then there's the emptying of her house...

On top of all this there is the flu that has been plaguing my life since Christmas Day, one week of feeling really ill then lurking in the background with occasional ickiness repeats.

And then there's the fact I've been trying to concentrate on writing a novel, which isn't going too badly - up to 14,500 words and an aim to get over 80,000 by the end of March - yeah I know it's tight but I need to set deadlines so I will get on with it.

But some things have been happening I wanted to post. Firstly there's some news on my reviews being released/posted.

Murky Depths issue 15 is now out in the big wide world and contains four of my film reviews for the following DVD releases.

Black Death
Inception
14 Blades
Road Train

And there's a whole bunch more on their website just gone live
David Moles - Seven Cities Of Gold
Army of The Dead
Defendor
Exam
It's A Wonderful Afterlife
Legion

Anyway, here's their website - http://www.murkydepths.com/. Go check them out and not just for my reviews. The zine itself is wonderful. Well worth picking up - latest issue, especially as it contains the first episode of a comic serial written by Lavie Tidhar and starring Adolf Hitler.

Also had a few writing rejections, three to be exact, this week. Will be getting arond to resubmitting those in a few minutes...

Will be writing more reviews and more on the novel this week. Need to get some up to Murky Depths for their next issue - if Terry thinks they are good enough to feature.

And I have a couple more short stories to write up - handwrote the first drafts last week. Fingers crossed

New Story Sale - Oddly Not Mine

2011-01-11T20:41:00.004Z

After putting up with me and my writing attempts over the last four years my wife wrote a short story (to be fair she has planned out a novel and written the first few chapters but this is her first short).

Anyway, it surprised me by being a little surreal. It was good though, so I submitted it to Eschatology Journal for her - the market that accepted my short story Chicken last week.

And today they accepted it. So on the 12th of May this year her story, entitled "The Dance" willl be published on their site. Wow, eh. I feel really chuffed, I have to say

Anyway if you want to go check their site out, obviously without the story live yet but still well worth a visit, here's the link - http://eschatologyjournal.org/

Oh, and her pen name is Carey Lester.

I'm freaked and very chuffed. I may have said that before

Chicken (story)

2011-01-02T21:52:00.001Z

My story Chicken will be posted to Eschatology on April 6th

New Story Sale

2011-01-02T14:39:00.001Z

Just received the email that my short story Chicken (1000 words) will be appearing in online zine Eschatology Journal this spring. More details to follow

In the meantime, here's the web address - http://eschatologyjournal.org/

Things happen - death at Christmas

2011-01-01T22:10:00.003Z

It's been a while since my last blog. Not far off two months. I've been twittering a bit - easier to do as the iPhone lives in my pocket 24-7 and I've written a review or two (ok, maybe 20) but in truth my time on this PC has been limited.

And the reason has been my mother. At the end of October she was taken into hospital after a fall and diagnosed with an infection (which had caused the dizziness that meant she fell). Well we thought that that was all but it was soon clear that her faculties were very impaired.

She didn't recover them when the fever was cured and she was diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's. They tell me that the infection increased the speed of onset - I'm not a doctor but I trust they know what they're doing.

So we set about loooking for nursing care for her and visited a number of homes that could provide the level of care she needed. We even thought we'd found one - out by King's Lynn - and were going to visit it this week to confirm it was suitable.

And then we got THE phonecall. At 6:30am on Christmas Morning. There are not many phone calls you are going to get at that time and on that day - not unless you have relatives overseas which we do not.

My mother's health had taken a serious decline and she had passed away at 4am Christmas Morning.

It was an odd feeling. Not so much one of shock as we had been preparing for it since she was taken into hospital but strange. Okay, there's the expected mourning stuff I guess although I've never been one for manic histrionics or much visible emotional display - stiff-upper-lipped Englishman I guess.

But there's something odd. My father died three years earlier so my mother's passing leaves me parentless. We were never a close family (we got on ok I guess but it was never like the best friends almost relationships I've seen in some parent-child bonds even into adulthood). But being without parents is strange. The world's changed.

Guess it's time to start being the adult.

New Review Posted

2010-11-13T17:56:00.003Z

Dark Scribe Magazine has posted my review of Justni Cronin's The Passage

You can find it at

http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/

Just have to scroll down a bit.

Sorry for the short posting - have promised the family that we will start a film shortly so have to rush

DemonMinds extra

2010-11-07T22:21:00.003Z

Thought before I log this machine off for the evening it might be an idea to post the ful contents list for the DemonMinds antho I mentioned in the last post. So here it is

Daniel Robichaud - Jacket Ne Saie Quoe (Poem)

Suzanne Sykora - Dandelion Seed (Poem)

Jenna M. Pitman - A Girl and a Dog Walk Into A Bar (Story)

Gustavo Bondoni - Happy Hour at Lilu's (Story)

Kenneth Whitfield - Addictions (Story)

April Grey - At the End of Day (Story)

Chris Morey - Schism (Poem)

Joyce Frohn - Little Coffins (Poem)

Bernard J. Schaffer - The Kyoshi Scrolls (Story)

MZ Hoosen - The Sleeper (Story)

Bruce Memblatt - Bottle in Bordeaux (Story)

C. S. Johnson - Seven Circles (Story)

Gary McCluskey - Patches (Art)

Zac Mauer - Good Grief (Art)

David Pickering - Elegance (Story)

KC Wilder - an unsuccessful writer relaxing at home (Poem)

Tom Thornton - Dow Jones (Poem)

I. E. Lester - Acting's A Hell of A Job (Story)

John Grey - It's Not Like the Old Days (Poem)

Michael Shell - I Have Seen A Gargoyle (Poem)

Dark Matter - The Crush (Story)

Jeffery Scott Sims - Stealing Boris Karloff (Story)

Coy Hall The Image Disturbed (Story)

Rhonda Parrish - Hunger (Poem)

Michael Shell - I Have Seen a Gargoyle (Poem)

Recent times update

2010-11-07T16:12:00.002Z

In amongst a few weeks of assorted craziness (I might blog about it later) I have had a couple of nice writing related moments. I received a copy of DemonMinds Halloween 2010 anthology magazine. It's a whopper - I think the format size is US Letter although being a Brit I might be wrong about that. And much more importantly to my writing ego, it contains a story of mine - Acting's a Hell of a Game. As well as lots of other short stories and poems from authors like Jeffrey Scott Sims, Daniel Robichaud and loads more.

And I also received a copy of Murky Depths issue 14 which contains three of my short reviews - for Lavie Tidhar's Cloud Permutations, W. D. Gagliani's Wolf's Bluff and the film Defendor.

And I have started writing again - sent in another review to Murky Depths this afternoon and will hopefully get some more done later...

Bathynomus giganteus

2010-10-16T19:18:00.002+01:00

Forget all the drawings, paintings, models and computer generated imagery of what an alien race should look like. All you have to do is look up this creature - the giant isopod or Bathynomus giganteus. It is a very weird looking animal and you can find them in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

You don't need to go traveling to other worlds (of the imagination or otherwise) to see strange creatures.

Stephen Fry

2010-10-09T20:48:00.003+01:00

I'm supposed to be reading all kinds of books at the moment. I think I must have about 20 or so review copies sitting on my to read pile. The only problem is that Stephen Fry has a new book out - his second volume of autobiography - and I simply have to read it. You see like a number of other English people (I can't claim this to be so for other nationalities - I've never asked) I like Stephen Fry.

I like his cleverness. I like his word use. I like his geeky enthusiasms. I could go on. He would. He's not the most modest of people - and I have to admit I can appreciate that. There are few things that annoy me more than false modesty. If you have a talent, an ability, why the hell not be proud of it and promote it, and hence yourself, as best you can.

Equally I like honesty. And in this book, The Fry Chronicles - I'd noticed I'd not mentioned the title earlier, Stephen Fry discusses his University life and early career in TV, radio, journalism, playwriting and all-round general clever-clogs-ness.

But he also tells of is failings. His physical failings such as nicotine addiction, his feelings of shame about his own body and his desire, immense desire - need really - to be loved.

I rarely read autobiographies. I'm trying to think of ones I've read as I type this. I've read all of Asimov's but then again I am a total Asimov addict so they go without saying. And yes I probably would read his old shopping lists - how do you spell obsession again?

And I've read Frankie Boyle's - on a whim that one. I like some of his comedy, he takes chances. He tries to do things with comedy others do not. A lot of people think he goes too far but unless you try things how do you know what's going to be funny? His book is frightening honest at times. And very scathing. But all through it's just plain funny.

Anyway I digress. Back to Stephen Fry. And his book. It's superb. And tonight it will be finished. I just pity the author whose book I pick up next. It will suffer in the comparison.

Murky Depths #13

2010-10-04T23:46:00.003+01:00

Just received my copy of Murky Depths #13 in today's post. It's a really good looking magazine and I'm looking forward to giving the stories a read later.

But I wanted to post a quick little blog entry about it as the issue contains three of my short (c. 250 word) reviews. There are two book reviews (for Dean Koontz's Relentless and Ronald Malfi's Snow) as well as a film review (for Stag Night).

If you feel like taking a look at their site - and preferably considering buying a copy of this fine mag (and I'm not just saying that because it features me) - then their website can be found at

http://www.murkydepths.com/

Oh and the site currently has the cover for #14 (really great cover too) which is available for pre-order and which I will also have reviews in. You could go buy both.

Enjoy!

Catch-up time

2010-10-03T22:29:00.003+01:00

I've not been blogging much of late. Holidays and new bookcases have taken up a lot of my time. I spent a week based in Belgium and managed to go exploring in Holland, Germany, France and Luxembourg (in addition to Belgium itself). I still love Belgium. I think I may have to go back there many more times.

As for the book cases. Well we had a little bit of building work done earlier this year and some of the extra space was devoted to storing my books. And book cases arrived this last week. So I had the happy task of going through the boxes which have contained many of my books for the past couple of years and give them shelf space. Oh it was fun.

I have managed to find time to watch some movies too - so I thought I'd spend a few minutes giving some short comments.

1. Night of the Demons. I liked the original of this back in the 80s. It was a fairly tasteless, silly little horror comedy. It had all the elements you'd expect for a straight to video (remember pre-DVD age) release. Bad effects, corny dialog, decent amount of bared female flesh and silly monsters. But it was good fun. It didn't take itself even remotely seriously. So - the sequel, have they screwed it up, made it all PC and taken the fun out of it?

Thankfully no. It's a fairly straight (or should that read camp and twisted) remake. All the elements you'd want are still there. And it's still great fun.

2. Zombie Women of Satan. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is bad. Seriously. A mad scientist has been experimenting on his son's sex slaves. (Sonny boy runs a brainwashing cult - who doesn't?) And he's created zombies out of lyngerie clad young women. And it all kicks off when a 38th rate adult caberet act, with the prerequisite dwarf, have turned up for an interview for an internet broadcast (also run by sonny boy). This film is terrible. But as I watched it in good company the experience was at least enjoyable - we spent the hour and a half taking the piss out of it mercilessly.

3. Robin Hood. I know, it's a bit mainstream for me. But I do have a family and I'm not the only one who decides on the films to watch. The production values are high. The film looks good, although the locations don't look much like the Nottingham I know - Nottinghamshire is only about a dozen miles away from where I live so I am reasonable familiar with the county. And the story seemed a little silly to me - even for a Robin Hood story. Nice looking film (probably better for the women watching it - Russell Crowe doesn't do it for me).

4. Bodyguards and Assassins. Back to Chinese films. Much more my thing. Slightly different to the norm this one - for Chinese films. It's set in Hong Kong at the turn of the 20th Century when the city was still a British colony. And it's subject matter is revolution against the Imperial rule in China.

Most Chinese films I watch fall into one of two categories. Firstly there's the epic history, the true cast of thousands, slightly fantastical legend movie that the Chinese are so good at producing (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers). And secondly there's the modern, edgy gangster type movie with plenty of kung fu and guns.

I like both. This is neither. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I found the film was superb.

4. Death Tube. Japanese horror that's very much in the Saw mold. Our main character wakes up to find himself inside an internet based killing game called Death Tube. He's not alone. There are eight people in total each facing tasks and puzzles with death being the penalty for failure. Oh, and the whole thing is run by people dressed in teddy bear costumes.

It's a very silly concept but it manages to be quite disturbing. Somehow having a dehumanised, partly synthesized voice coming from the image of child's toy is creepy. That and people do die in this game. And the good thing is the survivors of the killings really freak out about it.

5. Meat Grinder. Korean gorefest - a very over-the-top sequence of torture and grisly killings. This is definitely not a film for the faint of heart. The central concept of disposing of bodies by serving them in a fast food restaurant is certainly not new - Eat the Rich came to mind as I watched this - but none before have done it with quite as much on screen claret. Satisfying to all us sickos.

6. Arn: night Templar. Swedish historicla movie set during the crusades. Young kid Arn is raised in a monastery and trained by a former Templar. No sooner has he returned to his family as a young man that a single indiscretion sees him pressganged into the Templars and sent to fight in the crusades for twenty years. He proves himself a great warrior and an honourable man...

I could go on but I don't want to spoil it. This film is superb. Truly wonderful. It has the grime and dirt you'd imagine of the 12th Century, lots of action, love, chivalrous knights, betrayals, unlikely friendships and plenty of sword fights. Fantastic

7. Road Train. Australian horror (I'm getting around the globe a bit with this movie watching aren't I?) The road train is a multi stage trucks. They are famous in Australia and hundreds of them criss cross the country delivering all manners of goods. This one though is evil and it's found it's next victim. It's a bit like Christine on steriods, this truck. Can't say it's the best film I've seen but not bad at all.

8. Nazi Dawn. American supernatural war film. Lance Henricksen leads a rescue mission to a US warship adrift in the Persian Gulf and drifting towards Iranian waters. It's a silly film. I mainly watched it as a fan of Henricksen. Problem is he is just too old to be convincing as a special forces soldier - even one who admits he's nearing retirement age.

There are others. But I'm running out of time. It's 11pm and I'd like to get another review written for submission before I go get sleep.

Where did this month go?

2010-09-27T21:13:00.002+01:00

I just noticed I haven't blogged since the 5th. Wow. Where have the last three weeks gone? Okay I think I can put some of it down to being on holiday in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and Germany for ten days in there somewhere (I will add some blog entries about the trips at some point). But it doesn't account for all the gap. To be truthful I haven't written all that much in that time either - half a dozen reviews for Murky Depths is all.

Well the fact is I have had nine new book cases delivered and have spent a good deal of the time since getting back from mainland Europe sorting out the various boxes of books and getting books onto shelves. And it's been great fun. That may sound sad but it's true. I love books and a lot of these books haven't been out of boxes in years.

Good times.

New Review posted (New Myths)

2010-09-05T22:53:00.001+01:00

My review of Harry Turtledove's Hitler's War has just been posted to sf website New Myths. If you want to check it out you can find it at

http://63.64.44.120/index.pacq?id=278&tier=2

Magners League

2010-09-04T22:51:00.003+01:00

Anyone who's read any of the previous postings on this blog will be aware that I am a Europhile, and addicted to Italy in particular (and Belgium, Luxembourg, France - I could go on).

And I'm a rugby fan. A serious rugby fan.

Today saw two of these things come together. The Magners Leage which has featured teams from Scotland, Wales and Ireland, this year also features two Italian teams, Benetton Treviso and Aironi Rugby. Fantastic stuff.

And as a serious Venice fanatic I'm obviously going to sepnd the entire season, and hopefully many to come, supporting Terviso (Treviso is only just up the road from Venice).

Today Treviso played their first game against the Scarlets and they won 34-28. Yehay!!!

Two more submissions out there

2010-08-30T23:28:00.003+01:00

I wanted to end the long weekend having done something positive writing wise and fortunately something presented itself in the form of page proofs from Demon Minds for my short story "Acting's a Hell of a Job" in their upcoming Halloween edition.

That and I found new potential homes for the two short stories rejected this weekend.

Review of Edward Lee - The Golem

2010-08-30T23:10:00.000+01:00

I'd never read an Edward Lee novel before picking this book up. I'd heard they were gory, and many of the review quotes on the cover of and inside this book used phrases like "hardcore horror". I was expecting extreme horror.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when this book wasn't an out-and-out gorefest, when it wasn't the loosely strung together sequence of gross-out horror violence I'd imagined. What it is, is a well-written, tightly plotted and entertaining, but decidedly mainstream, horror novel - with the kind of main plot you might imagine Stephen King producing.

Games designer and recovering alcoholic Seth Kohn and his ex-junkie girlfriend Judy Parker have moved to Lowensport, Maryland to start a new life away from the reminders of their former addiction riddled lives. Their plans, though, are not going to work out, as the town is the home of a dark cult based on a twisted form of Judaism - a cult that controls a zombie-like golem.

And, unfortunately for them, Seth and Judy are square in the cult's sights as soon after they arrive in town four barrels of clay from the old world (Prague to be specific) are discovered, one hundred years after they were lost in the early days of the town. The cult consider these barrels theirs, and they want them back so they can create more golems.

Seth and Judy are great creations. Lee has created two fully rounded lead characters that you just cannot help sympathising with. They are damaged goods, yes, but they are have got their lives back together and are trying to keep on the straight and narrow. And the author has then placed them in great danger, some supernatural, some through deliberate manipulation of their pasts by the locals. He's delivered the precise kind of seemingly hopeless situation that makes a good horror novel.

But this is not the only story going on in this book. Intermingled is the tale of the Lowensport of 1880, the time of the founding of the town and of the battles between the Jewish incomers and the Maryland natives. It's this two time period nature that is the book's only real drawback. Having two timelines running means you have to read a lot more of the book before anything really substantial happens.

It is a shame - for much as the 1880s tale is good, it pales in comparison to the modern plot strand. Seth and Judy's story is compelling. But every time it begins to build momentum the action switches back to 1880 - to a tale that you know will only have one possible outcome. The present day set up leaves it reasonably easy to guess what must have happened in the past.

But this is almost nit picking. This book has some good horror moments without overdoing the gore. It has a slightly different, and interesting, take on zombies. The Jewish connection is handled well - the author has managed to use an element of Jewish mythology and a Jewish cult as bad guys without vilifying the religion itself. Definitely worth a read!

Annoying weekend - writing wise

2010-08-30T21:08:00.002+01:00

The last weekend in August in the UK means a three day weekend with a national holiday on the Monday. So it seems all the ingredients for a good time. Didn't quite happen that way though. Not writing wise in any case.

Firstly the weekend statrs with a rejection from Drabblecast and today it has ended with another rejection, this time from Neo-opsisfor a story I still feel is one of the best I've written. Although now that it has received six rejections maybe I should re-assess that belief. Mind you it has taught me not to write stories in second person narrative. Which is a great shame as I rather like second person tales. They make me feel as though I'm in the middle of the action.

And running all through the three days was the fact I had a lot of extracurriculur from the day job. I spent nearly all this weekend, including until 4am yesterday (on a Sunday) updating our software system. And sitting here now at 9pm Monday I have more yet to do.

I don't dislike my day job by any means, in fact I have to say I rather like the puzzles and problems it throws my way but I could have done with a nice break this weekend from it to get some writing done. I have three reviews I need to write for submission with deadlines looming (and two of which are likely to be missed meaning I won't be able to feature in those mags) and a (hopefully) comedic horror short story I'm about 8000 words into that I have some ideas for where to take it next that I would love to get time at.

Still I will get time at some point I'm sure. I know this weekend was an aberration. It's not normally this time consuming.

Second Review of Wrath James White - Succulent Prey

2010-08-29T14:31:00.000+01:00

After a number of years reading horror you begin to feel that you have pretty much seen it all. There's nothing left that will scare you or make you wince. Nothing an author can write that you will disturb you. Zombies - been there, ate brains with them. Vampires - heck they're pretty much PG these days. Witchcraft's gone cuddly, demons are just like regular people etc, etc.

Even serial killers, with their advantage of being all too plausible, are sanitised somewhat - Hannibal Lector, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers - are now more friends than feared enemies.

Not so when you pick up a Wrath James White novel however. He still has the ability to unsettle you big time. He does this not only by the extreme violence of his books, but also by the context. The main character in this book is a cannibalistic sex-maniac - and, believe me, this is going to let you in for some pretty gory bits. Even for a long time reader/watcher of gory horror.

He's achieved this by making his monster more than just a straightforward monster. Joseph Miles is a giant of a man, six and a half feet of sculpted muscle. He's also the only survivor of a child sex killer - suffering repeated rapes and stabbed over a dozen times. As an adult he is consumed by his urges to cannibalise his sexual partners.

But he is not willing to give in totally to these urges, he wants to fight against becoming a total monster. He sees the attacker of his ten-year-old self to be his salvation. If he can reach the man (tricky as he's in a maximum-security psychiatric unit) and kill him, it will free him to become a normal human being.

As a plot is may seem a little hackneyed - the kind of thing that would feature in many pulp vampire or werewolf stories. But in many ways this is the point. Miles is attempting to reason away his insanity, to find an external reason for his condition - something that was done to him. Something he can cure.

White has brought a sick world into sharp focus. He may have focused the action on one twisted individual but, through Miles' visits to sex-clubs and Sex Addicts' self help groups, the author has provided him a supporting cast of, in their own ways, equally broken characters.

In his own way, even his college lecturer is as needy - being willing to deliberately withhold information from a police investigation or even mislead the detectives to give him a chance at testing his own theories on aberrant behaviour.

This is what horror needed after years of dumbing-down on the scare-front. This book is a definite confirmation of horror as adult fiction. No teenage-friendly undead romances here. This is flesh-ripping to the extreme, gore-splattering scares! Great stuff.

Review of Jacy Nova & Nick Nova - Vampress Girls: City of the Lost Souls (Graphic Novel)

2010-08-29T14:30:00.000+01:00

In the fourteenth century, during the time of the Black Death plague in Europe, a deal is struck. The secrets contained in the Vampress Code were written down in a locked book, one that required two keys to be opened. One key was given to the High Priestess of the Vampire Clan (the good guys in the book) and the other to the High Priest of the Demon Clan (the Bad Guys).

Not a totally original premise, but one that held a certain amount of promise. Nothing came of it though. The action soon moves forward in time to early twenty-first century California, but the promised epic battle between the supernatural forces of good and evil doesn't materialise. What we have is two girl-group pop bands, made up of American high school girls (one from each tribe) spending their time bickering at each other, going clubbing and being sick. It's all very superficial.

Despite the simplistic art style and the speech bubbles dialogue being very prosaic, this could have been a great story. It isn't though. Despite all the available richness of the vampire and demon mythologies, seven-centuries of history and modern culture against which the authors/artists set their tale, they have produced one of the most lightweight and crass books I have ever read. In its way it's a really impressive feat.

How you can mix vampires and demons, seven hundred years of history and glitzy, Rock 'n' Roll world of the early twenty-first century, and end up with something this vapid is mind-blowing.

In fact the only challenging thing you'll find in these pages is identifying the various characters. Eight of the main characters are high-school age girls dressed as rock-chicks, and without colour to the artwork to give you assistance it is difficult to tell these girls apart.

It's difficult to think of a single good thing to say about this. Oh, here's one - it doesn't take too long to finish.

Review of Brian Keene - Urban Gothic

2010-08-21T23:58:00.002+01:00

Six suburban white kids venture into inner city Philadelphia because one of them "knows" where he can get good drugs. It's plainly not a good idea. One made all the worse when their car breaks down in a run down neighbourhood.

When a group of black teenagers approaches them they fear the worse and panic, not waiting to see if the group was intending to rob/attack them or, perhaps, help them. They run, heading straight into an old, seemingly deserted house at the end of the street. Once inside they find themselves in a mutant nightmare, the house is populated by some of the most twisted, vile sub-humanoid creatures I've ever read in a mainstream horror novel.

The danger is immediate. As soon as they close the door behind them they run into the first of the house's freak occupants - a giant, pus-oozing, brutal beast of a man carrying an un-really large hammer. From this point on they will undergo a terrifying ordeal, running, crawling, sliding, swimming through every kind of foul substance, desperate to escape the mutants intent on making them lunch (and you guessed it - I don’t mean they are inviting them to dinner).

Keene has managed to create one of the most disgusting books I've ever read. Talk about slime. This book positively drips slime, mucus, blood - in fact pretty much every type of bodily, or otherwise organic, fluid oozes out of every page of this book. As a novel is the total embodiment of the word "ew"!

I've never read anything that made you cringe as much as this book. Keene wants you to live this experience, breathe in the odors and drink the filth; yes, drink - his characters end up doing just that, half drowning in something you'd rather not go within a hundred yards of.

But for all its unpleasant content this is a good read. Keene has managed to write characters you can actually sympathise with. They make mistakes, they get scared and lash out, but they are human, and they are in deep shit (literally).

It is possible to say that the plot, such that there is one, is lightweight. Six kids get locked in a building full of twisted mutant monsters. It doesn't sound that inventive or realistic - sounds like maybe there's not enough to maintain interest to the last page. And that would be true but for one thing.

It's a very fast paced novel. There's no hanging around here. The whole of the book takes place within a single evening, a total time-span of perhaps a couple of hours. You aren't going to get bored with this one.

Brian Keene has a knack for horror. He can induce some serious scares. He can make you cringe. And with Urban Gothic he's added to an already impressive horror resume. Watch out for this guy, he's going places.

Film Review - The Midnight Meat Train (back to posting old reviews)

2010-08-21T23:55:00.000+01:00

Leon Kaufmann is a struggling photographer - determined to make it big without selling out. He prowls night-time New York in search of the iconic image of the city's dark side that could make him a household name.

A chance encounter on a subway station platform with a well dressed, but hard-faced, man sparks an obsession in Kaufmann. He pursues the man, believing him responsible for series of disappearances from late night trains. His paranoia about the man is well founded. Mahogany (the well-dressed man) commits the most brutal of acts on the subway, beating his victims to death and then butchering them.

Ex-soccer player Vinnie Jones is perfect as Mahogany. He has the perfect look for a deranged serial killer. But it's the focus on Kaufmann (Bradley Cooper) that makes the film work. Cooper plays the progression from career-desperation into obsession about the subway killer wonderfully.

This is a film for the Saw fan, rather than the fan of psychological scares or Freddy-style total gorefest. It's not going to unnerve you; suspense isn't on the cards. And although there's considerable violence here (it gets very bloody at times) it's not relentless. There's more too it - a fairly good plot for one thing, including a decent amount of intrigue. (How many people are involved in this?)

It's a good film, no doubt about it. But it could have been better. More should have been made of the reasons why it's all happening. The reveal at the end answers some but not all of your questions. There are also issues concerning Mahogany that are left hanging (his medical condition for one). You reach the end of the movie with several things unexplained and it's frustrating.

These are minor gripes only though - this film has a lot to recommend it. Watch it - you could do a lot worse!

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Actors: Bradley Cooper, Vinnie Jones, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Roger Bart

Label: Lions Gate

Length: 100 minutes

DVD Release: February 2009

Demon Minds 2010 - Table of Contents

2010-08-21T16:40:00.002+01:00

Demon Minds have posted the table of contents for their 2010 edition - out around Halloween. You can find it at the link below

http://www.demonminds.com/accepted.html

But it's posted in full below

Daniel Robichaud - Poem - Jacket Ne Saie Quoe

Suzanne Sykora - Poem - Dandelion Seed

Jenna Pitman - Story - A Girl and a Dog Walk Into A Bar

Gustavo Bondoni - Story - Happy Hour at Lilu's

Kenneth Whitfield - Story - Addictions

April Grey - Story - At the End of Day

Chris Morey - Poem - Schism

Joyce Frohn - Poem - Little Coffins

Bernard J. Schaffer - Story - The Kyoshi Scrolls

MZ Hoosen - Story - The Sleeper

Bruce Memblatt - Story - Bottle in Bordeaux

C. S. Johnson - Story - Seven Circles

Gary McCluskey - Art - Patches

Zac Mauer - Art - Good Grief

David Pickering - Story - Elegance

KC Wilder - Poem - an unsuccessful writer relaxing at home

Tom Thornton - Poem - Dow Jones

I. E. Lester - Story - Acting's A Hell of A Job

John Grey - Poem - It's Not Like the Old Days

Michael Shell - Poem - I Have Seen A Gargoyle

Dark Matter - Story - The Crush

Jeffery Scott Sims - Story - Stealing Boris Karloff

Coy Hall - Story - The Image Disturbed

Ray Bradbury Music Video (just a little rude)

2010-08-18T00:45:00.002+01:00

I've just seen a pop video entitled F*** me, Ray Bradbury. One of my friends on Facebook posted the link and it's hilarious.

Just wnated to share the vid with anyone who doesn't mind adult language - if you do mind and you still visit the link, please don't blame me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

Third Dark Scribe Review (of recent times)

2010-08-17T20:42:00.004+01:00

The third of my recent batch of Dark Scribe Magazine reviews (and fifth in total) has been posted. This one for George Mann's Ghosts of Manhattan, a 1920s Batman style story with steampunk stylings. Not a bad read.

Anyway you can find my review at http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/

Latest short story rejection

2010-08-15T23:39:00.001+01:00

Everyday Weirdness just rejected my short story Chicken. Makes my batting average with them .500 (and yes I know being English I shouldn't probably use American sporting idioms but what the hell).

Now to try to find it a new potential home

Latest Dark Scribe Review

2010-08-15T23:35:00.003+01:00

Dark Scribe Magazine has posted my review of Edward M Erdelac's novella Red Sails - a bit of a pirate adventure piece. You can find it at http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/

On Dean Koontz's Frankenstein (written before book four had come out)

2010-08-09T22:38:00.003+01:00

In the near two centuries since the publication of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein has become almost synonymous with horror itself for many, with only Bram Stoker's Dracula being more widely known.

But like Dracula, the years have not always been kind to Frankenstein - both are often considered fair game for authors; filmmakers; comic writers; games-designers and merchandising manufacturers - not all of whom have been all that concerned with maintaining the legacy of the original.

In summer 2005 Dean Koontz became the latest author to take a stab at adding to the Frankenstein mythos, with the first of a series of novels based on his concept for a proposed, but never realised, TV series.

Koontz's basic premise is an updating of the Frankenstein story, accepting the events of Shelley's novel but asking what would happen next.

We find out early in Prodigal Son, the first book (co-written with Kevin J. Anderson) that Dr Frankenstein still lives, having prolonged his life by artificial means far beyond normal limits. So too does his seemingly immortal creature, now going by the name of Deucalion and residing in a remote monastery far away from civilisation.

The first thing you notice about this series is that the two main protagonists have changed sides somewhat. Victor Frankenstein, now living under the alias of Victor Helios, is an intensely driven evil man. Any hint of the misguided scientist of Shelley's original has gone. This is not a man attempting to push science for science's sake only. He has a much more sinister purpose in mind - the creation of an artificial super race controlled by him, and intended to replace regular humans.

Deucalion is a much more peaceful individual, he has learned to control his anger and is seemingly content to remain in his monastery home. However when he hears his creator still lives he knows he must stop him from completing his scheme.

In the middle of it all are two New Orleans police officers investigating a murder where the corpse appears to be not entirely human.

There are some good ideas here. The updating of the myth introducing twenty-first century science to Frankenstein's work is handled well. Add to that, three interesting interweaving main plot lines (scientist, creature, police), well rounded characters and skilful prose that is a joy to read with just the right amount of humour to lighten the mood from time to time and there is the making of a great novel in this.

But it's the members of the New Race and, in some ways, Frankenstein himself that are the let down of the book. That Frankenstein is the villain of the piece is not a problem, but what is, is the fact that he seems to have mutated into the over-the-top stereotype villain you would associate with James Bond movies - although perhaps he might be a little too much even for a Bond flick.

And his creatures are hate-filled, over-athletic sex machines. Okay, within the framework of the story some of this is understandable. Frankenstein has engineered his creatures with the desire to kill us normal humans - a hatred they find difficult to contain - and with a powerful sex drives so they have a means of releasing their tensions. But it seems almost a trashy exploitation gimmick, a literary equivalent of the ten-minute plot-break heavy sex scenes you get in straight-to-video horror films.

On balance though Prodigal Son comes out well ahead. It's an entertaining read, one could easily read in a couple of sessions, and it sets up the series well.

Book two, City of Night, followed later in 2005, this time Dean Koontz having swapped his co-author Anderson for Ed Gorman.

The book picks up the action straight from the end of book one, and sees Victor Frankenstein/Helios increasing his work to replace humanity. Okay, there is a lot of extra suspense thrown into the mix but the book suffers from a definite "in-the-middle" feeling. It's not a book that gives any real answers to the questions book one raised. You might say this is not a fair criticism for the middle book of a trilogy, but I've always felt the "trilogy" concept was one too often forced.

Just because a story is going to last longer than a single book, why does it have to reach three volumes. If a story can be told just as well in two books, it should be left at two books. As a result of fitting into the expected trilogy format, this book feels it is a little stretched.

But despite that it is far from a bad book. Koontz and Gorman have ramped things up a little. The dangers are growing, the numbers of the New Race out in the world are growing and our heroes are facing ever-greater odds.

It successfully builds on the story of book one, develops it, adds in some unexpected twists and sets up the conclusion well.

And therein lies the series' main problem. Book two came out at the end of 2005 and left a story hanging in mid air. Anyone who bought the book and read it at the time would have been aching for the conclusion.

Well the third book was delayed, being published nearly four years later. It's been such a delay that many people will have forgotten about the series entirely and will never read this third book. At the very least the delay will mean that many people will approach this book almost cold, remembering little but a general outline of the first two volumes and having to relearn all the character names etc.

That would be okay though if the book were good. And that's a real pity. It just doesn't measure up to the first two volumes. The action here feels lacklustre. The characters have moved more into stereotypes and have flattened into very two-dimensional beings.

I'm probably going to buy book four when it does come out but I can't say I'm holding out all that much hope.

Better late than never I guess

2010-08-09T22:32:00.002+01:00

I enjoyed reading. Okay a number of people may read much more than me but I do manage to get through two or three books in a week so I don't think I do too badly. And I will admit this is largely due to a liking for shorter books. I read a lot of novellas so I guess I get a bit of assistance from the books I choose to read.

Anyway I recently discovered a new way of adding to my reading tally. I take a book with me to work. Before you start accusing me of not actually doing anything for the day job, I want to say I restrict my reading to lunch hours only. But it does mean I can add an extra book into the reading schedule each fortnight. As long as I stick clear of fiction that is. I don't think I could ever read a novel in the middle of a crowded canteen.

But non-fiction. I can do that. So recently I've read a book about the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Dava Sobel's Longtitude, a couple of travelogues and am currently reading a book on Fermat's Last Theorem.

It gives me a good feeling to know I'm doing something good (for me anyway) in this dead time. Unless there is anyone in the canteen I enjoy talking to I often spent these breaks being very bored and wondering back to work early.

Once more books have saved me.

Review of Bill Bryson - Shakespeare: The World as a Stage

2010-08-09T22:31:00.000+01:00

Although best known for his travel books this is far from Bryson's first venture into other fields. He has written the obligatory (for a writer) book of personal memoirs ("The Life and Time of the Thunderbolt Kid"), a book or two on the English language ("Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words") and even one on the sum total of human knowledge ("A Short History of Nearly Everything"). And now he has turned his hand to biography with this book on the greatest of all authors.

This feels remarkably well researched - despite being such a short book he lists three and a half pages of selected bibliography. This amount of available research material does not mean, however, that much is actually known about Shakespeare life - far from it. Bryson even makes fun of this fact throughout the book.

The book explains the few known facts of Shakespeare's life and how they are known - his birth (or rather his baptism, the exact date of his birth being inferred from the baptismal ceremony), his schooling, his marriage and fathering of children in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Then moving on, Bryson details the little that is known of Shakespeare's life in London - lodgings, acting, a few various financial activities including taxes and house purchases and finally his death and will.

All of these items provide such a frustratingly small portion of Shakespeare's life, giving rise to a plethora of guesses, educated and otherwise (mainly just wishful thinking), about the unknown years.

Bryson however, does not join in this make-believe. The book includes many of the speculations that other biographers have made about aspects of Shakespeare's life. He humorously dismisses the more outlandish claims - his sexuality, his religious affiliations and even whether or not he was actually the author of the books attributed to him, whilst being fair and even-handed to the more reasonable speculations.

But this book is far more than a presentation of the scant few known facts about Shakespeare's life, with a discussion on Shakespearean research and commentary tacked on. Bryson sets his life into its context, explaining the conditions, customs and opportunities of London in the late sixteenth century. He grounds Shakespeare in his world, proving how he was fortuitous he was to enter the theatrical world of London in the middle of a golden period.

The book also answers one question - why is Shakespeare remembered as he is? If he lived in a London filled with theatres, actors and playwrights, why aren't his contemporaries' works as widely known, especially given as he was not one the most of the most productive of Elizabethan London's authors?

As Bryson states in this book - of the twenty-nine surviving plays from this period consisting of three thousand words or more, fully twenty-two are by Shakespeare or Ben Jonson. This leads naturally to the question (answered within these pages), "Why is William Shakespeare so well represented?"

And in answering this Bryson places Shakespeare not only in his time but also very much in ours, exploring how the writer has lived beyond his days when many other Elizabethan playwrights are known now only by scant references in obscure documents.

Bill Bryson could probably explain anything. He has such a wonderfully friendly, relaxed, easy-to-understand way of writing. His writing is full of joy, and reading his prose brings a smile to your face. And he is an honest writer.

Although you do get the impression that he is a strong proponent of Shakespeare Bryson doesn't put him on a high pedestal or believe him a man incapable of errors. Whilst discussing his work he is happy to list several of Shakespeare's mistakes, shortcuts and laziness of writing. This helps make the book a well rounded, balanced piece. There is no vitriolic criticism, and no hero-worship. This is a straightforward history (as well as can be presented from the lack of information) of the English language most famous writer - and very entertaining it is too.

Review Posted

2010-08-08T17:42:00.003+01:00

My review of Robin Becker's Brains: A Zombie Memoir has been posted on the horror website Dark Scribe Magazine.

You can find them at - http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/

The reviews section is accessible from the link on the right hand side of the screen, or you can get to it direct by clicking - http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/

Review of Richard Parks' Hereafter, and After

2010-08-04T00:42:00.001+01:00

Jake Hallman is a dead accountant, and the afterlife's latest arrival, appearing at the start of the Golden Road to Heaven. Brendan, his own personal guide angel awaits him. Jake soon non-plusses Brendan however, when he questions the need to actually make the journey - can Brendan force him to go? With this simple revelation Jake becomes a Free Soul.

As a Free Soul he begins to realise certain truths about the afterlife, and of the nature of the gods. Although such occurrences are rare, heaven has a mechanism to track them, and Jake finds himself from time to time in front of The Accountant, the being responsible for keeping score.

Jake follows his own path, a ghostly free agent. He visits Valhalla where he discovers that hearing tales of even the most heroic and perilous adventures grows dull after an eternity of retelling, and the gods are bored. He teams up with a former Valkyrie and visits Hel, and all the time continues to see the truths about existence.

This book is wonderfully irreverent. It takes a swipe at the old myths, and our beliefs of life after death. It lines up wonderfully bizarre encounters as angels, demons, gods and mythical heroes, even the mistress of Hel all come face to face with an accountant.

And it knows when to stop. This is not an idea for a 500-page book, or a trilogy of such books. The almost surreal, off-kilter feel of this works perfectly as a novella. It's a wonderful stress reliever of a book.

Book Details

Released March 2007

90 pages

PS Publishing =

http://www.pspublishing.co.uk

ISBN-13: 9781904619864

Review of Mike Resnick's Starship: Pirate

2010-08-04T00:38:00.000+01:00

For me I have always felt Mike Resnick is my guilty little secret author. Generally I like hard science fiction, I like high concept science in my fiction. Books concerning alternate-dimensions or time travel, genetic manipulations, major scientific advancement and the like written by Stephen Baxter, Robert Charles Wilson, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and others fill my bookshelves.

Mike Resnick's fiction is not like this. His books are galaxy-spanning adventures, without the slightest care for how his starships, blaster pistols, gadgets and gizmos actually work. His worlds are frontier outposts, mankind on the edge, exploring and expanding into new territories. In short he is telling tales of America's old west transplanting the setting to the stars.

This probably leads to another reason why I shouldn't like his work. I do not like western movies. I endured many of them as a kid as my father is a fan, and I would be perfectly happy not seeing another my entire life, and reading one would certainly not figure. So my liking Resnick's fiction is something I try not to understand - I just accept it.

This particular book is the second in a series, although I would guess it is not all that necessary that you would have read the first. Suffice to say Wilson Cole is a hero, the most decorated officer in the Republic's navy. Also he is not particularly liked by the brass, having this tendency to get the job done by any means, even if it means circumventing regulations. That the public adores him, is just another reason why he is despised by the higher ranks.

In book one in the series he saved the day again. I'm not giving anything away - he was hardly likely to die in book one of a series intended to last five volumes. So the Navy decides to reward him with a court-martial. His crew disagrees with this, rescue him, steal their ship - a hundred-year-old patrol ship called the Theodore Roosevelt - and they head to the inner frontier.

Well they need to find someway to sustain themselves so they decide on becoming pirates. But being hero-types standard piracy is not going to be way of things - certainly not a moral enough activity for heroes to engage in. So they decide to prey only on other pirates.

All of which means that we are to meet a fairly familiar bunch of typical Resnick characters in typical Resnick surroundings. But do not for a minute think that this will lead to a very derivative and unoriginal book. This is a galactic-spanning stage remember. If we maintain the old west analogy then hearing the legends of the Frank and Jesse James does not mean we would not want to read about Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, "Doc" Holliday, Buffalo Bill or Wyatt Earp.

Resnick's books are fun; they are pick-me-up fiction. This one maintains that, it's a good read. It's not up with his best - for that you would need to check out Ivory or Santiago - but it should entertain anyone who enjoys adventure science fiction.

...and a rejection

2010-08-02T22:36:00.002+01:00

Encounters Magazine just returned my short story "What Do I Do Now". Never mind, eh?

Film Review - The Midnight Meat Train

2010-08-02T21:49:00.002+01:00

(Again, allow for the time between this being written and resurrected for this blog)

These are minor gripes only though - this film has a lot to recommend it. Watch it - you could do a lot worse!

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Actors: Bradley Cooper, Vinnie Jones, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Roger Bart

Label: Lions Gate

Length: 100 minutes

DVD Release: February 2009

Short Review of Richard Satterlie - Imola

2010-08-02T21:47:00.002+01:00

(Review written in 2009)

Last year Satterlie introduced us to an insane serial killer with a difference. Agnes Hahn a shy, retiring type, scared of much of the world around her. But she was a split personality, and her other self, Lilin, was a sadistic killer who liked pleasuring herself on the severed members of her victims. This being the follow up has no reveal to build up to, and for that it lacks something.

Agnes starts the book in control, a resident of Imola, a mental asylum. But slowly her murderous alternate is beginning to work her way back to the surface. Lilin takes control and escapes the asylum, intent on mayhem and the love of Agnes's life - Jason Powers, the reporter who helped catch her in book one.

This book really does suffer from being a sequel. It's well written, the characters are good, the plot adequate. But there's little suspense or mystery. How can there be? Right from the off we know what Agnes/Lilin is all about.

Satterlie writes a good tale and has some decent ideas, it's just this one ran its course in the first book. This is one sequel that just wasn't needed.

Short Review of Brian Keene - Urban Gothic

2010-08-02T21:44:00.001+01:00

Trapped in the wrong part of town when their car breaks down and confronted by a group of, what they believe are gangbangers, six friends decide to seek safety in a seemingly abandoned house. They soon realise their mistake, discovering the house is a filthy hovel with every kind of slime or secretion coating the walls and floors as well as home to a family of cannibalistic mutants, one of whom seems very keen on, quite literally, "f***king-your-brains-out".

This is one of the biggest gross-out books I've seen from a mainstream publisher. Almost every page dips with one bodily excretion/fluid or another. Okay, there might be little in the way of character-building, minimal background and little plot development, but you have to consider the timeline. The whole thing takes less than an evening from start to finish - maybe two hours of story time in total. In that time you would learn much about anyone.

In some ways you might consider it a one-dimensional slime-fest, but in Urban Gothic Brian Keene has served up an incredibly fast paced, adrenaline filled, romp of a novel. And boy, does he know how to disturb you!

Review of Stefan Petrucha - Teen, Inc

2010-08-02T21:42:00.000+01:00

Jaiden Beale is in nearly every way a typical teenager. He is starting to becoming aware of himself and his place in the world. He has been going through the changes of puberty, becoming an adult. His hormones are racing, bringing with them a growing sexual awareness and all the insecurities these changes bring.

Jaiden's life is a little more complicated than most. Whilst still a baby Jaiden's parents were killed due the negligence of a large company, NECorp. The company sought to regain some PR points by adopting him and offering to raise him in place of the parents he had lost.

Although initially a media sensation, his celebrity has grown quiet and he believes he has the chance of at least some normality, the chance to be an ordinary kid. He convinces NECorp to allow him to attend a regular high school.

However, each incident or opportunity in his life has to be passed by a committee, the corporation being paranoid against future potential lawsuits. Their obsession with guiding his life has effects ranging from stifling to deeply embarrassing. They offer him seminars on dating, profiles on potential girlfriends etc.

And when the girl Jaiden likes just happens to be an environmental campaigner dedicated to proving NECorp is releasing pollution in levels far greater than they report, the higher ups see it as an opportunity to gain inside information about the environmentalist's work.

Jaiden, though, doesn't want to play their game, and fights back. Problem is the corporation has a great deal more resources than he does.

This is a real David vs. Goliath tale. Jaiden is struggling against absolutely overwhelming odds. But he still fights, he doesn't give up. And because of this the book is very uplifting; it’s a true story of hope.

This is a great example of a what-if tale on a human scale. Jaiden's age is perfect for the story, it works in a way that just wouldn't were the lead character adult. For not only is Jaiden struggling against the machine that is NECorp, but he having to do so at a time in his life when he is unsure of himself - standing, as he is, at that junction between his childish past and adult future.

Highly recommended stuff.

Three more review sales

2010-08-02T21:29:00.003+01:00

I received email this evening that horror website Dark Scribe Magazine will be featuring another three of my reviews.

These are for Robin Becker's Brains: A Zombie Memoir, George Mann's Ghosts of Manhattan and Edward M. Erdelac's Red Sails.

I'll post links when the reviews are live

Review of Robert Edric - The Mermaids

2010-08-01T23:21:00.001+01:00

Early one morning a group of five girls from a small fishing village encounter three mermaids in a cave by the sea's shore. No real interaction occurs between the girls and the mermaids. The girls though are mesmerised by the creatures and begin telling their tale to whoever would listen. They are not believed.

The majority of this book focuses on Sarah Carr, the eldest of the group, and the town magistrate and church minister who are questioning her about these events, trying to get her to admit that the girls had invented the whole thing.

The magistrate is particularly venomous in his questioning, interrogating the girl as though she had committed mass murder. In his eyes Sarah is bringing ridicule down upon the town, especially as she told her tale to a newspaper reporter.

For a fantasy novella there is very little actual fantasy in this tale. Indeed if you consider that the mermaids only appear in the retelling of a tale by the girl at the centre of the story you could say there is none at all. But there is a pervading feel of something otherwordly running throughout the story.

The book concentrates on the reactions of the village-folk to the tales told by the girl. Some react angrily, fearing the embarrassment this could cause their home, others looking for ways to exploit the notoriety and the influx of people who would come to seek out the mermaids in an attempt to reverse some of the decline the town had suffered since its hey-day.

This is not a book for anyone who likes closure in their fiction, or for that matter action. The main events of this novel don't even occur during the timeline of the book - they are just included as testimony. In many ways this is more like the real world. Things happen, people talk about them and then they just fade out of our collective consciousness, leaving the people involved to get on with their lives. I like this in a book.

Having the majority of the piece as a questioning session works well. The barely controlled anger of the town magistrate is very believable. He would be the kind of man who would be incensed at the girls and their tales, and of the fact that the situation has grown beyond his control with Sarah's telling her tale to a reporter.

The "good-cop, bad-cop" routine the magistrate shares with the minister is handled well, better than I would have expected. This too easily could have felt forced, included only for effect, to house the mermaid encounter retelling. This is a good read. It's original, more than I would have believed from a quick read of its blurb and the setting reads true. I've visited declining fishing villages like this in many part of England.

This is good stuff!

Review of Robert Edric - The Mermaids

2010-08-01T23:21:00.000+01:00

This is good stuff!

Review of Nate Kenyon - The Bone Factory

2010-08-01T20:31:00.000+01:00

As we pick up the action, David Pierce is in a hole. Unemployed since a bust up with his previous boss, and with a young family to support, when he is offered a job at a remote hydroelectric project deep in the Canadian forest, he has no option but to accept.

However things are not quiet and peaceful as he might hope in the remote community he and his family are about to join. A local farmer was discovered dead, missing his head, and a young girl and cop have recently disappeared. David, his wife Helen and their daughter Jessie are about to move into Ground Zero, the centre of the killing fields.

There's a quote on the front of this book likening Kenyon's writing to early Stephen King. On the strength of this book I have to agree with this - although maybe it's a little too similar.

A number of the elements of this may be familiar. We have a couple whose marriage has problems, with a slightly weird kid who seems to have some psychic ability, moving into the middle of nowhere in winter. Throw in a bit of mental instability and it sounds a little bit like The Shining doesn't it? So far you might feel there is little about this book that will make you want to read it. Okay, it might not win prizes for originality, but there is much to recommend here.

For once the kid with powers angle manages to be neither creepy (very much overdone in fiction) nor annoying (something I thought the only alternative to creepy). Jessie has premonitions, glimpses of the future that she accepts calmly even when they are portents of great danger.

Kenyon has portrayed the townsfolk of Jackson as a real community, people care about each other here. And he's done this very efficiently, dropping in just enough human caring without drowning you in syrupy goo.

The author has also handled his sub-plots well. Adding in an environmental investigation against a power plant was a risky touch on Kenyon's part. It could so easily have become little more than vitriolic raving - pages of narrative needlessly interrupted just so the author can get on his/her soapbox. Not so here, Kenyon has reeled in any excess he may have been tempted to indulge. There is no story element here that isn't needed; everything contributes to the whole.

Kenyon's writing still is wonderfully simple, unencumbered with over-elaboration, yet still richly descriptive. He sets his scenes simple, without feeling it necessary to describe the room's curtains or the number of trees lining Main Street. He also isn't over the top, he manages to creep you out, and doesn't have to drown you in the red and sticky. Kenyon is not at the top of horror's tree yet, but on the strength of his first three novels, it wouldn't surprise me to see him there soon.

Review of Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

2010-08-01T20:30:00.000+01:00

None of the major elements of this series are new. Vampirism caused by a virus (been there), healing quickly so not worried about being injured (done that), clan wars between different undead factions (seen it), depravity and a disregard for regular standards of human decency whilst still showing signs of a conscience (bought the T-shirt for that one).

But despite these familiar ingredients Huston's books feel fresh. That's possibly because he puts a bit of twist on all of them. Joe Pitt is callous one minute, whilst agonising on whether he should infect his human girlfriend, making her a vampire to save her from dying of AIDS.

The clan wars are spun by introducing a family of ultra-religious Jewish vampires -intent on pursuing their vampiric goals whilst still obeying Jewish law. Throw in a group of misfits who have decided that the best thing to do with vampirism is to stage a freak show. The only difference is that the blood and gore are real, rather than staged, with the performers relying upon fast healing powers to be able to perform the following night.

This is real noir stuff. It has the feel of a typical old-school pulp crime story, right down to the cynical first person narrative. Joe's character matches almost exactly the downtrodden Private Eye. He isn't averse to violence, but equally he is not a guaranteed winner in his fights.

His "job" is to be an enforcer type for "The Society", one of the vampire clans on Manhattan Island. It's not a position he cares overly for, nor one he is that comfortable with. He'd prefer to make his own way, but knows that being independent or rogue would ensure a very short life. The result of this is he is not the most diligent of enforcer. See him backed into a corner and the Society's needs will be the last consideration in his attempt to escape it.

Huston's language is strong but it fits. His vampires are immoral so why would they worry about profanity. His stories are brutal, extremely violent in a casual way. Whereas a lot of modern vampire stories are horror-lite, providing a kind of diet-terror, this is the full-fat, hi-salt variety. These are not books you would want to give your teenage niece who enjoyed Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Bloody, violent and relentless. What more do you want?

Review of Phoebe Wray - Jemma 7729

2010-08-01T20:29:00.000+01:00

Jemma 7729 has the misfortune of being born into a very dystopian North America, one devastated by earlier war. The government of this time has twisted history, using their biased version of to justify their subjugation of women. This causes a serious problem for Jemma, a wilful, independent girl who refuses to step into line and accept the lowly position of being female.

She fights back, refuses to allow boys to bully her, and in one case rape her, and the authorities put the blame squarely on her shoulders - after all she should have allowed the boys to beat her, should have submitted to their naturally aggressive nature and kept quiet.

When she doesn't she is punished, imprisoned in a correction facility facing just the prospect of being altered - chemically stripped of her will and emotions.

Where most would give up, Jemma continues to fight back. She escapes from her prison and begins a campaign of resistance, dedicating herself to destroying as many of the facilities producing the alteration drugs as she can.

In many ways this book reads like a feminist version of George Orwell's 1984, Wray is treading the same boards as Sheri Tepper. But whereas Tepper tells unique stories, full of freshness and unlike anything else you are likely to come across, Wray's work feels familiar.

Originality is one thing this novel just does not have. Several of the elements are so predictable it is unbelievable. However it is very readable, and more over it's readable even if you aren't an overt feminist - or even female. In many ways that puts her one up on Sheri Tepper, I could see this book being enjoyed by teenage readers - definitely not something you could see with a Tepper novel.

Jemma is a very likeable hero. When she is being persecuted you feel the injustice of her situation. When she is struggle against the system you root for her, will her to succeed despite the inevitable futility of her efforts and overwhelming odds against her.

Thankfully Jemma does not have a golden touch. In a book like this it would have been all too easy to make Jemma a superhero, capable of anything. What she is though is determined, and intelligent - and she uses this well, researching and planning before making her every move.

But even with this level of care she does run into trouble on many occasions, escaping some by luck, others by being rescued - she makes good allegiances that serve her well.

The style of this seems ideal for younger readers. The action and violence is described in a very gentle manner, even when the action the author is describing is of a graphic nature. This is further emphasised with the underlying hope running throughout this novel. Even when things seem futile Jemma never gives up, never accepts her fate - not matter how grim the situation. Not bad; I wouldn't call it brilliant, but not bad!

Review of Simon Clark - Ghost Monster

2010-07-29T23:17:00.000+01:00

Pel Minton is a young American woman with a mission. She wants to see the world, working her way around the globe. Six months into her trip and she's got as far as England and is still there, working as a field archaeologist. She has decided, however, that her current dig, at a cemetery in the coastal village of Crowdale will be her last before moving on.

What she hasn't counted on though, is the Murrain curse. Centuries earlier Crowdale was terrorised by Justice Murrain and his army of the insane. Murrain was eventually defeated and his ghost and those of his Battle Men are trapped in a mystical prison controlled by a mosaic in the family mausoleum. The town is safe as long as the mosaic remains intact.

Unfortunately, though, the cemetery is falling into the sea, a victim of rapid coastal erosion and the spirits of Murrain and his followers are beginning to break out. So, unless the archaeologists can convince the authorities that their site is worthy of protection, the necessary coastal defences to prevent the mausoleum from being destroyed will not be built.

The setting and set up of this book are superb. The town has a wonderfully complex history. It's protectors, the Murrain family, descendants of the former town persecutor, are reviled as outsiders by people unaware of the efforts to keep the town safe. The myths of the "Ghost Monster", the children's nickname for the mosaic itself is endearing and totally believable.

The characters too are, for the most part, very real. Okay the bad guys, the insane Battle Men, are stereotypes for the most part - but in their role as the big bad, this is not detrimental. Pel is a good enough lead character. She's not going to be memorable in the way that some horror characters would be - Mother Abigail anyone? But she's real. You can sympathise with her. As you can with the archaeological site director and the present day Murrain family members.

But it's the story itself that doesn't totally live up to its part of the bargain. It's a good set up. Possession is a disturbing horror concept and Clark handles it well. But the book's progress towards its climax feels, at times, somewhat laboured.

The subplot, with the personal vendetta of one family against Jacob Murrain, after an event decades earlier, may be necessary to trigger certain elements of the main plot, but it doesn't ring true. It feels a little forced, necessary only to speed up the climax. The three characters involved stand out as very one-dimensional when compared to the main roles.

This book is not one of Clark's best. To find out what he can really do you should try Darkness Demands or Vampyrrhic. But it's certainly entertaining. And it's setting in an archaeological dig and its plot use of coastal erosion does make it at least a little bit different from the norm. Shame about the title though.

Review of Mike Resnick - Starship Mercenary

2010-07-29T23:16:00.000+01:00

You know what you will get with a Mike Resnick novel - a galaxy-spanning backdrop, larger than life characters and above all else action. Resnick is not an author who will spend time convincing you of his scientific credentials - you are not going to need to wade through page after page of technical specifications. Nor are you going to receive exquisitely woven intricacy - rich background detail is not Resnick's speciality. After all when you think about it, both of these things would get in the way of the action. And the action is superb.

Wilson Cole and the crew of the former Republic Navy Starship the Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy R) are continuing their attempts to make a life for themselves on the Inner Frontier, outside the reach of the Republic. This is not easy; Cole and his crew are military men and women. They have always lived ordered lives, ruled by discipline and law. The inner frontier, however, is a much different place.

Having tried their hand at ethical piracy - and realised such an endeavour is plainly impossible - this volume sees them becoming mercenaries, although still working within a strong sense of right versus wrong.

This new line of business sees them protecting worlds from the threats of warlords, exposing cheats in casinos and rescuing a fence from incarceration on an alien - all of which Cole achieves using a minimum of force and a maximum of guile. However his ethics over choosing which contracts to accept beings him into conflict with the Valkyrie (or Val as she prefers to be called), a former pirate who joined the Teddy R in the previous book.

When Cole refuses to accept a commission as part of a warlord's armada intent on wiping out a world refusing to pay tribute, Val is incensed (as well as drunk) and heads off to join the mercenary fleet on her own. It's a decision that sees Val and Cole on opposite sides when her warlord new boss and former captain find themselves on opposing sides following an argument in a casino.

In similar fashion to the previous volume Resnick shows the difficulties of trying to operate ethically in a lawless frontier - after all morality applies as loosely to a mercenary as it does to a pirate. Cole, however, has a very strong morale streak and he is determined to apply this to his new professions - despite these attempts seeming very oxymoronic and impossible to fulfil.

Cole as a central character is superb. He is an idealist in many ways, but a realist in his expectations. At the start of this series, whilst he was still a Navy officer, he relieved his captain of command to prevent her from destroying a world and killing millions of sentient beings. He did this fully aware that the Navy would not agree with his actions and that he was heading for a court-martial for mutiny. But he did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do. That one thing sums up his personality.

But this is not a book to succeed or fail on the strength of a single character. His crew is also full of wonderfully real and wonderfully over-the-top characters. Cole's second officer, Forrice (or Four-Eyes) is a sex-crazed alien with an evil sense of humour. Security Chief Sharon Blacksmith is almost Big Brother on legs. David Copperfield, an alien infatuated with the works of Charles Dickens who dresses as an English Victorian gentleman. Val, the redhead giantess former pirate who can outfight, out-drink and out-sex any man. And that's to name just a few.

Resnick writes a kind of fiction that should appeal to fans of Captain Kirk and Arnie-style sf-action movies. But don't think means it is brainless. Resnick delivers morality tales in lawless realms complete with romantic outlaws and much derring-do.

It's not one for the fan of great prose, nor of hard science fiction. But if you want to be entertained and don't care about the (currently-thought) scientific impossibility of faster-than-light travel, the difficulties of maintaining an empire spanning hundreds of thousands of worlds or just how your ship's shields actually work then there are few better than Mike Resnick.

Review of Ray Garton - Bestial

2010-07-29T23:14:00.000+01:00

In horror movie-land sequels are pretty much a par for the course. You make a good horror film, it seems it only makes sense to go back and milk the idea a second time. In the world of horror books (note - not dark fantasy or paranormal romance, I mean HORROR) this has been less common.

I'm not saying they don't exist - Graham Masterton's Manitou and James Herbert's Rats both started series - and sure you get books set in a repeated environs - take Gary Braunbeck's Cedar Hill short stories and novels, and Stephen King's version of Maine. But straight sequels, picking up the action from the end of the prior book or soon after, haven't filled the shelves in bookstores.

I guess part of the reason for this is the rather final end that most horror books have. Zombies are destroyed, vampires staked, demons exorcised, witches burned etc, etc. Okay, Dracula can be resurrected over and over but mostly you get to the end and that's it.

Recently though this seems to be changing. L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims have begun a series featuring secret British Government Department 18. Bryan Smith followed up his 2005 debut novel House of Blood with Queen of Blood, and Mary SanGiovanni followed her debut The Hollower with Found You.

Ray Garton has continued this trend in producing a sequel to his 2008 werewolf novel Ravenous, as well as an indirect sequel to earlier novels with the re-appearance of paranormal investigators Gavin Keoph and Karen Moffett. Ravenous is a good choice for a sequel. Its ending was wide open, the sheriff of Californian town Big Rock had been killed, along with the werewolf hunter and the werewolves had won!

We pick up the action with the lead werewolf, Irving Taggart, having taken over as sheriff, intent on taking total control of Big Rock. Our investigators have once again accepted an assignment from horror author and weird-stuff aficionado Martin Burgess and arrive in Big Rock to uncover the truth - unaware just what they about to walk into. Fortunately for them they have allies, as we discover that not every werewolf is happy with their transformation or with the intentions of pack leader Sheriff Taggart, and one or two of the unchanged townsfolk are finally determined to fight back.

There are some nasty bits in this book. Werewolf babies are born fast, strong and feral and very, very hungry, which leads to a rather pleasingly bloody and violent little birth-scene in a hospital ER - and it has an all-action, no-holds-barred gorefest of an ending.

But there is one aspect of this novel that is likely to upset some more than the flesh-ripping or graphic sex, and that's the author's treatment of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Garton was raised in this church and it's plain virtually from the start he is not a fan. It's a shame really for, though the church made a good centre for some of the action, the scathing tone adopted for these sections does distract, and could cause some to avoid reading it at all.

It's not perfect. It has flaws. But the writing is strong, the horror stronger! Garton has a great knack of writing extreme horror and strong sex (often combined). I definitely want the next Garton novel.

Review of Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine

2010-07-29T23:09:00.000+01:00

Dandelion Wine in many ways is a coming of age story for its most frequently occurring character. The book starts with the start of the summer of 1928. Doug Spalding is twelve; his younger brother Tom is ten. Doug has made an important and quite revelatory discovery about himself - he is alive! And he intends to celebrate and relish every minute of it and of this summer.

Unlike many of Bradbury's books this is not science fiction or horror, or at least not overtly. There are some hair-raising moments and more than one of the stories concern death - even going as far as Green Town having its own serial killer.

One of the most wonderful imaginings in this book concerns and old civil war soldier, and his tale telling, the rapt attentions of the young listening to stories so far removed from their present they could almost be in another country. But this is far from the only highlight, we read of friendships, hopes and dreams, treasured items, and above all regular folk adapting to changing times.

Having a 12-year-old boy as central character helps this feeling of change. Doug is starting to see not everything is eternal and unchanging - a point emphasised by his taking the final ever trolley bus journey to the end of the line and back - with the old track-bound cars being replaced with regular buses. But not all is negative.

Yes, there is a sense of the inevitability of change, but change that can bring new opportunities, new adventures as much as end to the ways of old.

The stories are like spinning threads, weaving gently across a summer in a small American town, carrying the characters in an out of the focus and allowing the readers glimpses of their ordinary yet magickal lives.

New Short Story Sale

2010-07-29T20:49:00.001+01:00

Demon Minds have just sent an acceptance for my short story "Acting's a Hell of a Job". It will be appearing in their Halloween issue.

If you want to check out their site you can find it at - http://www.demonminds.com/

Review of Will Elliott - The Pilo Family Circus

2010-07-26T23:38:00.000+01:00

There are a number of things that children love but adults can find creepy, disturbing or just downright scary. Think of puppet shows, balloon animals, ice-cream truck jingles and worst of all clowns.

One night on his way home from work Jamie almost runs over a clown standing oblivious to his surroundings in the middle of a Brisbane street. He thinks little of it. The following night he encounters more of them, all seemingly out of it. When Jamie recovers a small bag one of them drops - believing it contained drugs as they had to have been on something - without realising it, he has put himself in great danger. For now the clowns are aware of him.

And now he has a simple choice - pass an audition to join the circus or die. Unfortunately for him he passes the audition.

This particular circus is a little stranger than most, more sinister and definitely more dangerous. Jamie, now re-christened JJ the Clown, finds himself a member of an antagonistic troupe. There's none of the famous carnival camaraderie; this is more like a civil war with face-paint and big tops.

It's also not your typical circus of trickery, sleight-of-hand and fakery. The freaks are real (the show has a matter manipulator to create them); the fortune-teller can actually see the future and has a crystal ball she uses to spy on the carnie folk. And the clowns try their best to inflict injuries on each other during the show - relying on the magickal powers of their face-paint to prevent them dying and heal their injuries quickly.

But this protection comes at a price as Jamie finds out - the greasepaint might save his life but it makes him a different person - the sadistically violent, uncaring and self-centred JJ, perfect for this clown posse. He also finds the circus's true purpose. Enter through these gates and you wont find yourself losing money on the stalls and you needn't worry about your wallet going missing. This circus steals souls.

This book is bizarre - it's almost as you might imagine a collaboration between Chuck Palahniuk and Salvador Dali, providing they are supplied with enough hallucinogenics and amphetamines to keep them going. Yet is more than just surreal brutality.

To go with this weirdness and mayhem Elliott has even managed to supply a pretty decent plot and some well-rounded characters - okay well-rounded in a kind of slightly out-of-focus, fluorescent, rabid-dog manner but still they're there.

And it's the interactions of two of these characters that provides the books highlight. Jamie and his psychopathic clown alter ego JJ are battling for control of their body and their place within the circus - each trying to gain the upper hand.

Elliott's other great achievement here is that it all holds together. It would have been easier to allow the weirdness to get away, for the violence to destroy all in front of it. But it didn't, it's coherent - as well as splendidly absurd in just the right way. Now I need to go for a lie down.

Review of Chris Roberson - The End of the Century

2010-07-26T23:37:00.000+01:00

Strand One - Galaad, a young man from Wales, has been having visions of a woman in white trapped in a glass tower on a remote island. He journeys to Caer Llundain (London) to tell of his visions to Artor (Arthur to you and me). Artor believes his visions to be true and organises a quest to rescue the woman in white.

Strand Two - Sandford Blank is a Victorian Private Investigator with a mysterious shady past. (Yes he does sound a little like Sherlock Holmes.) Together with his associate Miss Roxanne Bonaventure he is called in to investigate a series of murders in London threatening to disrupt the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria.

Strand Three - Alive Fell is a teenage American who suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy. She's run away to London, following clues given to her in hallucinations during epileptic attacks. Once there she encounters a former spy from a secret British Intelligence organisation MI8 - tasked with pursuing supernatural foes. She also discovers that there could be some truth to the hallucinations that compelled her to come to England.

The most impressive part of this segmented novel is that the three parts are equal. No single part rises above the others. Usually when reading this kind of book one segment is noticeably more enjoyable than the others. As it's human nature is to want the good bits there is a natural tendency to rush (or skip) the others. No such worries here - this book is remarkably well balanced.

Roberson has also managed to write each strand in a slightly different voice, making slight changes to the language to suit the period. But it's not done to excess. Blank and Bonaventure's diction is the wonderfully self-restricted, clipped prose of Victoriana. The Arthurian tale is told in a restrained heroic tone - everything measured against masculine bravado; and the modern tale is more edgy, more a case of fighting a system as well as a definite enemy.

But the book has one or two flaws. Firstly right from the very first page there is an all too obvious inevitability that the three story strands will join together. This knowledge does hamper the pleasure of reading. You find yourself waiting for those links to arrive, and doing so does distract. But this is minor, and some might find it pleasurable to spot these links.

But the main problem is the switching between the threads. It's jerky - especially as each section appears in the same exact order - Arthurian into Victorian into modern day before beginning the loop again.

When you do return to each in turn you pick the tale up exactly where you left it. If these are linked tales there should be more of a feeling of progress across the strands despite their differing time periods. It’s slow, hard going.

I've read longer books. I've read books that took longer to get to the action. But these gave more. If I've moved forward so little plot-wise after two hundred pages, I want to have enjoyed some wonderful, deep character and world building. Here you get little of that, because in reality you are only seventy pages into each tale.

It's a shame, for Roberson has created fine characters. And his plot, once you get to it, is not bad. It has intrigue, adventure, touches of the supernatural and magickal, a little humour and a definite David versus Goliath vibe.

So, I have advice for anyone thinking of reading this book. Do! But I would recommend your reading the first twenty-eight chapters of this book as three separate linear tales. That is start from the beginning and read every chapter headed "Twilight" (Arthurian) until you run out of book. Start again and read all the "Jubilee" (Holmesian) chapters (except chapter thirty), and then the "Millennium" (present day) chapters.

When you have done this then begin reading what should have been the fourth separate linked short story of the book at chapter twenty-nine and read to the end. I have a feeling it will be a lot more satisfying that way. A pity it's not how it was presented.

Review of Brian Keene - Castaways

2010-07-26T23:35:00.002+01:00

Okay - I'm going to post another couple (maybe three) this evening. Here's the first...

Many matches can be considered as made in heaven - strawberries and cream, hot dogs and mustard to name but two. Brian Keene has introduced another - Reality-TV show contestants on a tropical island and a tribe of previously unknown pygmy cannibals.

You just can't go wrong with a combination like that. Except that is if you are a contestant, cut off from your only means of escape by a tropical storm that has grounded the helicopters. Fortunately amongst the ranks of stereotypically vapid wannabe celebrities are one or two people you will actually like - and feel may have a chance of surviving the show.

This book is well balanced. It has a great concept, an element of gore (although not overdone), a few good scares and a band of disparate powerless underdogs facing seemingly insurmountable odds and a good touch of humour. It has its flaws, a pointless subplot concerning terrorism, and unnecessary character development of the some of the ingredients on the pygmy's main course. But despite its faults, this is a well-crafted entertaining horror.

Book Details

ISBN: 08439-6089-2

Page Count: 285

Price: $7.99

Format: Paperback

Release: February 2009

Publisher: Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing)

Webpage:

http://www.dorchesterpub.com/Dorch/productdetail.cfm?product_id=2294&L1=1

A horror film top tip

2010-07-25T22:37:00.003+01:00

This weekend I watched a relatively new release horror film that I feel I need to mention to anyone who happens to read this blog.

The film has a really fun title - Backwoods Bloodbath and a cool silhouetted scythe on the cover. Ok, the plot is a little familiar - group of city folk head to a remote cabin in the woods in a region where there's your stereotypical local legend (can't really call it an urban legend in the middle of nowhere) and encounter a mad man (yeah, the one the locals went on about) armed with a scythe who proceeds to start killing.

But an overused plot is nothing a well made horror film can't overcome. Good directing, halfways decent acting (screaming doesn't have to be Oscar winning level to be effective), and some kick-ass effects and you can have a really good gory scarefest out of this much-used scenario - after all they wouldn't keep using it if it didn't work.

However this film isn't all the things you might hope - and certainly not what I hoped. I sat down to watch this with a couple of friends on Friday night hoping to have fun both with the film and at the expense of it - half the fun is shouting at the characters after all. But what we got was a serious appalling movie. Badly acted, badly directed, abysmal dialogue and ludicrously inserted, seriously bad effects. I mean this was just plain bad.

I don't normally like writing scathing reviews of films. I try to find something good in every film I see. Problem is with this film I just couldn't. Please avoid.

Review 3 of L.H. Maynard's and M.P.N. Sims's Black Cathedral

2010-07-25T22:36:00.000+01:00

In case you haven't heard of buzzword bingo - here are the rules. The players enter a business meeting with a card with a number of buzzwords written on it. Then these words and phrases are crossed out as they as spoken in the meeting (but not by the person whose card features the word). The first person to complete their card wins.

With this book you could almost play X-Files Buzzword Bingo -

Secret Government Organisation - check!

Psychic Powers - got that one too!

Ley lines - and that!

Big Brother Style Corporations - on a roll now!

Mysterious deaths on a deserted island and a satanic cult - you better call the scorer over now. I think I have a winning card.

But what prize might it have won me? Well you would be forgiven for thinking a book combining all of these different plot elements (and I haven't named them all by any means) would be confusing at best - downright unreadable at worst.

Well, it actually isn't that bad. Despite the myriad overused plot hooks, the stereotypical characters (can you think of a maverick lead investigator at odds with his boss?) Maynard and Sims have actually produced something entertaining.

Essentially the story is this. A team building exercise on a remote Scottish island goes wrong - badly wrong. All the group members suffer gruesome deaths, and their bodies are never found. Nor for that matter is the rescue helicopter.

Their employer - a large US based multinational that feels equal parts Orwell and Occult - wants to know what happened and has tasked Department 18 (a secret British government body who investigate the paranormal) with uncovering the truth. And they have one condition - the expedition must include Robert Carter - even though he's just been fired after years of insubordination.

And so off the group go to their date with destiny (or at least the plot climax). Not everyone is going to survive (that's a given in horror novels) and there's the inevitable twist as the action starts to gear up. This book really is that formulaic in many, many ways.

But for its faults there is a lot to recommend this. For one Department 18 is interesting. It takes the X-Files vibe further. Its investigators are all psychic in one way or another. They have great toys - these guys are like a room full of spooky James Bonds - possibly without the martial arts skills though.

This is intended to be the first book in a series. Considering the amount they've crammed in here - this gives me visions of D18's next case featuring a lost tribe of half-alien, ghostly werewolves and their war with vampiric sorcerers who have taken control of the internet in a fiendish plan to hypnotise the whole world into following their diabolic ways. Whatever the authors pick for the second book I definitely want to read it.

Book Details

ISBN: 08439-6199-6

Page Count: 287

Price: $7.99

Format: Paperback

Release: January 2009

Publisher: Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing)

Webpage:

http://www.dorchesterpub.com/Dorch/productdetail.cfm?product_ID=2272&L1=1

Review 2 of L.H. Maynard's and M.P.N. Sims's Black Cathedral

2010-07-25T22:35:00.001+01:00

What do you get if you throw a secret government ghost-hunting organisation, psychic powers, ley lines, a maverick investigator who hates his boss, sinister multinational corporations, satanic cults, a secret Vatican order and a remote, deserted Scottish island into a pot and stir.

Well by rights it should be an ungodly mess, a disjointed novel crammed to overflowing with so many overused dark fiction stereotypes you wonder how they managed to close the book's covers. It almost reads like a season trailer for the X-Files.

Somehow though Maynard and Sims have managed to make all these pieces fit together into a cohesive whole. Not perfect by any means but it is entertaining. The characters are engaging; the plot is well paced; the organisation (Department 18) has sufficient promise to sustain the promised series and the cult at the crux of the plot is original enough to keep your interest. Not a bad start - let's see where book two goes.

Book Details

ISBN: 08439-6199-6

Page Count: 287

Price: $7.99

Format: Paperback

Release: January 2009

Publisher: Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing)

Webpage:

http://www.dorchesterpub.com/Dorch/productdetail.cfm?product_ID=2272&L1=1

Review 1 of L.H. Maynard's and M.P.N. Sims's Black Cathedral

2010-07-25T22:31:00.003+01:00

This next one is a bit odd. I read this book when it came out and wrote three reviews, each targetted at a different magazine. Guess how many of them sold - yep, none. So here's the first. I'll post the second and third straight afterwards...

---------------------------------------

Most of the elements of the book will seem familiar - even too familiar. We have a secret government department operated by psychics, all of whom are feel as though they've been dragged out of 1960s-90s TV spy/cop shows and liberally dosed with special mind-powers, investigating paranormal events - not exactly a fresh idea.

Add to this a powerful loose-cannon top operative with a knack of pissing off his boss - a boss who finally had cause to fire him only to see him brought back for one last mission.

We also have mysterious secret religious organisations, including a satanic cult and a secret Vatican order, and a remote island location, which has been the centre of spooky goings-on that just happens to be at the convergence of a number of ley lines. It sounds like you could have put all the elements from Hammer House of Horror into a hat and drawn out half a dozen to make the plot.

But oddly enough it's not a bad read. The characters might be overly familiar but they're comfortable. You don't find yourself irritated by them - well except for their grouchy boss, but you are supposed to find him annoying.

The tale focuses on an investigation by the secret British government Department 18. Robert Carter is the fired maverick investigator. His association with the department seems at an end when his partner goes missing during an investigation, until the events on Kulsay Island require his special skills.

Kulsay Island, off the coast of Scotland, is deserted. No one has lived there in decades. Perfect territory for the kind of team building exercises one American organisation wants its employees to undertake. Unfortunately this is one island whose spooky reputation has substance and their people all disappear. The corporation's CEO wants Department 18 to investigate, and insists Carter is on the team.

For all its lack of originality this is wonderfully entertaining. For one thing the authors have managed to bring the myriad of threads together into a cohesive whole. For all its pick & mix plot makeup this holds together. The investigators manage to step out of their PC all shades of the demographic stereotypes, become realistic individuals and gel as a team.

The plot is paced well. It's not action from the get-go, but builds tension gradually towards the very effective climax. Here the authors have been very clever. The bad guy is not revealed from the start. We follow the investigation in real time, as it were - we're slowly drip fed snippets of information as the investigators make discoveries and deductions. So as their levels of fear and excitement build so do ours.

Maynard and Sims have also managed to set the groundwork what could become a very entertaining series of Department 18 paranormal investigations, while not sacrificing the action and excitement of this first story. I have a feeling this could be a great series. I can't wait to read more!

Review of Zoran Živković - The Bridge

2010-07-25T22:29:00.002+01:00

This is a difficult book to fully describe. If you'll indulge me I believe I know the best way of summarising The Bridge.

Imagine a drunken conversation between Franz Kafka and Salvador Dali, one in which Dali challenges Kafka to write a book based on a few compulsory elements suggested by the painter. Firstly each of the three linked stories must start with an impossible encounter (a man meets himself, a woman meets a dead former neighbour and a teenage girl meets her future son). Each story must feature an antagonist with red hair, a mismatched item of clothing, a pursuit (mostly on foot) and all must end at the same place - on the bridge of the book's title. Oh, and nothing in any of the stories must make any real sense, although the main characters must, in the end, accept everything.

That just about sums this book up. It gives a better overview than a direct explanation of the plot could.

For all its weirdness it is beautifully written - Zoran Živković's prose is always elegant. Even when his plot is this obscure his narrative flows wonderfully well. There are few authors who could sustain your interest when each tale can be viewed as a series of increasingly bizarre, random events. A man entering a brothel to eat flowers, playing a version of ten-pin bowling in a church with wine bottle for pins and a young man in a bath full of shoes are typical of the scenes you will encounter in this book. There are stranger.

He is also playing with the structure of the short story in this book. His are not the traditional tales of exposition into conflict rising to climax then denouement. He often begins his tales somewhere in the middle of nowhere, then meanders through a surrealistic fantasy analogue of our own world before dropping us off at a point some time later, not necessarily at a recognisable end point, having allowed us to share his unique world.

Don't start reading a Živković book expecting to be told the "whys" of the situation. You will rarely get the answers you want. In this book the encounters just happen - treat the fact a man can meet an alternate version of himself as reasonable and don't go looking for an explanation. Go with it!

It's worth the effort. Because if you can accept the variation from traditional story structure you will feel enriched by your visit, and you will certainly marvel at the writer's imaginings - even when you are struggling to understand how someone who dreams this stuff up is not in an asylum. But for all his flights of whimsical fantasy Živković's tales are very grounded.

The tales work so well because of their focus - the involvement and motives of the lead characters. The man in the first story follows himself for purely selfish reasons - he is afraid that the copy might cause him embarrassment. The woman in the second follows her dead neighbour out of a feeling of concern, the girl in the third out of a bizarre maternal instinct.

Živković has made these people real and, through them and their bafflement at the events they witness, we can connect with the story. Also when the tales end - usually abruptly - their acceptance of events allow us to accept them also.

This is the kind of fiction fans of David Lynch's more offbeat moments would enjoy. This is Twin Peaks on acid, dream-sequence style fiction - all overlaid with a very European sensibility. In short it is extraordinary. To anyone who has read Živković before this probably comes as little surprise. He is like a modern gritty urban Lewis Carroll.

His Alice is less likely to fall down a rabbit hole to find her fantasy world than enter through a shabby looking doorway in a seedy brothel. But for its extra dimension of edginess over Carroll's work, Živković has the same innocent whimsy. His characters may live in a world of murder, theft and deception but it's seemingly kept at arm's length - it never touches them directly.

Okay it might not be the best idea to be a friend of a Živković lead character - they can have a high mortality rate but their grisly, and usually bizarre, ends are remote from the action and not described in excessive detail. For his protagonists Life will just carry on getting slowly more and more unreal.

Živković has been an active writer in his native Yugoslavia / Serbia since the 1980s and has been a publisher, academic and even written and hosted a television show. Outside the Balkans though he has remained unknown. Thankfully in recent years translations of his work have seen publication both in the USA and UK from a variety of speciality presses.

The nature of these presses though results in his books being published in limited editions so few people will be reading his work in English. His work deserves to be read, but it is likely his books only ever see publication in the small presses and Zoran Živković will remain the greatest writer you've never heard of.

Review of Paul Collins - Quentaris: The Spell of Undoing

2010-07-25T22:29:00.001+01:00

So here's the problem. You have a successful young adult fantasy series that's run to more than two dozen titles. How do you keep it fresh? After all, even in a city as rich as Quentaris, there are only so many stories you can tell - surely? That's the dilemma that faced Paul Collins and Michael Pryor - the creators and editors of the Quentaris novel series.

Well their idea is just about the most original I've ever come across. Quentaris has been ripped out of this world and thrown into the rift-maze to end up… - well no one knows where. Different! Oh, and just to make it more fun, the city is now equipped with sails so it can now navigate through the various other worlds, meeting other city-ships as they go.

Brilliant surreal, it's like a Terry Gilliam young adult novel. Quentaris travels see them encounter dragons and pirate cities (the former helping, the latter attacking) and generally trying to find a way to adapt to their new environs.

As a counterpoint to this grand scale main story Collins has provided, interspersed with the city's ordeal, a very personal story of struggle. Tab Vidler is an orphan, determined to make it as magician. You just know she is going to be important in Quentaris's survival.

This is quite simply wonderful. Enough of the old Quentaris remains - the city is still the city we know, the people are the same people we've read about before but everything is different. Collins and Pryor should be applauded for this. Not only is it one of the most inspired of directions I've ever seen an established series taken, but to make such a change without it feeling forced is commendable.

They've given the city a new life and set the stage for a whole new, and eager anticipated (by me), new set of adventures whilst producing one of the best books in the series so far. This could have been so easily a "necessary" book, one that was not all that enjoyable to read but needed to give the subsequent titles somewhere to roam. It's not. This is great.

Long may Quentaris reign!

Book Details

Ford Street Publishing (and Imprint of Hybrid Publishers)

http://www.hybridpublishers.com.au/fordst.html

186 pages

ISBN: 978-1-876462-53-6

March 2008

Review of Graham Masterton - Death Mask

2010-07-25T22:24:00.001+01:00

Graham Masterton has built a reputation over the past three decades for hard-hitting, easy-to-read horror novels. He might not be talked about in the same breath as Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but he's reliable. You know you are not going to get a bad book if it has Masterton's name on the cover.

And here, that's exactly what you get - a book that's not bad. It's got the usual touches of Masterton horror violence - just enough to satisfy without descending into seemingly endless descriptions of limbs being ripped off. The characters are pleasant, fully rounded. And the plot is reasonably interesting, reasonably well paced - building nicely from an easy start to a well-structured conclusion.

But it's nothing more. Masterton has done better than this - much better. The plot crux is a little too obvious. If you start with an artist, Molly Sawyer, drawing a rose that miraculously comes to life you just know that her drawing a sketch of a murderer responsible for the brutal slaying of a man and serious injury of a young woman is not going to go well.

So when the attacks increase, and the police seem unable to find the killer, it is a little obvious that perhaps, just perhaps, Molly's sketch has also, like her roses, left the page and become alive. Add to this a mother-in-law who's a bit witchy (tarot cards always in hand) and a husband who's the stereotype of scepticism and this seems a little lazy.

That said though, it's not bad! For it's faults this book is easy to read. It is easy to sympathise with the good guys, easy to want them to somehow defeat the undefeatable evil. It has enough slight twists along the way, a small surprise or two just to keep you on your toes, and a feel good ending.

It may, on some levels, be a bit of a paint-by-numbers style formulaic horror novel, but Masterton's skill for horror and the ease of reading of his prose have made this a relaxing, entertaining read - a good pick for lazy summer days when something more challenging wouldn't suit the mood.

Review of Bryan Smith - Soultaker

2010-07-25T22:21:00.001+01:00

At first glance this book might seem worrying for a true horror fan. We have a coven of witches based in an American high school. It sounds like it might be heading for the Twilight with broomsticks territory. You know the kind of thing - three hundred pages of teen angst and rampaging hormones with occasional glimpses of the supernatural thrown in.

Thankfully though, this isn't. This is horror, real horror. It might be set in a school, but these aren't girly-girl witches trying to use their powers for good, and worrying whether the Quarterback looked at them in class. This teenage coven is pure evil, no doubt about it. They are intent on using their powers to control and kill.

The story itself is not exactly original. Myra Lewis is the new girl in town, the demonic coven leader and alluring goth-girl (a bit stereotypical having a goth witch). Within weeks of arriving in school she's recruited many of the in-crowd girls, and they've began terrorising the rest of the school - including the staff.

Against her is Jake McAllister, back in town to stop his brother his brother throwing his life away - and totally unaware his brother Trey is in the thrall of Myra. Together with a few new-made allies - the usual batch of outsiders that end up fighting bad guys in these books - Jack determines to defeat the forces of darkness.

So in pure story terms this is a case of been there already. But this is not about originality. This book gives you every element you could want in a horror tale - pure unadulterated evil, a hopelessly outgunned, mismatched bunch of good guys fighting seeming insurmountable odds, gore, sex, some plot twists and then some more gore.

Books like this succeed because they don't give you time to stop and look around. It doesn't take long to get into the action - within a handful of pages Smith takes us into a sex magick ritual in a forest clearing. This sets the pace for the book as a whole, for throughout its three hundred pages there is no pause, no unnecessary character building background tales to break up the (blood-) flow. This is horror as it used to be, as it should be.

Bryan Smith is one of a growing band of newer horror writers that are pumping the genre full of gallons of fresh blood. Reading his books makes you realise why you read horror in the first place.

Review of Jenny Mounfield - The Ice-Cream Man

2010-07-25T00:33:00.000+01:00

Three school friends decide to get their own back on the Ice-Cream Man after he deliberately drives away from them despite having seen them. That, they thought, was that. However the Ice-Cream Man has other ideas and he begins to make their lives hell, repeatedly passing by their homes, playing his tune, sending emails and calling their mobiles - always identifying himself as the Grim Reaper.

This book plays right into one of my pet hates. I have always felt ice cream vans to be creepy. These vehicles come into your neighbourhood playing a distorted, out-of-tune, monotone version of a typical children's song. No one bats an eyelid when they appear, and there is an instant trust to the person in the brightly painted van. Just the kind of thing to make a wonderful horror tale.

This has some of the elements of great boys-own fiction. The three lead characters are such a disparate bunch, each with their own problems. Rick is still mourning the death of his father, and trying to cope with his mother falling apart - spending much of her time passed out drunk. Marty is wheelchair bound, and fighting his mother's desire to molly-coddle him and stop him being a teenager. And Aaron is the fat kid, bullied by his older stepbrother.

These are not stereotypes though - we're not talking dial-a-troubled-kid clones, no just-add-water instant-mix characters. Mounfield makes you invest in these three kids; she involves you in their world and their fears.

The author has managed to walk a fine line. There is nothing in this book that I would make it unsuitable for younger readers. Indeed the bonding of these three, all somewhat broken, teenagers and their determination to overcome their handicaps and beat back anything life throws at them is admirable and, to a degree, inspiring. For adult readers she has managed to make you feel what your fourteen-year-old self would in the characters' places, bringing together the us-versus-them feeling kids have when dealing with their parents, and the unease around authority figures (adults in other words).

The horror element in this book is more an undercurrent of dread. It's not a book to pick if you enjoy hack-n-slash; our ice-cream seller is not a flesh eating zombie or a demon wishing to rearrange your limbs. This book will unsettle rather than gross you out. It plays on your fears that someone is watching you or out to get you and that no one will believe you. And it will definitely make you think twice when you next hear that reedy siren blaring out Teddy Bear's Picnic, Turkey in the Straw or, as in this case Pop Goes the Weasel — 'Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle…'

Ford Street Publishing 2008

http://www.fordstreetpublishing.com/

Review of W. D. Gagliani - Wolf's Gambit

2010-07-25T00:32:00.001+01:00

At first glance this book didn't fill me with much hope. Stories where the protagonist is a supernatural being fighting against their beastly nature and attempting to make amends as a detective or police officer are hardly groundbreaking. Okay, it's normally a vampire cop but it's not a great leap having a werewolf cop.

Add into it the almost-cringeworthy name of Dominic Lupo (yes, lupo is the Italian word for wolf) and the fact I hadn't read the first book and this was feeling like it was going to be a pretty dismal read. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I feared.

Nick Lupo is a Milwaukee detective and a werewolf. Every full moon he leaves the city and heads for the wilds of the Eagle River reservation lands where he can unleash his Creature in safety. Or he could, for members of the tribe's council are being murdered, ripped apart in what seems to be an animal attack, and Lupo has to accept the fact that he might not be the only one of his kind.

Sheriff Tom Arnow is an in-comer, a city cop looking for a quiet life in the sticks. Under pressure from the Mayor he needs to stop the murders before every member of the council have been killed.

There isn't all that much to this story, its characters or its setting, that is in any way original. You could pick elements from TV shows like the X-Files, Buffy and Forever Knight, mix it all up and produce a story similar to this. But I can guarantee it wouldn’t be as good.

Gagliani has somehow overcome the book's seemingly insurmountable issues and produced a decent read. Lupo, his girlfriend the reservation doctor, Arnow the sheriff and Sam Waters the tribal elder are all endearing.

The bad guys are not totally one-dimensional, killing-machine monsters. They have personality and their own inter-relational issues - the tension over Alpha-status within the pack is a very nice touch. And the element of mystery about their employer and his unknown motives are all wonderfully done.

These, together with an easy writing style, succeed in making this a fun book, one that can be read independently of the series' first title Wolf's Trap (you can take my word in this, I haven't read it). It's not a book that will set your world on fire. Possibly not even one you will remember overly a year after you've read it. But it is one that will entertain. And sometimes that's exactly what you want from a book.

More Reviews - Rio Youers - Old Man Scratch

2010-07-25T00:21:00.002+01:00

Johnny Gregson's dreams of a quiet retirement with his wife in their new country home are quickly ended when he encounters his new next door neighbour, Scratch Clayton. Scratch is a cantankerous grumpy old man who seems to take pleasure from turning the lives of the incomers into an absolute hell.

Nothing he does is illegal as such. And little is violent, even though Scratch, despite his age, is still an imposing and intimidating figure. But his actions build insidiously making it seem as though Scratch's every pore oozes hatred.

At the same time Johnny is beginning to notice that something is not quite right about the bend in the road hear their houses. Being a blind corner, road kill is commonplace. At least once every week Johnny finds himself dragging the remains of another creature to the roadside from in front of his driveway. But he notices that shortly after he does so, the bodies disappear. Not in the kind of way you would expect carrion eaters to gradually eat away at the rotting remains, but totally - as though they were never there.

This is not an out and out horror story. In many ways it is a simple story of the struggle between two old men who just plain don't get on. And in that it might remind you of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon's typical on-screen, antagonistic relationship. But there is a strong undercurrent of something not quite right running under the surface.

This short tale (the book clocks in at just 57 pages) is wonderfully atmospheric. It relies on spookiness rather out and out gore for its horror credentials and when its violent scenes do arrive, they are short and not overdone for shock value. It's good that this is so too. This book is all about mood. Having a few pages of overly descriptive gore would have spoiled the effect.

Its length may worry some though. Twelve pounds (roughly twenty dollars) for less than sixty pages? It's a hefty asking price. And being honest its content may also be a sticking point. This does not have your traditional novel format. Compared to mainstream this may feel incomplete, lacking the resolution many seek in their fiction. If you have read the Twilight novels and want to read other dark fiction trust me, you don't want to start here.

But thank the heavens it doesn't conform to the so-called norm. Imagine how bland that would make the world. Go on, give your reading muscles something more than just the next vampire romance novel.

Murali and Tourmalet

2010-07-22T23:46:00.003+01:00

Sri Lankan test cricketeer Muttiah Muralitharan has retired. He played in his final test match today and fitting took the very final Indian wicket to bring his personal tally to 800 wickets in 133 tests. 800 wickets!! Now that's something I judge as worthy of a second, totally superfluous exclamation mark. That mark will take some beating. I feel privileged to have seen him bowl on a number of occasions. I might not be Sri Lankan, and a number of the wickets he took in his career may have belonged ot English cricketeers but the man was something special.

I don't think I've ever mentioned cycling in my blog. Anyone who knows me would probably think there is a really good reason for it - let's face facts, I'm not known for my fanatical devotion to keeping fit. But I like watching the big Tours - Italy, Spain and of course the Tour de France.

For all that it is effective a bunch of guys riding bicycles along deserted roads, which on the face of it does sound a little dull, I find the race fascinating. Okay part of this might be my love of France and Italy (although I have no great love for Spain, nothing against it just never appealed) but I like watching these races.

And today's tour stage was incredible. Again on the face of it you might say it was dull as nothing really changed. Andy Schleck didn't manage to rode away from Alberto Contador and they rode in together resulting in an unchanged 1-2 in the race. But they were riding up the Col du Tourmalet. They rode up a mountain for 20 kilometres (at the end of five hours of racing) at a gradient of about 9% for large parts. Those guys are amazingly fit.

You can't help but be impressed by them.

Three

2010-07-22T23:37:00.003+01:00

Okay, the question has been answered. I had enough time to post three book reviews before the episode finished...

Hope you like them. I might post a film review or two in the next few days. Those kindly folk at Organic Marketing have been good enough to send me some more review copies and I think I might post the details here. Or at least short notes about them. I may still go out to find them an alternate home whilst my main market is temporarily unavailable. (Terry from Murky Depths is going on holiday for a bit so there's not going to be much in the way of activity in that direction.)

The episode of House BTW was the right back from the beginning - Occam's Razor from near the start of season 1. Cool show although my wife occasoinally tells me I'm about as subtle as House and have other of his idiosyncrasies. Mind you she does know me best.

Review of L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims - Black Cathedral

2010-07-22T23:34:00.001+01:00

Book Details

ISBN: 08439-6199-6

Page Count: 287

Price: $7.99

Format: Paperback

Release: January 2009

Publisher: Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing)

Webpage:

http://www.dorchesterpub.com/Dorch/productdetail.cfm?product_ID=2272&L1=1

Review of Joel A Sutherland - Frozen Blood

2010-07-22T23:32:00.001+01:00

This is old-school horror, the kind of book that you might have seen back in the 1980s. It's straightforward, no-frills, no hidden meaning scary atmospheric stuff. Its set-up is old school too.

Two estranged sisters are coming back into each other's lives due to the recent death of their father, and the reading of his will, taking place in his mansion near Ottawa during a severe and seemingly never-ending hailstorm.

There is a great deal of mistrust between the two. Tara is a recovering alcoholic. Her relationship with sister Evelyn was destroyed following the death of Evelyn's daughter - killed by a drunk driver - an act her sister symbolically identifies with Tara herself. Before the evening described in the book the two had not communicated in three years.

There's even the kind of twist you would get in many 1980s horrors. After about sixty or so pages everything points to a battle between the two sisters - each descending into their own brand of madness - and heaven help anyone who gets in the way.

However things change. The storm, initially seeming to be the device used to keep the sisters locked together in the family home, claims its first (in these pages at least) victim when the lawyer attempts to leave. The ice pellets of the hailstorm tear at his skin, beat him unconscious to the ground, reducing him to a bloody pulp.

But this is not a book that relies on shock. Even with the lawyer's death you'll find no detailed descriptions of gore. The author is going for atmospheric fears, using the isolating power of a serious storm to unsettle. There are no demons, no mysterious strangers, witchcraft or magicks here.

The ghosts Tara sees and interacts with regularly could be a result of her mind. There is no conclusive proof they actually exist. Even the mysteries (the off-screen alterations to the contents of the house) are in essence mundane, much more likely the result of malevolence on one sister's part, or madness on the other.

This book works best in the way it gradually increases your knowledge of the sisters' relationship through a Tara's flashbacks and conversations with the dead. The initial sense of incompleteness may seem a little confusing. But this slow peeling back of the layers gives you each new piece of information at just the right moment - when its affect is greatest.

In many ways the familiar big-old-house setting, sibling rivalry and deeply flawed main characters work for him. He's not wasting time describing the background. We know it and he knows we know it. It allows him to get one with it - to tell us a story.

Sutherland is not the finished article by any means. His descriptions are occasionally prosaic when they could make the scene more real. Some of the jumps are too abrupt, the dialog a little stiff. But his pacing is good, and he presents an ending that doesn't wimp out. His ability to spin a good yarn, with just the right creepyness-factor makes this a very entertaining debut novel.

Review of Michael Coney - "Hello Summer, Goodbye" and "I Remember Pallahaxi"

2010-07-22T23:26:00.001+01:00

As with every summer Drove is visiting Pallahaxi with his parents. This year however things are a little different. Drove is on the verge of manhood, and Browneyes, a girl he met the previous summer, is occupying the majority of his thoughts.

However, just as Drove is becoming more involved in the world at large, the world is about to get involved in his life. His father is a Parl (a member of the government) and not at all happy that Drove is showing interest below his social standing, something about which Drove cares nothing at all.

But as well as obstacles to his love life Drove and the entire world will have to contend with an infrequent astronomical even that plunges the whole world into darkness (and cold) for forty years - the Great Freeze.

Like much British science fiction, this is bleak in ways American fiction rarely is. The further you get in the book the more you become certain that the ending is going to be anything but "happy-ever-after".

This world is remarkably well realised; the prose and descriptions are exquisite. The growing relationship between Drove and Browneyes, despite the opposition of his parents and the suspicions of hers, is portrayed brilliantly with just enough detail to show progression but not to become even remotely graphic.

This gentle love story is the only light relief of the novel. This is a dying world. The townsfolk are becoming more and more aware that all is not right, that this worse-than-normal cold is not just a fluke but an indication of future times.

This, together with the growing secrecy and out-of-the-ordinary behaviour of the government, is leading to growing frictions between the classes. But it's all done in a very understated English way. It is also not a good versus bad tale. Each side is simply trying to survive, although the means the Parls are using are less than totally moral.

" Hello Summer, Goodbye" was voted in a one newsgroup's poll as the greatest British SF book of the 1970s. Given that he was up against Arthur C. Clarke, Bob Shaw, Edmund Cooper, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss and James White (amongst many others) it's certainly an achievement.

This has all the government paranoia and small-man-against-the-big-machine feel of a George Orwell novel but its wrapped in a lyrical poetic gentility. This is a classic. It deserves to be more widely read.

* ~ *

Packaged alongside this is Coney's sequel - "I Remember Pallahaxi" - so far unpublished although posted on the author's website shortly before his death in 2005.

Any reader of the first book could easily it set on a lost human colony world, so far removed that all memory of origin is lost, together with all the advanced technologies that used reaching the world.

This time the characters are noticeably non-human, possessing genetic memory enabling them to search the memories of their ancestors (from birth to the moment of each subsequent generation's conception). This trait forms the basis of their society, with the man-chief and woman-chief of each village chosen because they posses the longest genetic memory. (The presence of actual humans on the world, running a mining operation, acts to confirm their alien-ness.)

As before a Great Freeze is approaching. And once more it plays an adolescent love story against the end of the world. This time, though, we know the great freeze is survivable. After all these are the same beings and the same world, someone must have survived the first time. So it's impossible to feel the same degree of tension as before.

The two youngsters are also as separated by circumstance as Drove and Browneyes. Hardy is the nephew of the Man-Chief of Yam, an inland hunting-farming village. Charm is from Noss (a coastal fishing village), the daughter of the Woman-Chief. The two villages exist in a state of mutual suspicion.

It's been a poor year for Yam. With crop yields down and game hard to find, they approached Noss for a loan of fish to cover the winter, against a share of the following year's crop and hunt. The deal had been achieved due to the diplomatic skill of Hardy's father Bruno, the Yam Man-Chief's elder brother. (In a brilliant touch the youngest child assumes the title due to their possessing a greater share of their father's memory).

The following year Yam's crop is even worse and game even more scarce. Bruno is murdered (a truly shocking event when all descendants will remember the act) and his diplomacy lost just when it is most needed. Relations between the two villages deteriorate rapidly when they need to be working together.

Hardy is also in danger. Despite earlier accusations of Noss's guilt over Bruno's murder he realises the threat is from a much closer source. Noss, and more specifically the Woman-Chief's daughter Charm, could be his only salvation.

This suffers the same problem as most sequels. After all, we've already been-there, done-that. So unless it progresses the story in a new direction there is always going to be disappointment.

In the case of "I Remember Pallahaxi" this is not great. Coney's prose is still wonderful; his characters are just as involving, and there are enough differences to maintain interest.

The natives are less technology-dependent, having found equilibrium with their world. They possess genetic-memory that should jar with the first book, after all Drove and Browneyes did not. But it's handled beautifully, with the lead characters asking the same questions as the reader, and investigating this change, believing it key to their future.

There is also the human mining colony. This seems unnecessary and incongruous. They play such a small role in the story, why are they there? But their greater knowledge aids Hardy and Charm's search for answers about their world.

Okay, so it doesn't measure up to the first book, but it has its own appeal.

Some more reviews are coming...

2010-07-22T23:21:00.002+01:00

I said yesterday I was going to post some reviews and so the next couple couple of posts will contains them. How many I'll post is pretty much up to Dr Gregory House. I'm watching the end of an episode of House before I get some sleep so...

Enough for now

2010-07-21T23:21:00.002+01:00

Okay, over the next few days you might find this blog gets a number of new reviews added but I think I'm going to stop for tonight. Five reviews in one go is a big hit. Any more and no one's going to read them

Review of Darrell Schweitzer - Living with the Dead

2010-07-21T23:20:00.003+01:00

Darrell Schweitzer is an American. I just thought I should mention that up front because this reads like European fiction, not American. Not saying anything is wrong with American fiction, it's just that an acceptance of whimsy as normality is not something you usually find in American fiction.

The story is set in a small coastal village. At random intervals the villagers awake to find a pile of dead at the docks. But unlike our world here the dead do not decompose and they are not buried and forgotten. The villagers, under direction from an unseen oppressive government dedicated to maintaining "the order of things", are required to give the dead a new home - to take them into their homes and treat them as guests.

This is not considered strange or repulsive, it's just the way it is. The villagers do not consider it onerous, it's just the way it is, the way it always has been and the way it always will be.

Another element you would normally associate with European writers over American is that, in truth, there is no all-encompassing plot. The novella briefly follows several of the villagers - a government official who discovers the most beautiful woman in the world amongst the dead, a schoolteacher determined to maintain order, a child in her class.

Each person has a little cameo tale, each interlinked, showing how they adapt to their lives amongst the dead. How they cope as new arrivals reduce the available living space they have more and more. We read of their taboos (mainly treating the dead with anything other than reverence), their fears and their desire to maintain a status quo, no matter how odd or difficult it may seem.

And whereas you could say there is a general them running through this, a feeling that you are viewing a momentous period in the lives of the villagers, there is no definite flow, no feeling that momentum is building towards an inevitable change.

Also despite the book being populated by the dead it's not a horror tale. This isn't a case of a voodoo priest reanimating corpses, or some evil sorcerer with plans of world domination. So don't go looking for a reason of why the dead appear, they just do. Accept it! Go with it! The reason for this phenomenon is not important, this story is at a much more human level. These are people, like you or I, just in a totally offbeat environment living their lives.

So if you're looking for a detailed plot and full resolution (a happy-ever-after ending), or a traditional horror tale with an easily-identifiable bad-guy I would say you're probably better off sticking to the mainstream. You'll miss out on an enchanting little tale though.

Review of Kevin J. Anderson - Metal Swarm

2010-07-21T23:18:00.001+01:00

Both the Human HANSA and Ildiran Empires are in a state of disarray. Despite being on the winning side in recent galactic-wide wars against the gas-giant dwelling Hydrogues, both have seen their forces severely depleted. Having internal troubles as well has not helped either race.

The human race is on the verge of a civil war with the increasingly paranoid HANSA Chairman Basil Wenceslas refusing to admit that Earth's problems are largely the result of his own actions and his making enemies of humanity's independent offshoots at a time Earth needed allies. The Ildiran leader, Mage-Imperator Jora'h, has his own problems attempting to recover from the damage his mad half-brother did to the thism, the Ildiran's mental links.

Both races need time to recover, but (as expected) that is the last thing they are going to get. The sun-dwelling Faeros are back and intent on ridding the Universe of Ildirans - and humanity seems trapped between the murderous black Klikiss robots and their creators.

Anderson is playing on a galactic stage here; we have seven species (two humanoid, one insectoid and four very alien) and one artificial life form in a struggle across hundreds of solar systems. This kind of grand scale concept does risk the author "going-off-on-one" and writing a novel so vast as to be totally disconnected and unreadable. But he's used a very good technique of tying the action down to a manageable readable level. Each of the one hundred and forty-six fairly short chapters in this book tells its story from one person's point of view, giving a human (or Ildiran) perspective to the events.

Lengthways, this series ("The Saga of the Seven Suns") is quite simply colossal. This sixth volume runs to nearly seven hundred pages in hardcover and some of the previous volumes have been even longer. The obvious worry with series like this is whether the story can sustain the interest of the reader over so many pages. Well for the first five volumes this has been absolutely no problem, this series has contained so of the most compelling space opera I have read in years.

This sixth book though is showing the strain. There is a feeling here of being a bit of a filler, a way of getting from the position at the end of book five to the point when the concluding seventh volume needs to begin.

It's a harsh comment in some ways. There is a lot of good action in these pages; the set up at the end of the book is brilliant, leaving a wonderful cliff-hanger at the end - one will leave you desperate for the release of the final volume. But I believe that, although "The Sags of the Seven Suns" is good as a seven-book series, it could have been truly great over five. I would still gladly recommend the series to fans of space opera despite this observation; Anderson has re-awakened a liking in me for this sub-genre that has been long dormant.

Review of Justin D'Ath - Pool

2010-07-21T23:16:00.001+01:00

Wolfgang Mulqueen is a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in New Lourdes, Australia working a summer job at the miracle pool that has put the town on the map (and caused its renaming from Loddon Springs). The water in the pool has a slope - finding its "level" a few degrees off horizontal - and, since an incident a dozen years previous, a reputation for healing properties.

A butterfly lands on one of the pool's visitors, a blind girl slightly older than Wolfgang named Audrey, who visits the pool daily but not to experience its waters, preferring to sleep in the shade of an umbrella poolside. The butterfly collector in Wolfgang cannot resist taking a closer look and so he announces himself to Audrey so his approach does not scare her.

This single event begins an unusual summer for Wolfgang. He begins a friendship with this unusual blind girl - one that is encouraged by her father who actually pays Wolfgang to spend time with his daughter, so worried is he by her solitary and nocturnal nature. Their friendship blossoms, despite Wolfgang seeing her more bizarre side, including a liking for walking through cemeteries at night, and finding out more about the mysterious events of her past.

This is a young adult novel. I thought I'd better mention it. It doesn't read like other young adult fiction I've read. Its plot is more surreal, and its characters more flawed - just witness the monetary agreement between Wolfgang and Audrey's father for proof. It's also not a book for traditional plot-strand resolutions. This is not a give-away, by the way. Right from the off you feel this is not going to be a standard boy-meets-girl-during-a-supernatural-event-happily-ever-after tale.

There is a deal of the boy-meets-girl in this book, the two go on dates and there are first kiss moments, but there is something different underlying the whole. Audrey's back-story, with regards the accident that left her in a coma for months and caused her blindness, has uncanny timing when compared to the sloping pool and Wolfgang's own life. She also seems disconnected somewhat, as though she never totally returned after reviving from her coma.

The human side of the story is not lost amongst the spookiness. Wolfgang is a typical sixteen-year-old, full of hormones and very much aware of Audrey as female. He matures through the book, as witnessed by the changing of priorities regarding his butterflies. And, although he still has childish tendencies including a stutter when he becomes embarrassed or nervous, the Wolfgang at the end of this book is noticeably older than at the story's beginning.

There are some tender moments in the story, in the relationship between the two main characters - most especially during a trip to the zoo butterfly house, so he can properly introduce her to the creatures and show her his passion for them. It's their interaction that is the strongest part of the novel - D'Ath has managed to make their stuttering feelings totally believable.

It's not a book that is going to make me concentrate on reading young adult novels; I still want more to my fiction. But it is one that proved to me that books for younger reader have great merit.

Second (Third) of the book reviews (Stephen Baxter)

2010-07-21T23:12:00.003+01:00

Onto another of the never published reviews - Stephen Baxter
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Review of Stephen Baxter - The H-Bomb Girl

Laura Mann is in a difficult position - fourteen, parents are splitting up and she is moving from the only home she's ever known to her mother's hometown Liverpool. To make things just that little bit worse it's October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis unfolds; and for some reason everyone is taking a special interest in her - as though she is the lynchpin of a turning point in history.

Mort, a US Airman boarding at her house seems to watch her every move. Miss Wells, a teacher at her new school is eager to be a confidant and offers help a little too assertively, and the forty-something Jive-O-Rama waitress Agatha fauns over Laura. And all Laura wants to do is get on, make new friends in a new town.

They all seem to believe that Laura is a pivotal player in a pivotal moment in history, something a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl struggles to understand. To further confuse matters Laura discovers Miss Wells, Agatha and Mort may not even be from 1962.

I've read many Stephen Baxter books over the years. Without exception I've found them good reads, although hard work. He writes demanding prose. Although this isn't the first young adult book Baxter has written it's the first I've read. Before starting I couldn't imagine how his style and tendency for dense plotting would work for younger readers.

It does, and possibly due to his making it personal. The book is set in Baxter's hometown, where he lived when he was fourteen; the time's not long before his teenage years, so he knows the people and places. That familiarity gives the book richness I didn’t expect.

The story itself could have been trite and predicable - after all we have a teenage girl being courted by various parties seeking her help to further their causes. Baxter avoids this though, by introducing some wonderful touches, not least of which are the reveals - of the time travellers' existence in 1962 and their background stories and plans.

This interweaving of supporting cast back-stories and multiple possible future timelines proves one of the books real strengths. Baxter has, for the most part, managed to bring hard sf concepts to a younger audience without weakening the plot or having lightweight science. There are a few moments when it doesn't quite work - when Laura and friends find unusual objects (modern day tech) in Miss Wells' locker it's a little hackneyed.

Generally Baxter blends his story into 1962 well, effectively using pop-culture references - the Beatles and James Bond being "new" - and his time-travellers are just different enough to cause double takes.

It's interesting that the lead character is female. SF traditionally appeals to boys more than girls and, from my memories of this age, teenage boys are less likely to empathise with a female protagonist than male. I hope Baxter hasn't limited his potential audience, this is very entertaining and deserves to be read widely.

An Old Book Review - Amber Benson

2010-07-21T23:01:00.004+01:00

Okay not that old. I thought after I'd posted the review of the Skipp/Spector book The Bridge I thought to myself about posting other reviews. Well I have over the last few years written reviews for a number of books and then been unable to find them homes. Okay I will admit some of them were rejected but even the rejections were usually not because the reviews were crap.

Honest, I'm not just trying to soothe my own ego - prevent damage to the poor fragile things. I'm going on what I've been told. A lot of these were rejected because I'd send in two or three reviews to editors who only wanted one so they could pick the best for them. And the others languished. Until now. I'm going to post them one by one. So here goes, first one up - second if you count last night's but that's different. I wrote it for this blog.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I.E. Lester - Review of Amber Benson and Christopher Golden - The Seven Whistlers

Rose Kerrigan, Mike Richards and Alan & Jenny Bryce live in the small New England town of Kingsbury. Although they have day to day issues, they live quiet, generally happy lives and have settled into a routine, including regular get-togethers at the town pub, the Pennywhistle. But, as this is a horror novel, you know this tranquillity is not going to last.

Rose is the first person to notice the changes -she sees two large black dogs tear apart a stag in the woods behind her parents' cabin. She is not the last. At the same time a series of accidents and misfortunes begin to happen.

It's the way that the foreboding builds that is the book's real strength. The presence of the dogs increasing steadily in number towards becoming the Seven Whistlers of the book's title is handled well, without being too obvious, but it’s the misfortunes that really increase the menace. They suggest an evil atmosphere is overcoming the whole town.

This is exactly the kind of set-up and delivery you would expect in a Stephen King novel - same kind of town, same kind of social group, and same kind of underlying sense of increasing dread. The main difference between the two is page length. Stephen King would have spent over one hundred pages setting the scene, introducing the characters and giving them back-story before any action really started. By the time King would have hinted that all is not right in small-town paradise, this book has already finished.

And it's that shortness that is the quite-literal shortcoming of the book. The setting is superb, Kingsbury is a perfect horror town. The group of friends are convincing, as are the supporting characters we meet along the way. And the horror of the tale - the hell-hounds are suitably menacing and a pleasant change from some of the so-called scary monsters I've read too often.

But this needs more length, more time to tell the story. I've read so many books over the years and have thought on many occasions that books are just too long. That they are padded to suit the 500-page liking of the best seller charts in bookstores and supermarkets, as though the old adage "Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width" has become a reality of publishing. But for once I wish the authors had made this longer. This is a good read at 143 pages, but I feel 300 pages would have made it a great read.

A book review - John Skipp & Craig Spector - The Bridge

2010-07-20T23:54:00.003+01:00

I've got one or two book reviews over. I normally try to send these all in to various mags etc to get published but I have a couple of books I've read and not managed to find a home to send in a review (not because they're rejected, merely because I try not to oversaturate the markets I submit to). But I still think these books need a bit of an airing so I'm going to post some of the reviews here.

First up is John Skipp and Craig Spector's The Bridge - just reprinted by Leisure Books. If you fancy ordering it I'm adding the Amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-John-Skipp/dp/0843963964/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0

The people of Paradise Pennsylvania are people you'll find anywhere. They want to make a few bucks, live comfortable lives, and not be overly bothered with the messy stuff. So they entrust their waste to a waste management company and forget about it. Only problem is that company has been illegally dumping the toxic goo for years, and now all those chemicals have reacted and produced a big bad monster who's bringing the fight back to the townsfolk in true gorefest fashion.

This book originally came out nearly two decades ago in 1991. It's hard to believe. Its core plot of mankind ruining the planet (dumping toxic chemicals in this case) until the Earth decides it's had enough is, if anything, more suited to this decade than the nineties.

This is horror as a vehicle for an environment point and, despite reservations to the contrary before starting reading Messieurs Skipp and Spector have proven that horror is the perfect genre for such a political point. And they've done this by not forgetting the most important thing in a novel - a damn good plot. Oh, and great characters and wonderfully easy-to-read prose.

You'll be left wondering one thing when you've finished this novel. Why the hell didn't this book raise the two authors into the same heady heights as Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Yes, it's that good.

Start the week with a rejection

2010-07-20T00:11:00.003+01:00

My short story Chicken has been rejected by DF Underground. Ah well, such is life. Time to try, try, try again (or whatever those old clichéd phrases would have us do).

In any case I like the story so I've resubmitted it someplace else. Hopefully it will find kinder eyes this time.

Ten new reviews posted

2010-07-18T22:25:00.003+01:00

UK sf/horror site Murky Depths have posted another ten of my reviews

Book Reviews
Ray Garton's Scissors
Stephen King's Blockade Billy
Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman

Film Reviews
Alice in Wonderland
Bikini Girls on Ice
Daybreakers
Resurrecting the Street Walker
Vampire
The Wolfman

You can find all of these at - http://www.murkydepths.com/

No Heavy Lifting (writing news)

2010-07-17T21:34:00.002+01:00

The title of the blog entry comes from a favourite author of mine (Mike Resnick). He always described a second (or third etc) sale of the same piece as a "No Heavy Sale" meaning that he'd not had to do any actual work for the sale.

Well I've just had one.

Last year a short story of mine (Waiting Room) appeared on UK horror site House of Horror. Well now it's going to appear in print in an American anthology called Dreams and Screams being published by Liquid Imagination.

I could get used to this - but I suppose I'll have to write more stories and get them sold the first time before these events are likely to be common.

This bizarre world

2010-07-11T09:55:00.003+01:00

I've just read a news article on the BBC News website that reminded me that there still are people in the world who want to do spontaneous things just for fun. Apparantly there is a tradition that's grown up in recent years in California which sees thousands of people moon passing trains on a given day each year. The appropriately named Moon Amtrak day was yesterday, July 11th.

The even have a website dedicated to the event

http://www.moonamtrak.org/

Yeah, and you'd guess for something fun, the authorities are trying to "crack" (sorry couldn't resist the pun) down on it.

2 sales / 2 rejections - some kind of balance I guess

2010-07-08T23:24:00.003+01:00

New Myths (http://www.newmyths.com) has bought another two of my book reviews - for Harry Turtledove's Hitler's War and Tim Waggoner's Dead Streets. I think this makes it to eight that I've sold to them - in addition to the three articles.

But on the short story side I've had two rejections - from Daily Science Fiction and Black Ink Horror. Ah well, I'll keep trying.

Charles Saatchi

2010-07-01T22:36:00.003+01:00

I've just read the news story about Charles Saatchi donating his gallery containing a collection of more than 200 pieces of contemporary art to the nation. Wow!

The Saatchi Gallery is a 70,000 sq ft exhibition space in Chelsea. It's becoming the Museum of Contemporary Art for London (shortened to Moca London).

And it includes some very famous pieces including Tracey Emin's My Bed. Again wow!

Just goes to show people can surprise you, and in a good way.

Thank you Mr. Saatchi

Down to Earth with a Bump

2010-06-29T21:59:00.004+01:00

After yesterday receiving news of a short story sale, reality has returned. Three rejections (one science article, one book reviews column and one short story) all from Basement Stories.

Ouch! I think they're trying to tell me something.

Still two of them are back out there with other potential homes. Now if I could just find a market for science articles...

Some films - catching up

2010-06-28T20:16:00.003+01:00

I've been watching a few movies of late and it's about time I posted a few comments about them. I'll start with the more commercial stuff.

Alice in Wonderland - yeah, Tim Burton. Well, it looks good. Nice and dark, twisted in just the right Tim Burton way. The acting's pretty good, and the plot paced well - decent and quick. Only problem is the plot content. It feels like a sequel. Guess it was always going to as, in many ways, it is. The story isn't a straightforward telling of the Alice books. It features a grown up Alice (nineteen years old I think) who's dismissed her previous visits to Wonderland as the rich imaginings of a child.

So all through she's refinding all the characters and places of Wonderland. Johnny Depp is good, although a little overbearing - his role has been beefed up a little too far, kicking the film out of balance. It's okay - but I wanted it to be so much more.

Daybreakers is a cool, near future sf-flavoured vampire movie. It has a top class cast - Sam Neill, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe - great effects, great visuals and, unusually for such films of the last few years, a superb plot. Definitely worth a watch for any sf/horror fanatic.

The Wolfman. Best way to sum it up is - oh dear! As with Daybreakers it has a superb cast - Anthony Hopkins, Benicio de Toro amongst others - great setting (a kind of reimagined Chatsworth House), and decent effects (when they happen). But what it really lacks is any drama. It is just so ponderous. Real pity.

Sorority Row is just what you'd expect from a college horror flick set in a girl's college dorm. Basically it's a slasher flick with a rehashed plot (from I Know What You did Last Summer) and the occasional baring of nubile young breasts. It's okay, nothing more - a bit of a laugh.

Jennifer's Body is a bit of a step up. Megan Fox plays the titular Jennifer, an American high school cheerleader who gets possessed by a demon and turns into a maneater - literally. It's saving grace is the perspective. The film is played from the POV of Jennifer's nerdy best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and this slight detachment from the action makes it feel so much more real.

Onto a few less mainstream and more Indie flicks. Diary of a Bad Lad is an independent British film that centres around an out of work media studies college lecturer who believes making a documentary about the gangster scene in Northern England will help him get his status (and position) back.

It's hard hitting. There's some real nasty stuff in here, both in terms of the violence, drug-use and attitudes towards your fellow man or woman. In style it's amateurish, deliberately so. After all the film is supposed to be the making of an amateur documentary. It's also humourous, although dark and possibly in ways that will only really be appreciated by Brits. I really can't see some of the black humour on display here translating to other countries...OK, maybe Australians might get this but I don't think Americans will have enough cultural commonality for this to work.

Vampire is an early 80s straight to video horror film out of time. In every way this feels like it should be thirty years old. It has the same production values as all those films I used to watch as a kid (yeah I know, sicko at an early age) when the choice to use the new VCR was limited but your desire to use the newest gadget was high enough for you to keep watching.

Jason Carter, of Babylon 5 fame, plays the Vampire. When he is captured by the feds instead of being killed, protecting the population at large, scientists observe and experiment on him to discover more about the vampire threat.

As a film it's very insular, restricted as it is for much of the film to just the two rooms of the laboratory. And it's also slower than you might expect from such a film - this has a very deliberate pace. But it is strangely compelling. Whether or not it's for the nostalgic reason of bringing back memories of film watching from times gone by, I liked this film - despite every expectation I had going into it.

Resurrecting the Street Walker is possibly the strongest film of all my recent viewing. Another independent British flick, and again featuring an amateur film maker, RtSW sees film student James Powell working an internship at a small scale UK film distributor when he discovers an incomplete video nasty from the 1980s. He becomes obsessed with the film and its director and resolves to complete the picture - even if it takes him across the line into murder.

New Short Story Sale

2010-06-28T20:13:00.003+01:00

Daily ezine Everyday Weirdness has bought my sf short story New Start. It's a bit dark - somehow everything I seem to write has a dark edge to it - unless it's silly.

Anyway, they will be posting it to their site tomorrow. So go check it out

http://everydayweirdness.com/

Just why music matters

2010-06-19T21:51:00.003+01:00

When I was a kid, somewhere about 9 years old, I heard music. I mean really heard. I know music must have been around me before then but I can't remember it making much of an impression. At nine though that changed. I heard The Who. Something about it excited me. Well I bought a Who album.

Then having listened to that for a while I bought another. And not long after started wondering what else there was and a schoolfriends older brother played me (and him I guess) some Rolling Stones tracks. Band number two in my life. So I bought a Stones album. Maybe I didn't pick the best one (Got Live If You Want It) but I liked it enough. So much that I bought a second - Rolled Gold. That was the better choice. And it ended up with me and my music tastes having developed to what they are now - Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Rush, Tom Waits, Nick Cave. I could go on and on.

But my purchase of Rolled Gold was way, way back in the days of vinyl. And since selling all my vinyl records more than a decade ago I've been able to play the album. That is until today when I saw the CD re-release of this compilation sitting on a shelf in HMV in Derby. I bought it, even though I think I own every track on other CDs, and I've just listened to it again. Fantastic collection. Made me realise just why I like music in the first place.

To bring things back to reality

2010-06-19T19:33:00.002+01:00

About a month ago I sent in a review to Plutonian Times - and they rejected it. Guess the run couldn't go on and on unbroken. Still, I hope to find that review a home somewhere, the paperback has yet to be released in the USA so it's still current.

Two more live reviews

2010-06-19T19:28:00.003+01:00

I'm rather happy to be able to let you know that Murky Depths have posted another two of my reviews on their website - for the new Sherlock Holmes film and for Ramsey Campbell's Creatures of the Pool.

As always you can find their site at http://www.murkydepths.com/

That brings my total on their site to nine - three movie reviews and six book reviews. Not to mention the four reviews (three books, one movie) that I've had in the magazine itself.

Just having a happy moment

Even more Muky Depths

2010-06-11T20:58:00.003+01:00

Guess I should have waited another day (following last night's post about a sale to the Murky Depths print mag). today found out they have accepted two more film reviews and a book review for the Snack Reviews on their website.

Films are Valhalla Rising and Mutants, book is Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing. If you want to read them, pop over to their site (URL below) and click the link top left.

http://www.murkydepths.com/

New sale (review)

2010-06-11T00:00:00.003+01:00

UK sf/horror mag Murky Depths (becoming my most regular home for writing) has accepted another of my reviews - of the recent DVD release Stag Night.

The review will appear in the next issue of their magazine - not on the website. I still have another couple of reviews with them so maybe I'll be able to let you know some more news soon.

I hope this rejected thing isn't becoming a habit

2010-06-07T20:00:00.001+01:00

Today's rejection came from online sf zine New Myths. Because they have previous accepted a number of my reviews and articles I thought I would try them with a short story call The Screen. Didn't maintain my non-ficiton hit rate though. Bounced back today, rejected.