Review: The End of the Day

Image from http://www.orbitbooks.net/

The End of the Day
Claire North
Orbit, 16th April 2017
HB, 403pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

This is a beautiful, haunting and rewarding book. It is also in some ways a provoking book (which to me is a good thing!) - and I think it may divide North's readers.

In concept, The End of the Day continues her recent series each of which takes a particular (fantastical) attribute and runs it for all it is worth - so Harry August is endlessly reborn as the same person, Hope Arden is forgotten as soon as you look away from her, the nameless narrator of Touch can occupy others' bodies. Each of those is a very smart, well written exploration of what those abilities - or curses - might mean.

This book superficially takes the same approach but is really rather different in two ways.

First, in The End of the Day, Charlie has no special talent, but he has a very special job. The Harbinger of Death,  he goes before the Pale Rider (if that's how you perceive Death: other Deaths are available) as either a warning (to those who might, for a time, evade their fate) or a courtesy (to those who can't).

Death comes for ideas as well as people, and Charlie always brings a gift.

The Death Charlie serves is a rather shifty character (even Death's gender varies with the observer). But Charlie himself is a real, breathing, human being, with a pension plan, health insurance and a back office ('Milton Keynes') who look after his schedule and pay his expenses (they're a bit on the stingy side). He was interviewed for the role, and his predecessor is still around to answer the odd question or give advice. So the central character here is unlike those earlier, gifted/ cursed protagonists - although you might think that his most unusual job could be seen as either a gift or a curse.

The second difference is that the earlier books had a considerable amount of thrillery plot, as Harry, Hope and... whoever... struggled with malign organisations, or with other, similarly gifted individuals and sought to propser or simply survive, making use of their talents or overcoming their limitations.

The End of the Day has much less of this, indeed almost nothing - while there are some attempts to manipulate Charlie and through him, his boss (what couldn't the modern state do were it to get Death on side?) these are much more things that happen to him that events in which he takes part. Beyond doing his job Charlie doesn't plan much or drive the story, rather his role is essentially as witness: to disasters such as the melting of the icecaps (one mission takes him to Greenland, 'out on the ice') or war in Syria and Iraq as well as to more intimately human tragedies or triumphs (an episode in Nigeria). So we get many, many little stories - a young woman and her grandfather evicted from their London flat to make way for property developers; a warlord in Belarus who's not ready to die; two women in Africa who love each other so much despite persecution; and so on. Charlie visits all these and many, many more and North winds the story back and forth, sometimes telling us what happened afterwards (or before), sometimes not.

There's a fairytale aspect to much of it, heightened by the way she introduces many chapters or episodes:

On the shores of the sea...
...in a land where all things grow...

or

In the land of sun...
...in a land of oil...
...on the edge of a lagoon where the city grows...

And also by the way the central conceit is taken seriously by all. From black-ops technicians in secret locations to border guards and police, nobody questions that Charlie is the Harbinger of Death, though many wonder that that means.

It may be like a fairytale, but that's not to say that the writing isn't pin-sharp, realistic and - in many places - unremitting as it faces some of the truly horrible ways people die: the description of bodies flung into a pit after a massacre will haunt me for a long time. This is not escapist writing, it reflects some truly grim events and feels very contemporary. As such it's fitting that we also get glimpses of the other Harbingers - of War, Pestilence and Famine - and their principals as they go about their work whether in refugee camps, Pentagon boardrooms, Whitehall clubs, UN forums or secure laboratories. We don't always know what they're about: possibly it's better that way.

We also hear snatches of conversation gathered from the air, as it were. It seems that Charlie somehow listens in on these wherever he goes: if he has a special talent, that's it. But they don't enable him to take any particular action, nor does he appear to want to - he just wants to do his job, and sometimes, the voices soothe (through the book Charlie's role takes more and more of a toll on him - witnesses are not always disinterested observers). So they're like a running commentary, sometimes germane to the story, sometimes apparently not. There's a theme of a ticking clock - perhaps time is running out, somehow? - and an alternating chatter: rat rat rat human human rat rat as the innocent are maimed and killed and treated as things. Only Charlie, it seems, wants to hold onto the idea that people - however degraded and wicked - remain people, as he maintains when visiting a seemingly gracious but deeply racist KKK leader.

It is in many ways a dark picture of humanity and a dark picture of our world, often showing people at their worst. And all these vignettes, while they build into a powerful impression of  terror, of seething destruction and accelerating loss and change, aren't redeemed by being made incidental to a hopeful plot, to Charlie's success in getting one over the forces of disintegration.

It is, then, a challenging book, one with a great deal of incident but not too bothered by plot and marked by a great deal of darkness.

There is some hope. The most positive thing in Charlie's life, as he witnesses loss, torture and disintegration is his relationship with Emmi, conducted when he's briefly at home between trips. This is described tenderly and North shows how it becomes increasingly important to him as other certainties flee and even Death - who he thought he could rely on - lets him down.

I enjoyed this book IMMENSELY. North manages both to build on her recent successes and to create something really new and different. While it might not be quite what everyone was expecting, I'm so glad this isn't only a book about someone with special abilities, but so much more.

Review - Deadly Game by Matt Johnson

Deadly Game (Robert Finlay No 2)
Matt Johnson
Orenda Books, 15 March 2017
PB, 352pp, e-book

I'm grateful to Orenda books for a review copy.

First, full disclosure. I reviewed Johnson's first book, Wicked Game, on a blogtour last year and my review is quoted inside this one (Yay! Fame! Fortune! Prizes...) I also attended the launch of that book at which the author spoke very movingly of his experiences in the Met Police and the PTSD which was part of his reason for writing these books.

I'm also reviewing this on 22 Match 2017, the day of a terrorist attack in Westminster close to where I work, and I spent this afternoon watching the incredibly brave and professional police managing the situation.

So I may seem a teensy bit biased about this book, which I enjoyed greatly, but I'll try not to be.

In fact, it's actually quite a hard book to write about. Johnson's writing isn't perfect but it has something, a distinctive voice, a blend of the matter of fact and the down right incredible, which makes it compulsively readable.

I'll say a little bit more about both these aspects in a moment. First, in case you haven't read Wicked Game, the setup.

Inspector Robert Finlay is a bit of a misfit. Ex SAS, then Royal Protection, he had just moved into uniformed policing - with a lot to learn - when he got caught up in a terrorist campaign that seemed to target him and a group of his ex-Regiment comrades. Johnson pursued this thrillery concept with zest, having Finlay dust off a cache of weapons and mix it with the bad guys, including, at one stage, taking pot shots at SO19, the Met's armed response specialists. (Bit awkward in the canteen afterwards, obviously).

Things got straightened out and blame for the killings laid at the door of Monoghan, an MI5 maverick. In Deadly Game, the Met are trying to find a role for an Inspector who's now shunned by his uniform colleagues as a bullet magnet but isn't qualified to be a detective. In the end he's attached to a human trafficking taskforce. (Johnson refers throughout to the trafficked women as 'slaves' which is either a bit quaintly old-fashioned or plain non-PC: take your pick. See also references to a WPC, a top firearms officer, as a 'girl').

At the same time, he has business remaining with MI5 over the Monaghan debacle, and his liaison there also tries to use him to get a line on an ex SAS man who's just published his memoirs. Involvement in that inevitably leads Finlay into deep trouble, in a fast paced adventure blending conspiracy theories, a 'state of the world' sub-plot reminiscent of a Richard Hannay story, and an expose of the human trafficking racket.

It's all unbearably tense, with what I'm coming to see as Johnson's characteristic blend of deeply credible detail (weapons, procedures, tactics, inter-Service relationships, personalities) with some frankly fantastic twists of fate, actions, and events. If one wanted to criticise, the latter might be a sufficient excuse, although I think that would be unfair as they don't in any way hamper enjoyment of the story. I'll only give one example - because I don't want to spoil the story - which is when a key fact becomes known because, at just the right moment, one of the trafficked women escapes and is picked up by the police.

If you want every last detail of your books believable, things like this - and there are more - may be a problem for you. Yet I find myself not particularly bothered about these things. Why? Is it because I'm biased (see above)?

I don't think so. I think the reason is rather different and goes to the heart of the appeal of Johnson's writing.

First, I've learned to be wary of saying 'X is just not believable'. It seems to be a fact in today's world that the unbelievable happens more often than you would think, and that a writer striving simply for believability might actually have to tone down the real world rather to write something convincing - and where's the fun in that?

Secondly, Johnson is, simply, a born storyteller. He does it all with such verve, switching between Finlay's first person narration and as much third-person following other points of view as is needed to paint the background -  but without ever getting bogged down. In so doing we are introduced to facts Finlay doesn't know (and never learns), characters he hardly meets (but who populate the pages of the book like figures in a soap opera, suggesting there's a whole world out there beyond what we're told) and events that took place long before. It all creates such a convincing impression of depths, of a teeming community of spies, police and crooks, that you can - well I could - forgive the odd apparently far fetched plot feature.

Finally - Johnson has been there. He won't, obviously, talk about stuff he shouldn't, but perhaps we can take on trust that, yes, the unlikely does happen, cases are moved on by strokes of luck, and both criminals and spooks do indulge in baroque extremes of behaviour from time to time (I'm looking at you, MI6 man Howard Green...)

So, to sum up: this isn't a slick book, it has a raw quality such that the unlikely events described actually seem to make the story more credible. Again I go back to John Buchan and his 'shockers'. They weren't elevated literary writing perhaps but they were - and are - cracking good stories, still readable after a hundred years or more. For sheer readability and entertainment I'd see Johnson in that tradition. But unlike Buchan, at the same time, he's exploring Finlay's slow recovery from PTSD - not at all a quick or easy theme, but a journey I'm looking forward to him continuing in future books.

To sum up even more: READ THIS BOOK!

Review - Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods

Image from http://warrenthe13th.com/

Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods
Written by Tania del Rio
Illustrated by Will Staehle
Quirk Books, 21 March 2017
PB, 233pp

I'm really grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I don't often get to review children's books here at the Balloon (although I have one or two others coming up) which is kind of a pity because they are often the best written, sharpest and most readable books around. (I know this because I have two (now adult) children and we've had fun with books over the years - all for THEIR benefit of course.)

So it was a lovely surprise when Jamie at Quirk Books sent me an advance copy Warren the 13th. This is actually his second adventure, after Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye. It's definitely something different, perfectly matching del Rio's measured text to Staehle's beautifully moody line illustrations -  you get some flavour of them from the cover image but the book itself is gorgeous, a real visual treat.

Warren himself is a 12 year old boy... perhaps... this is a world where nobody is what they seem and whether Warren is actually human or not isn't worth worrying too much about. More importantly, he is possessed of a hotel - his family's ancient and renowned hotel - which has lately taken to walking around the countryside of Fauntleroy on its four mechanical legs. Along with his friends Sketchy - a strange but lovable creature with many limbs - and Petula - a trainee perfumier (or witch catcher) and a delightfully batty staff, the hotel attracts guests from far and wide on its trips.

Which always, of course, avoid the Malwoods, home to all of Fauntleroy's most evil witches...

You may guess what's going to happen here but I won't reveal it. It's enough to say that Warren's courage, ingenuity and kindness will, again, be tested to the limit on a breakneck adventure filled with whispering trees, slippery snake-oil salesmen and, of course, WITCHES. On the way we have a try at code breaking, see why hotel management should never be left to a lazy uncle, and learn some lessons about how trustworthy the Press can be. It's very educational! - as well as being delightful fun.

I'd have read this to my kids at bedtime if it had been out ten years ago and I'm sure they'd have loved it. There's nothing too frightening, just a few moments of "peril" and, of course, the baddies get their come-uppance in the end - after which the hotel sets forth in a new direction...

Strongly recommended.

Review - Relics by Tim Lebbon

Relics
Tim Lebbon
Titan Books, 21 March 2017
PB, 384pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of this.

Beneath the surface of our world, mythological creatures and their artifacts still exist—corrupt people pay fortunes for a sliver of dragon bone, a basilisk's scale, or an angel's wing. Angela Gough is an American criminology student in London whose fiancé Vince disappears, and her investigation leads her into a black market specializing in arcane relics. She meets Mary Rock, a criminal of mythic status who also wants to find Vince… to kill him. Angela and a growing team of adventurers must stop this horrific trade, yet they face a growing menace as the hunted creatures begin to fight back.

I found this a refreshingly different take on urban fantasy. Yes, we're in the heart of the city, and, yes, there are mythological creatures around, but there's no magic - that died years ago - and it's largely, the "monsters" who are the victims here, subjects of a merciless trade in body parts... and worse. So the book's suffused, almost, with a conservationist sensibility: the nymphs, angels, pixies and so on are the last of their kind, hunted almost to extinction and clinging on in dark corners and secret hideaways. That gives the whole book a distinct focus and a shape, as well as reversing the usual assumptions that something nasty's out there, waiting to eat us.

It's an intriguing premise, and Angela is an intriguing - an appealing - hero, drawn into a strange world with rules she can't understand when her boyfriend doesn't come home one night. Looking beyond the obvious explanation, Angela sets out to find him, rapidly getting into a world she never knew existed - a world of little known underground tunnels, of shadows in alleyways, of crime dens in Soho backstreets, strange, shrivelled creatures packaged up for delivery and most of all, of supremely creepy villains. Angela's resourceful and she puts her knowledge of crime to good use, but will it be enough to bring success in her search - or even allow survival in the world of Fat Frederick (NEVER shorten his name!) let alone that of Mary Rock?

Lebbon tells a violent, tension-filled story, the action pretty much continuous - but he also finds time to bring in some nice portrayals of London - the summer London that's almost like an outdoor room, crowds moving comfortably through the parks and streets, oblivious to the seedy yards, abandoned buildings and shadowy watchers... It's all very real and also very readable. And that relaxed, comfortable London is only a mask, a mask that slips in the most gore spattered finale that I've read in ages.

Of course there is a little more to the book than cruel humans hunting down Kin, and I sensed that Lebbon was setting up some tensions among the latter for future books - which I devoutly hope will follow soon - but on the whole it's straightforward, though a couple of characters play an ambiguous role - and even Vince turns out to be less innocent than you'd think.

A good, gripping read. I'd strongly recommend you get in on this series at the beginning.

Guest Post - A Presence of Absence

Today I'm joining the blogtour for A Presence of Absence, a new indie thriller written by Sarah Surgey and Emma Vestrheim. Sarah writes about the journey to publishing, and how the choice to self-publish made her and and Emma stronger.

A Presence of Absence is the first book in The Odense Series. Although this is a solid crime novel, it also begins and ends with grief for many of the characters, personal demons and life decisions.

A gritty murder case gets in the way of the characters’ everyday lives and sends the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish city of Odense, into a panic.

British detective Simon Weller escapes the fallout from the recent suicide of his Danish wife, Vibeke and heads out to her home city of Odense. But once there he is paired up with a local detective, Jonas, who is also about to hit rock bottom in his home life, and they must overcome their differences and personal problems to try and catch one of the worst serial killers Odense has ever seen. The case takes them back into past decades as history starts catching up with some of the local inhabitants. When Simon realises that his wife's suicide may not be all it seems and her name appears in the case, his integrity within the case is compromised, how far will he go to find out the truth of Vibeke's past and hide it from his already troubled police partner?

Back home in London Simon's family are struggling with their own web of lies and deceit and the family is falling apart.

With one family hiding a dark secret, the whole case is just about to reach breaking point...

You can buy the paperback here and the e-book here as well, of course as at

http://theodenseseries.com/

or on Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34267516-a-presence-of-absence

Find out more on Instagram at

https://www.instagram.com/the_wormcatcher/

Now, over to Sarah!

Self-publishing has made us stronger.

By Sarah Surgey

When Emma and I sat down to write our first novel we had no idea what type of journey we would be venturing on.

The actual book writing we had planned to the best of our abilities. We knew that as a writing duo and living in different countries, we would be producing a lot of solo writing and then blending together, we would be going back and forth with ideas but on a whole we had a strong storyline from the start.

What took us slightly by surprise was the road to publishing afterwards.

You need a literary agent, we were told! Yes, this is so very true, publishing houses won't look at your manuscript in the UK without one. Oh ok, we thought, let’s get one of those..... but, they only accept the smallest percentage of submissions that flood through their inboxes every second of the day.

So, the road suddenly seemed longer and we needed to get tougher. Not with the agents who were giving us great reviews but weren't quite prepared to take us on but, with ourselves. And we did......

Emma is the founder and editor of her own magazine Cinema Scandinavia and I'm a freelance writer and mum to 4 daughters, this we had to take our strength from (outside of our crime writing fears) and move forwards in our quest to publish our book.

Self-publishing gets you thinking. What are you offering the reader? A stand-alone book or a series? Why should they even look at a self-published book? How credible are you? All these questions were going through our minds and in the end helped us to mould out a much better "package" for want of a better word.

We knew that we would now need to sell not only a book we whole heartdley stood behind, but a series and ourselves!

And once all this was in place if an agent was interested we knew that we had produced the absolute foundation of The Odense Series.

Self-publishing is not just about writing a good book, it doesn't matter how good it is, it will just sit there unless you get it and you "out there" We did just this and got our series onto social media, Goodreads & Amazon, found an amazing artist Mike Godwin who has given us two great covers (Yes, we have a second book planned)! and did what we read was nearly impossible for a self-published author, organised a massive blog tour with 30 book bloggers on board!

So, we are out there and whilst congratulations is in order, we don't have time! We are promoting, engaging and writing (of course).

It's been a longer journey than we had anticipated but, we have done this and for that we are proud if not slightly bedraggled!

Review - Brother's Ruin by Emma Newman

Brother's Ruin (Industrial Magic No 1)
Emma Newman
Macmillan-Tor, 14 March 2017*
PB, 160pp, e-book

*Online booksellers give different dates but the author's website says 14 March

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy via NetGalley.

I hadn't heard the term "gaslight fantasy" before but I think it fills a definite need, describing fantasy books set an an alt-Victorian world but which aren't in that genre full of clockwork, goggles and brass - you know the one - and most importantly, which may involve MAGIC.

In what we're promised is the first of a series, Newman has reimagined the 19th century as undergoing an Industrial Revolution driven by magic, rather than science, with the key group being the mages of the Royal Society of the Esoteric Arts. It's a crime to keep magical ability secret - if you do, enforcers will drag you away to who knows what fate. Rather it must be developed and used for the good of the Empire.

But equally, anyone falsely claiming magical powers will also suffer penalties. A dilemma then...

We don't see much of the wider picture in this book. Rather it's focussed on a particular family and the effect on them of these rules. Sister and brother Charlotte and Archie Gunn are close. He's a sickly boy: she secretly earns money to support the family, much of it poured away on Archie's studies. If either were tested by the Royal Society and passed, the family could come into money. But if they failed, it would mean ruin.

So it's concerning when there's a rap on the door one day, and the Society's agents announce that Archie, who is the weaker of the two at magic, is to be tested...

Newman tells the story through the eyes of Charlotte, a determined and clear headed young woman, who's pretty much holding the family together. She hopes she can manage the Royal Society's testers. She's not so sanguine about the debt collector who's been hanging around, apparently planning to drag her father off to a sinister address in Whitechapel. Perhaps if she investigates the place she'll find a way...?

This is a short book with a relatively straightforward story - although Newman drops a few surprises too - and it runs at a breakneck pace once the setting has been established. There are some nice touches of characterisation, such as the genteel racism of Mrs Gunn when, to Charlotte's horror, she asks brown skinned Master Judicant that fatal question, yes, but where are you really from?

We also see Charlotte's internal turmoil - 'Once she got upset about something, it pummelled her insides like a demon trapped within her...' - making her human and vulnerable: just being a hero in a novel doesn't make you immune to anxiety attacks.

There are some very nice bits of language - 'a bold red coat that looked like it cost more than their coal bill for a cold winter', 'she wouldn't have been surprised if someone told her he was actually an artist's sculpture made flesh' (Charlotte develops a VERY close interest in one of the mages from the Society) as well as calls to action - 'It was time for this rude young woman to make a difference'.

The book ends on a distinctly promising note 'I need you to be ready for adventure' SURELY promising more with these characters and this setting? I am ready, Ms Newman, I am - bring it on!

Review - Chalk by Paul Cornell

Chalk
Paul Cornell
Tor, 21 March 2017
PB, 260pp, e-book

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

This was one of those rare books that stopped me in my tracks. At times not an easy read, I felt it spoke to me, making the story involving, in places painful, but above all, personal.

I should explain that at school in the late 70s/ early 80s I was bullied quite a bit (not as badly as Andrew in this book though!) I was a bit swotty and not a mixer, so within a few pages, I identified strongly with Andrew Waggoner.

He's an ordinary boy for the time: into Doctor Who, not sporty, a bit shy, trying to avoid the school bullies, with mixed success.

Then one evening - something happens. I was frankly gobsmacked by the place that Cornell goes to at this point. I won't give away what happens but it's no exaggeration to say everything changes for Andrew. The book really begins to fly at this point and describes what happens to him over the next year.

It's a taut, claustrophobic story that drops hints of a haunted landscape, of reservoirs of power and above all, explores a deep, pent-up urge for revenge, denied over centuries until fertilised by blood, rage and fear. Andrew seem to have become the vessel for that revenge - which also promises to pay his enemies back for what they did. The chosen tool is a second Andrew - always referred to simply as "Waggoner" - a creature who, or which, has an epiphany at the old hillfort and sets in motion a plan...

We're never quite sure - nor, I think, meant to be - whether Waggoner is "real" (and some kind of supernatural presence) or a projection of Andrew's rage. Waggoner firmly denies that he comes from Andrew's mind, yet others perceive them as one. Waggoner seems though to have motivations and a confidence that are very distinct form Andrew's. Indeed, they struggle and disagree, and this tension animates much of the story as, in that year, friendships are made and broken, pretended to and refused: as Andrew, very tentatively, becomes close to a girl (Waggoner warns him off): but above all, as the chalk patterns of vengeance spiral round and begin to grip the school.

I loved - if you can use the word for such a dark book - the way Cornell blends the different realities in this story. There is the world of the almost-adults in the school. Awful acts of bullying take place only a hairsbreadth away from adults who surely must know about them, surely ought to intervene, but don't - the curious world of the adults, with their own problems, of money, ageing and memories - seems quite separate place, even if it occupies the same space. The two run in parallel, rarely intersecting - so for example Andrew can't report what happened to him, the "obvious" way out of his nightmare. I wonder whether the need, the desire, to read (and to write) fantasy taps into this double universe? We all know in our bones that there isn't one world but many, and exploring that through fantasy is less painful than facing it directly? It's as if everyone has fallen into another kingdom with different rules. In a sense that seems no more unlikely than an ancient tribe living behind a thin veil in a real hillfort... or a twin created for a dark and secret purpose. I could relate to this.

But it's not just Cornell's themes that resonated with me in this book. More than in anything else by him that I've read, he describes the world as I saw it at that same time.

The white line (you'll know it when you get to it!).

The whole, arcane, teenage world of things that you aren't allowed to like and things that you must -

Andrew anxiously runs through the current pop hits, desperate not to betray himself by liking, even by knowing about, the wrong things. Or, forced to pass an initiation test, he fails on banal questions about football managers.

In other places he rages about not following sport or music because it's what the other kids are into. In a third rate private school out on the chalk of Wiltshire, deviance is severely punished by the other kids - but a certain sort of boy or girl wants to be deviant.

But what if you could punish them? I recognised this thirst for revenge too - and part of me cheered Waggoner on as he delivers it (in gruesome detail. Really. Gruesome.) Yet my unease also grew. It seems more and more likely there will be collateral damage, that innocents will be drawn in... It's an electrifying read, involving, harrowing and utterly compulsive.

I'd warn the reader that you may find - well I found - bits of this book difficult. There were times I had to put it down and breathe calmly - but I could never put it down for long. It is, simply, the best - and most powerful - thing of Cornell's I've ever read.  Buy it, read it.

Review - New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

New York 2140
Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit, 16 March 2017
HB, 613pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

"The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever"

wrote Louis MacNeice in Bagpipe Music

"But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather."

Despite the efforts of well connected denialists to break the bloody glass, the weather rolls on, unstoppable. And authors are now addressing the reality of climate change (perhaps only fiction can convey the reality of this inconvenient truth). A couple of years ago, Adam Nevill used its horror as both a background for and an essential strand of Lost Girl. Last year,  Jonathan Strahan gave us dispatches from the near future in Drowned Worlds.

Now, Kim Stanley Robinson presents a lyrical, beautiful yet chilling warning from 2140, where New York is up to its armpits in water and hustling hard to survive. It is an ambitious book, making real that old cliche that in this book, the city itself is the most important character.

But not the only important one. Robinson employs a device that must have made the book a nightmare to write, telling the story through multiple viewpoints which don't overlap or run in parallel but pick up from one another sequentially.  So we hear from "Mutt and Jeff", two hard up quants living in a garden who plot reform of the world's financial laws. There's Gen Octaviasdottir, the police Inspector who runs much of south Manhattan. Franklin, a trader and deviser of an all-important index which is powering an investment bubble. Vlade, building manager for the old Met Life skyscraper, now standing 50 feet deep in water and converted to provide accomodation, power and - via its farm deck - food. Charlotte Armstrong, social worker and leader of the Met Life co-op. Stefan and Roberto, two children of the waves who have a line in treasure hunting through the drowned streets. Amelia Black, cloud TV star who pilots an airship and films her attempts to save threatened species from the waves.

And, yes, the city speaks through the voice of "a citizen" whose account is the only one to really break the chain of narrative as it discourses on New York history (some of it, to us, still in the future). Sometimes this is immediately relevant, sometimes you only see the point 50 pages on.

And everywhere there are quotes: quotes from New Yorkers, quotes from those experiencing the city for the first time, quotes about famous citizens, geology, history... an awesome amount of research must have gone into this book but it's worn lightly, it all serves to set out the character of that extraordinary city and portray what it might come to after another 120 years of rising waters.

Because, in 2140, this is a city under siege.

From the waves which have drowned half the land, leaving the inhabitants living in the taller buildings, commuting by boat, trying to house the myriad of refugees arriving from even less fortunate places, running rackets, politicing, trading: being New York.

But also under siege from the uptown gentrifiers who like what's been made of the edgy intertidal and want in. The attempts of Charlotte and her allies to fend off one such attempt - and perhaps, to take back a little control from the world of finance and speculation - form most of the book's plot, together with the fate that befalls Mutt and Jeff when they offend those same gods of finance. It's almost beside the point, though, as the main action here is the city's endurance, deep rooted in its past, of all that Man (-made climate change) can throw at it. It is, as I said above, a beautiful book, Robinson playing with the paradox of a global disaster that still brings new possibilities, that draws out the best - and worst - in us. His characters defy not only the elements but the speculators, crooked financiers, a Mayor who sides with the rich. if it was a book about London I'd call it the Blitz spirit: perhaps for New York it's the 9/11 spirit? I don't know.

It is, in all ways, an immersive book. It's sweeping in scope - as Robinson points out many times, his city is a microcosm of the world, it shouldn't be taken as typical but it stands for many places and enables him to tell the story of the melting Antarctic and the shocks that it causes, as well as of financial crisis upon financial crisis in which the people have to bail out reckless capital and then suffer for having done it. There's perhaps an implicit comparison between those two manmade system-disasters. It's a great long chunky doorstop of a book, not a quick read but a read that rewards you with multiple views of the same thing, with many incidents and episodes that shed light on the characters, all told in subtly different registers suiting their protagonists (for example, the mildly comedic episodes featuring Amelia Black or the self-absorbed thoughts of Franklin Garr).

I could, really, waffle on all night about why this book is brilliant but really I'd do a poor job at conveying its genius compared with your just reading it so. I'll leave you with an extract:

Then comes September and the sun tilts to the south. Yes, autumn in New York: the great song of the city and the great season. Not just for the relief from the brutal extremes of the winter and the summer, but for that glorious slant of the light, that feeling that in certain moments lances in on that tilt--that you had been thinking you were living in a room and suddenly with a view between buildings out to the rivers, a dappled sky overhead, you are struck by the fact that you live on the side of a planet--that the great city is also a great bay on a great world. In those golden moments even the most hard-bitten citizen, the most oblivious urban creature, perhaps only pausing for a light to turn green, will be pierced by that light and take a deep breath and see the place as if for the first time, and feel, briefly but deeply, what it means to live in a place so strange and gorgeous.

Review - Hekla's Children

Hekla's Children
James Brogden
Titan Books, 7 March 2017
PB, 397pp

I'm grateful to Lydia Gittins at Titan Books for an advance copy of Hekla's Children.

A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned – Olivia – starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she’d been. After a body is found in the same woodland where they disappeared it is rest believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have terrifying visions of the students. Then Olivia reappears, half-mad and willing to go to any lengths to return the corpse to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay...

I greatly enjoyed this clever, multi-faceted novel. Rooted in landscape and myth, it explores - but in its own way - some of the same territory of "post portal stress" as, say, Alan Garner's Boneland or Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway: children disappear into the Perilous Realm, and come back... and then what?

One of the reasons I liked it so much can't really be gone into without a BIG spoiler, so I've discussed that at the end of the review. I'd advise you now to read that bit till you've read the book. (And you MUST read the book!)

So, we have children - well, teens - scooped Somewhere Else and the aftermath of that in at least one mixed jp life. But the events that summoned Ryan, Scattie, Liv and Bran are not over and done with - though they are rooted in the distant past. In a time of sudden death, of bad harvests and cold, a hungry ghost prowls the forests, an afaugh. As a defence, a tribe choose their best and bravest warrior and set him to guard the paths between the worlds. "Then we'll set a man to watch" as the old rhyme has it: Barkfoot too protects a bridge. But time brings forgetfulness, the Spirit Dances cease and offerings are no longer made - and in the 21st century, archaeologist Tara Doumani is called to examine a mummified body found in a Midlands park. Could it connected to the children who went missing nine years before?

No, she concludes, it's older than that. But doubts begin to creep in: Nathan, the teacher who was responsible for those kids turns up, having begin to see them around him and he, in turn, looks up his ex, now happily married and horrified that the past is coming alive again.

And in the dark places, something hungry is waiting.

"This is happening now. It is always happening..."

I was impressed by the way that Brogden weaves together all these viewpoint characters - and more in fact but I don't want to give too much away! - into a coherent story. It's unsettling at first, especially as we soon realise that some accounts are being held back, and in fact a major character doesn't therefore come on the scene until two thirds of the way into the book. And other characters change their role pretty drastically as things go on.

Nathan's is perhaps the main viewpoint: we see his pain at the "loss" of the kids but also his self-absorption in his (lack of) a relationship with Sue - which is what arguably causes the kids to be unsupervised in the first place. Nine years on he's determined to get to the bottom of things (and reclaim his lover?)

We also see his quest for the facts, which challenges conventional understanding of history, myth, reality and indeed time itself. One of the more amusing aspects of this is the struggle that those most rational of professions, the police force and the archaeologists, have when the facts won't fit.

Again, Brogden masterfully knits together history, myth and the topography of the West Midlands (not the most promising of landscapes - compared, say, to Garner's Alderley edge) so that everything does - in the end - make sense. In doing so he also addresses a very modern archaeological concern - what should be done with ancient human remains - and strongly suggests they shouldn't simply be dug up and taken away. Arising first where Western investigation has disturbed indigenous
burials, this issue has now, as it were, come home and so we see a campaign against the excavation of "Rowton man" as vans are wrecked and graffiti - "PUT HIM BACK" appears in various places.

Why, exactly, who "he" is, and what he has become are all questions central to this book. They need to be answered, but the point is not just just to understand things, but to change them. Because that hungry ghost is still out there and the answers are needed if it is to be stopped. But we don't just need answers, we need a champion. Who that might be is something you may guess, or you may not. I'll just say that the denouement, when it comes, is satisfying, and right - and when you read it you'll realise perhaps that one of the main themes of the story hasn't quite been what you thought.

A great adventure, involving writing and lots to turn over in your mind.

Strongly recommended.

And now for that spoilery bit. Carry on below if you dare!

Review - Carnivalesque by Neil Jordan

Carnivalesque
Neil Jordan
Bloomsbury, 23 February 2017
HB, 288pp

I'm very grateful for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

This was a strange book to read and review. At times I liked it a lot. At other times - especially in the final quarter - I felt I was reading a different book, still excellent but taking a different direction. It was though a rewarding and different book that took me to new places and combined the fantastic and the personal in a fresh and engaging way.

The carny world - fairgrounds, carnivals, circuses - is always a good setting for a novel: the self-containedness of the travelling show, the shifts in scene as it moves across a country, a continent, the garishness, the front, the glimpses behind the scenes. Above all the contrasts between what you're meant to see and what's really going on.

Jordan combines all this with a good dollop of creepiness: there's an ancient mystery at work in this carnival, which has become home to... let's say unusual performers, who draw with them unusual enemies. All this is told allusively, through hints and guess: even the carnies, we understand, have forgotten the details, such is their age and so scrambled have their origins become. But certain terms are avoided - and when a boy starts asking questions about them - well, he'd have been better off not.

It works really well, as we explore the carnival through the eyes of Andy, an Irish teenager who persuades his parents to stop at the carnival one day. Then he walks into the Hall of Mirrors... and comes out again. Only it's not him, not exactly. Everyone has a reflection, after all - so part of Andy remains in the carnival and part rejoins his parents. Are they two different sides of him, like Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde? or has the mirror made a new Andy? If so, which is it - the boy in the carnival or the one who returns home?

This part of the novel works well for me as a metaphor made real - the essence of science fiction - for Andy's, Dany's growth into adolescence. This is a central theme of the book (later we meet Andy's mother surveying the teenage girls who have blossomed over a summer, reappearing in fake tan, high heels and short skirts). We see, as it were, two sides to the boy: on the one hand a sullen young man, on the other a person filed with wonder at the sights and events and mysteries of the carnival and of its performers - especially Mona the acrobat who finds him in the Hall of Mirrors. This Andy - rearranged as Dany - grows in the fertile soil of the carnival, becoming a different sort of man. Growing up. The other takes up with one of those girls, getting up ton who-knows-what in the sand dunes ands setting the rumour mills whirring. Growing up.

Flitting back and forth between the carnival and Andy's home, we see and can compare the two men/ boys, as well as learning about Andy's parents who had already grown chilly with, distant from one another. It's never clear why but there are flashbacks to their attempts to conceive and strange events around that, as well as hints of myth - Irish as well as classical. Indeed the whole book is suffused with a mythological atmosphere, drawing on Milton and abounding in symbols such as hawthorn trees, mounds, changelings and, of course, all those mirrors, which are another central theme.

In a sense the history of the carnival is a jagged, mirrored, shattered history, touching on emigration from Ireland to America, the development of the moving picture - an improvement on the mirror, surely? - and the encroachment of the modern world on the ancient. The carnival is at the centre of all this, but for how long? Whatever the origin of the carnies, they can't reproduce and in the end they succumb to the Fatigue. So they have traditionally snatched children, unwanted children from families struggling to support them, and taken them into the business, as it were. But this is now barred by modern watchfulness. And with an ancient enemy waking, how long can the carnival carry on?

All of this is gradually teased out alongside Andy's story, the picture slowly forming as though a mirror were being cleaned. Then we come to the final part of the book which suddenly shifts into something much more like horror. And that was where, I felt, the delicate way that Jordan had built his structure and slipped it into the gaps of our world, suddenly came adrift. The carnival had been painted as something elusive, something you'd come across by accident and forget afterwards. Then, suddenly, it can be tracked on the Internet, and events there take a turn that can't, surely, be forgotten - though we're not told, in the end, exactly what does happen. Indeed a crucial scene is almost completely missing: Andy plays a key role in events but, a role he seems to have been preparing for right through the book but - unless I've missed something - we never learn exactly what he does.

I debated with myself whether this actually matters. Andy's role in things is signposted and by the time we reach that point, we know what to expect of him. Isn't that enough? I couldn't decide in the end whether this is very clever of Jordan or simply annoying. Perhaps it depends what genre you think you're reading: the ending is possibly more in keeping with the early, allusive part of the book than the later parts. I'm just not sure.

Overall, then, a fascinating if rather frustrating book. Perhaps the mirror metaphor is appropriate here, too? Which is the reflection - and which the reality?

Blogtour - Forsaken Skies

Today I'm honoured to be joining the blogtour for Forsaken Skies, Book 1 in author-of-mystery D Nolan Clark's sequence The Silence. Forsaken Skies was published by by Orbit on February 23rd, and the author agreed to answer some questions here.

Commander Lanoe is one of the Navy's greatest heroes, but the civil war left him with nothing but painful memories. When a planetary governor is murdered, it falls to Lanoe to hunt down the killer and bring them to justice.

Yet his pursuit will lead him towards the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.

An unknown armada has emerged from the depths of space, targeting an isolated colony planet. As the colonists plead for help, the politicians and bureaucrats look away. But Lanoe has never run from a fight - and he will not abandon thousands of innocents to their fate.

An intriguing setup, I think... so without further ado... over to you, D Nolan Clark!

Q: How did you get started with writing?

When I was six years old I saw Star Wars for the first time. I saw it about half a dozen more times. Then came the inevitable realization: there wouldn’t be any more of it to see for years. This was even before VCRs were available—once a movie was out of the theatres, that was it. I started reading SF books, devouring them really. When I finished the shelf at my local library I realized that if I still wanted more science fiction, I would have to make my own. My first projects were pretty terrible, but I could never get enough. It’s a process that’s never stopped.

Q: How long were Lanoe and Valk in your mind and when/ how did you “find” them?

Those two pretty much created themselves. I knew I needed an embittered hero, someone who had literally seen everything but still had a good heart. Somebody who would take on a risky mission because it was the right thing to do. Valk came next, because Lanoe needed someone who would balance him out—a good-natured, self-effacing kind of guy. Traditionally you would give the hard-boiled veteran the tragic backstory, but I figured I would change it up a little. Valk was injured during the war and now he’s in constant pain, unable to take off his space suit because it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He should have been a real miseryguts, but instead he’s the heart of the team, the one who complains the least. The rest of his story surprised even me, but it felt so right when it came to me that I had to run with it.

Q: Do your characters come to you before the plot or does the plot come to you first?

It wasn’t really that concrete. The characters shape the plot, but the plot also demands a certain kind of character. The two kind of grew around each other—Valk’s story, as I mentioned, wasn’t in my first preliminary outline at all, but it became central to the story. Lanoe’s need for other people (and his constant rejection of them) gave me Maggs, and Zhang, and Ehta—all of whom added something of their own to the plot.

Q: How much control do you have over the characters? Did the book ever take completely unexpected turns?

Yes, but most of them happened in the development process. By the time I actually started composition, I knew how the story ended and what would be left of the various characters. The biggest surprise that happened during the actual writing was that I discovered just how human these characters were, that their actions weren’t just based on heroism or abstract character motivations, but changed over the course of the story. It was a lot of fun getting to know these people, even as I tortured them and constantly threw them into peril.

Q: I’m interested in how authors make their settings real - with real world set novels you can visit actual places or places that might resemble or inspire locations. This could be difficult for space opera! How do you approach this?

It’s tough, but it’s crucial. A big part of Forsaken Skies is that the characters are defending a specific planet, a place that means something to them. I had to put a lot of work into shaping Niraya, the backwater world. The key is to find small details, things that don’t matter at all to the plot, and question how they shape the day to day lives of the people there. For instance, I knew Niraya was a dry, canyon planet with one big city and then lots of farms tucked away in remote places. I started thinking about what was happening on those farms (which never appear in the book!) and I did a little research and realized that the best livestock for a place with no real atmosphere would be large birds, like ostriches and emu. The idea of cowboys rounding up herds of emu really tickled me, and it shaped how I saw the planet. I also knew that the people who lived on Niraya had gone there for religious freedom. I needed to create a bunch of futuristic religions for those people to follow—some for comic relief, some that I wanted the reader to find respectable. That shaped all kinds of things, from the architecture of the churches to the clothes people wore to the opportunities available to the children of the emu ranchers. It’s a process that takes a lot of time, but it’s ridiculously fun!

Q. Which writer(s) do you admire most?

Science fiction writers like William Gibson and Ian McDonald, Richard Grant. I am a total fanboy for Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks. More recently I’ve really enjoyed Scott Lynch, Jonathan Howard and Felix Gilman.

Q. Did any writing (or other media) particularly inspire Forsaken Skies?

The book is directly inspired by Seven Samurai, and to a lesser extent the American version, The Magnificent Seven. I’d be lying if I said otherwise! I like to think I didn’t just copy Kurosawa, though, and added my own dimension to the story.

Q. What were you trying to achieve with the book (beyond writing a great story!) (perfectly OK to say “go and read it if you want to find out”!)

I wanted to write the book that I thought I was going to write when I was six years old. The book I tried to write when I was thirteen. Back then I didn’t have the skill as a writer, but also I lacked life experience—it’s something you just can’t fake. You have to be burned by life a bunch of times before you begin to understand it, before you can write about real human beings. It’s taken me almost forty years to learn how to write this book, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

Q. You’ve got two more books in The Silence sequence coming so it’s safe to say the story isn’t done yet! Can you say any more about what’s coming up?

Not without spoiling the ending of Forsaken Skies, which changes everything. But I can say that the story doesn’t end at Niraya. That the alien fleet which menaces the backwater world isn’t done with humanity, not by a long shot. It’s fair to say that the collision between these two species—us and them—is going to complete reshape both, and alter their respective histories forever.

Q. Finally, a question that isn't directly the book. Your ship has been damaged crossing an asteroid field and you’re sealed in an escape pod. You were able to grab one book - any book - as you fled. Which would it be?

Jeez. The longest one available. I would hope, if I was living that far in the future, I would have access to a whole library of ebooks! But, honestly, that’s kind of the story I’ve already lived. The answer is I would read anything I could get my hands on—and then I would make up my own stories, for as long as it took.

Thank you so much for answering those questions.

Forsaken Skies is out now and you can buy it from your local bookshop or here, here, here or here.

As you've heard, further adventures await so keep your scanners online...