Guest Review - Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Year One (Rebirth)

Image from Netgalley.com

Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Year One (Rebirth)
by Greg Rucka
DC Entertainment
DC Comics

This is a guest review contributed by Joshua Harris.

Thank you to the publisher for an advance copy of Wonder Woman via NetGalley.

Having read writer Greg Rucka and artist Liam Sharp’s very strong first volume of Wonder Woman since the DC Rebirth re-launch I was looking forward to seeing what Rucka would create with Nicola Scott on art duty. The result is a book that feels very much in line with the rest of the DC Rebirth titles but for all of the right reasons.

What Scott and Rucka have managed to create is a ‘meat and potatoes’ retelling of the origin story of Wonder Woman. Rucka structures the book well initially cutting between the military and masculine world of Steve Trevor and the all female island where Wonder Woman resides. Scott’s skilful clean style aids the nature of the story as it is always clear and economical in selecting the action. When the story plot threads merge early on in the book, things really get into gear. Rucka streamlines the story with a satisfying mystery building towards a fulfilling climax while Scott provides some terrific action sequences.

Ultimately Wonder Woman Year One is no reinvention of the wheel it is a highly effective sincere and exciting superhero comic.

Review - The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove

The Run-Out Groove (Vinyl Detective, 2)
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 9 May 2017
PB, 416pp

I'm grateful to Lydia at Titan Books for sending me a copy of this.

The Vinyl Detective is back, accompanied by girlfriend Nevada, friends Tinkler, "Stinky" Stanmer and Clean Head and the cats, Fanny and Turk. If you've read the first part of these adventures you'll know what to expect - a search for a rare record crossing over into detective work about, in this case, a dead 60s popstar and her missing son,  peril, wisecracks and a tapestry of (mainly) London streets, housing estates and record shops.

The two books are very much in the same vein (perhaps this one is slightly less violent - though a key character does come to a sticky end in a pretty shocking way) and, with the setting and characters established, Cartmel has more time and space to develop their relationships: the Detective and Nevada are a touching couple and his bickering with Tinkler is fun.

Slightly less well defined are the clients in this case, Lucy Tegmark and John "the Colonel", the brother of the deceased star. They're pretty hostile to one another but I never quite got why. That said, I didn't warm to the Colonel anyway, especially after his pretty unpleasant response to a woman who is rather on the large side.

But. The client brings the mystery, the mystery is what drives this genre: here it's a devilish one with a real touch of tragedy. When Valerian died and her son disappeared, a bother and sister were left behind and they clearly never came to terms with the loss. Now, it's time to try and get closure. But there's someone out there who'd rather things were left open...

I liked the way, in this book, Cartmel has his protagonists actually learn from their experiences in the earlier. Yes, the atmosphere and the general setup is similar but they are determined not to get caught out as they did before (cue a lot of rather clever dialogue as they assess whether they really are, or aren't, residing in "Paranoia Heights". This may be connected with still being rather haunted by those experiences - the Detective himself certainly is early on in the story.

But of course history never repeats itself exactly. The threat here is rather different, and not obvious. I certainly didn't figure out who was behind until very late in the day: Cartmel weaves the story with so many red herrings and false turns that I don't think you will, either.

In short: an excellent continuation of the series. Give me more!

(By the way, Cartmel collaborates with Ben Aaronovitch on the Rivers of London comics. I think I saw a couple of RoL Easter eggs in here - perhaps you'll spot more....?)

Review - Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell

Image from http://decastell.com/press-kit/

Spellslinger
Sebastien de Castell
Hot Key Books, 4 May 2017
PB, 396pp

I was sent this book for review by Amazon Vine.

Imagine you're back at Hogwarts, But you've no magic. You're a muggle - or at best a Squib - and about to be found out...

That's the dilemma that faces Kellen in this fast-paced YA fantasy. Kellen is from an ancient, high family of spellcasters, but what little magic he has is drying up - and he's due his trials in a few days.

But in Kellen's world, those with no magic, those who fail the trials, are disowned, cast out, treated as servants of even slaves.

De Castell takes this idea and spins a high-stakes tale of ingenuity, of growing up and of realisation. It's set in what - were it cloaked in modern dress and language - would be a classic dystopia: a cruel world, based on lies, prejudice and power, where those who fail are trampled down and a narrow ruling caste holds power for itself. The book spares no punches as it dissects Kellen's society: a society of rather conceited wizards who take for granted their moral superiority and their fitness to lord it over all around. And Kellen's part of it - so long as he sees himself among the privileged. But the events he sets in train as his trials approach will reveal some secrets about both his clan, and himself...

I loved this book. While serious in its subject, it's far from being dark fantasy of any sort - not least in Castell's brilliant counterpoint to Kellen and the pompous wizards: a woman called Ferius, a stranger who rides into town, looking and sounding for all the world like a gunslinger from a Western (except, no guns). As such strangers tend to do, she challenges the self-satisfied, brings new ways and stands up for the weak. Kellen is both enthralled and repelled by her, the struggle mirroring, perhaps, his internal struggle as he comes to realise there's more wrong with his people than simply his failing magic.

Add in a gallery of bullies and entitled schoolmates who could easily have come from Dickens or Tom Brown's Schooldays, a talking squirrel cat who drives a hard bargain, and layer upon layer of conspiracies, and you have potent blend. Indeed the only feature that isn't immediately obvious is where the title comes from: its derivation may seem obvious but until quite late in the book it isn't really clear what, in this world, a 'spellslinger' might be. That is eventually cleared up, though, and De Castell thereby prepares us for, I hope, many sequels following Kellen's and Ferius's future adventures.

Excellent, page-turnery reading.

Blogtour - Essex and Strange Magic by Syd Moore

It seems to be Essex week for me. On Monday - Bank Holiday - I went to Banbury museum to see Grayson Perry's tapestries which are on tour. Entitled "Julie Cope's Grand Tour" the two pieces tell the lifestory of the eponymous Julie, an Essex girl. Supported by Perry's own narration of a ballad for Julie, they are tender and moving and I'd urge you to see them if you get the chance

Coming back up to date, I'm delighted today to be joining the blogtour for Strange Magic, the new book by author Syd Moore which is published TODAY, 4 May. I've reviewed it here but before that, Syd has written a piece for the blog examining a key aspect of the background to her book - the curious history of Essex girls... and Essex witches. Over to Syd!

Essex Girl, Essex Witch

Essex Girls and witches. You might be forgiven for thinking that these two stereotypes (or are they now archetypes?) have nothing to do with each other. Certainly on first impressions they appear to be polar opposites. The Essex Girl, after all, is often depicted as blonde, in heels (possibly white, possibly of the stiletto variety), with a shed load of makeup plastered across her face. The witch, on the other hand, tends to evoke images of gnarled and scrawny limbs poking from tatty black robes, ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ style green hooters and masses of matted black hair. Different, no? Physically perhaps, but actually they share a lot of similar characteristics.

Syd Moore (c) www.danielnewmanphotography.co.uk

Witch persecution in England in the 16th and 17th centuries hit the county of Essex very hard. Between 1560 and 1680, for instance, in Surrey, Sussex and Hertford there were 185 indictments for witchcraft.  For the same period of time Essex, on its own, saw over 500. In fact, at one point Essex was widely known as ‘Witch County’.  The witches, of course, were mostly poor and often vulnerable, scapegoated for natural disasters or illness by villagers, picked on by neighbours, rounded up by witch hunters.  A fair few were accused of being lewd and lusty, of fornicating with men and the Devil himself.  A good portion of those who went through to the courts were considered ‘loose’, meaning they were not under the protection, shelter or control of a man.  And as, at that time, women needed a man to represent them at trial - a husband or a son, brother, nephew – many of these women were legally ‘dumb’. So - carnal, low of social class, loose and dumb. Sounds awfully like another stereotype doesn’t it?

I have a theory that the stigma associated with the women of Essex never faded. That this idea that females from this particular county were a bit off, weird and/or ropey persisted for a long time. So when the stereotype of the Essex Girl appeared in the Eighties/Nineties she was taken up quickly and very decisively spawning a wave of jokes and books and articles. Most of the jokes had the effect of neutralising what was in fact quite a powerful type of woman. Scary even. The Essex Girl was generalised to be promiscuous i.e. independent and sexually autonomous. Or was that ‘carnal and loose’? She worked hard and spent her money how she liked on what she liked. So what if she fancied spending some of it on beauty treatments. As far as I’m aware nobody has produced any evidence that beauty treatments correlate to IQ.  But indeed the OED begs to differ. In their definition she is ‘unintelligent’ too. So, she’s ‘dumb’?

Again, carnal, loose, low of social class and dumb – are you reading me?

I think it’s time to put prejudice aside, take a long hard look at where the stereotype might have come from, and try and put it to bed. If we can’t do that then we should realign the girl with some of the other qualities she’s become known to possess – confidence, sass, strength and fun. High profile women who have been associated with the stereotype, for better or for worse, have done remarkably well for themselves showing canny business acumen and drive. Amy Childs used her fifteen minutes of fame to launch a beauty range and fashion collection which is still thriving. And in today’s current climate with its problems of grooming and cyber-bullying, confidence and sexual autonomy in girls and women should surely be something to applaud.

Changing the attitude to the stereotype might take some effort but it’s not impossible. Witch to Essex Girl, after all, is a pretty miraculous transformation.

STRANGE MAGIC by Syd Moore is published by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, paperback £8.99

Blogtour review - Strange Magic by Syd Moore

Strange Magic
Syd Moore
Point Blank, 4 May 2017
PB, 392pp

The Only Way is Witchcraft...

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book as part of the book's tour (and to Syd for writing here about her book).

When Rosie Strange inherits her grandfather Septimus's run-down Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to close it down, sell it and take what she can. Estranged from Septimus for many years, her branch of the family has eschewed his interest in the weird and supernatural and got on with making a living. Rosie herself is a benefit fraud inspector -  neither the most glamorous or popular job in the world but one that certainly plants her feet firmly on the ground.

Of course, things don't go exactly according to plant. Rosie didn't expect to step into a mystery, and she didn't expect to run across the enticing (but annoying) young curator, Sam Stone in whose company she undertakes a hair-raising roadtrip across England, against a looming deadline...

Three things motivate the action in this book. There's the background of the Essex Witch Trials - real events, more deadly than the Salem persecutions and which inspire the (fictional) museum Rosie now has charge of. (And by the way, how cool is that? Having your own museum? If it was me I'd literally never leave again...) Moore clearly feels passionately about what took place and that really comes though in her writing.

Secondly, there's the whole Essex Girl thing. Rosie is an Essex girl and proud of it, as well as being many other things, and to a degree I think, again, Moore's righteous anger at women being stereotyped and sidelines animates some of Rosie's and Sam's attitudes in this book. Which is OK by me - it never becomes merely a vehicle for a point of view, and there's a curious and interesting interplay between the witchy bits of the plot and this aspect.

The third angle (come on, we're talking witchcraft, there have to be three aspects...) is a good old-fashioned mystery. A boy is in danger: saving hims is all tied up with finding the remains of Ursula Cadence, one of the original Essex victims. And so we get a wild chase via Boscastle, Porstmouth and points East enabling Rosie and Sam to spark off each other and work out how they really feel... or not. The creepy bits are creepy, Sam is a bit mysterious and something really nasty is brewing, which all comes to a head in a scene reminiscent of The Omen.

I enjoyed this book. It's not perfect - I felt that the characters hurried rather into the mystery, when they would surely have asked more questions and taken some persuading to become involved, and towards the end a great deal of information is conveniently provided by a hitherto unmentioned contact - but it is a great deal of fun, lighthearted and dark at the same time but with real heart and some serious issues at its core.

The central mystery - a tension between rationalist Sam's belief that the witch hysteria was only prejudice, its victims mere scapegoats and the looming presence of something darker here - is never quite resolved, nor, perhaps, ought it to be (especially if, as I hope, Moore plans to continue the series).

Overall, a fun, engaging read.

One final note in passing: I don't know if it's intentional but in having her action run up to a climax on Good Friday/ Lady Day, Moor has chosen a very significant and rare conjunction of festivals - the two don't often coincide. This blogpost explains why that is - for reasons I won't spell out for fear of spoilers, one might well see this as a very appropriate conjunction...

Blogtour review: Tag - You're Dead by Douglas Skelton

Tag - You're Dead
Douglas Skelton
Contraband, 27 April 2017
PB, 266pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of the book and to Gordon who arranged the blogtour and invited me to take part.

Tag - You're Dead is a noir thriller set in Glasgow. It's so noir, you almost need a torch to read it, as protagonist Dominic Queste wisecracks his way from abandoned tenement to remote moorland cottage to a restaurant where a chain-smoking blonde sits in a back room keeping secrets. Queste lards his narration with film references, as does the anonymous killer who takes an interest in him, and wisecracks for his country when cornered by the cops or the Glasgow heavy mob.

The style is authentic, heady and pitch-perfect. But it's not just a matter of style, of pastiche Chandler. Skelton knows how to spin a plot, too - how to spin a web, I should rather say, that catches his characters one by one. There's a pattern, because they're all in the same web. There's no pattern, because... well, that would be telling. It is, in the end, a devilishly simply premise. Devilish and simple and deadly.

Skelton peoples the book with unforgettable characters - Queste himself, his ever sadder partner, Ginty; Queste's backup, slum priest Father Verne and brothers Duncan and Hamish Sullivan who provide backup for the good Father ("We're all going to Hell - the question is, whether we go there alone") who runs a women's refuge and sometimes needs a shield against the dealers and the pimps whose business he's disrupting. They're the main players, but we also see cops, journalists, Glaswegians of every station, and they're all drawn with an eye to the telling detail, all made alive (if, in some cases, then made dead very quickly).

It's a fun read, a sobering one and every page is compelling. It may be a bit cliched that Queste is a grubby angel, that he was himself an addict and isn't above bending the law here and there, but Skelton carries this off with aplomb - partly through making the whole thing so transparent: Queste knows that he's in a noir thriller and behaves accordingly, as do some of the others such as muscle man Tank Milligan who dresses like a hood from a B-movie.

While there are shades of night over all the central characters and Father Verne, again, looks forward to the future battle they won't win, I hope that Queste and his friends appear agains soon because in an ever darkening world, boy do we need some deeper darkness to provide relief.

Review - City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Image from www.quercusbooks.co.uk

City of Miracles (Divine Cities 3)
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 4 May 2017
PB, 439pp

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

Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is back, and this time he's out for vengeance...

This is the third and final part of Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy, three books I have found delightful, entertaining and deeply accomplished.

In the world of the Divine Cities, miracles are commonplace, the Dininities walk among us and reality is mutable. But not everyone benefits from this: the Divine is here, but is unequally distributed - and for centuries, it was the people of the Continent who had the miracles, and the people of Saypur who paid the price. In an act of unforseen violence, the Divinities were slain and reality Blinked.

The first book, City of Stairs, explored the moral ambiguities behind this post-colonial situation where the formerly oppressed rule and seek to erase the culture of their oppressors. The focus of that book was the wily spy Shara Komayd, sent to investigate a murder in the city of Bulikov (in these books, the Continent has Slavic overtones and its residents are pale skinned while the Saypuris are darker).

The second book, City of Blades, focussed on Komayd's sparring partner, General Turyin Mulaghesh, brought out of retirement to clear up a mess. Both Komayd and Mulaghesh are delightful characters, professionals, even ruthless professionals, committed to, and masters of, the political game that is Saypuri public life, well connected, realistic, mired in compromise - but seeking a better way. We never actually get to see much of the Saypuri bureaucracy and its machinations, since the books are really about the crises that these two women face when the past won't stay buried and history threatens to turn upside down (again). But Bennett is really, really good at suggesting, at hinting... you just know what kind of organisation stands behind Shara and Turyin, what dangers they face, how high the stakes are.

'It's unfair that the dead leave us... but it's worse that they never really go away.'

Both books also feature Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, a great bear of a man from the North, Shara's sidekick with whom we learn - again hints, few details - she's shared a career's worth of adventures, scrapes and situations. An exile from his people, Sigrud is a lonely figure with a bad habit of continually losing what he values - family, home, honour - until at the end of City of Blades he is forced to flee, having committed a terrible crime.

In City of Miracles, Sigrud gets his own book. We learn more about his past, and what his losses mean to him. About the desire for revenge, and what it cost him and - in the end - who he truly is. Because he's got a part to play in making things right.

And they have gone terribly wrong. Shara has been murdered, leaving her adopted daughter unprotected, and once Sigrud hears about it, it's time for him to dig up his old work tools and come out of the forests to track down her killer and find what was behind the crime.

What follows is a truly white knuckle adventure filled with marvels, squalor, Divinities, spycraft, escapes, deaths - and an implacable enemy, something that can use the shadows to strike and which is very hungry. Sigrud begins simply wanting to avenge Shara, then he realizes that he has a bigger task - and that in the end, time will be against him.

I can't tell you how delighted I was to read this book, to meet, especially, Sigrud again and to see him account for himself and try to redeem himself (whether he does I'll leave it to you to judge). One of the strengths of these books has always been Bennett's characterisation of his three central protagonists. Sigrud's pain, his despair and his loyalty have always shone through but with more focus, in this book, they become nuanced, both more and less than in the previous ones and he has much more of a role in shaping the story. Which isn't to say that he overpowers everyone else: there are some other truly great - and horrible - characters here, including a pair of villains who are the embodiment of creepiness, a tough billionaire businesswoman who habitually clutches an automatic rifle, and a pair of teenage girls - one of them Shara's adopted daughter - who won't be pushed to the margins of things.

There are also some wonderful feats of imagination as the story powers towards its conclusion - my favourite was the Aero Tram which now HAS TO BE BUILT - but the idea of a seneschal (you'll have to read the book!) comes close as does the final release of Bulikov's miracles.

And there's dark humour:

'He takes a long, slow breath. 'In my operational days, there were three ways of thinking about things. There were things you knew. There were things you knew that you didn't know. And then there were the things that you didn't know you didn't know.'

'No wonder we keep having so many international crises' she said  'if you lot are running around talking like that.' "

Look, just read the book. It's brilliant in so many different ways - as a book in its own right, as the conclusion to a dizzying, ground-breaking fantasy trilogy and as an inseparable part of that trilogy.

This isn't fantasy with a Map and Dragons, it is fantasy with telephone, trains and radio yet still in a world of the deeply weird, a world where there is a Divine ecology which has been upset. It has things to say about power imbalances, about revenge and retribution, about progress and backwardness, about grief, loss and exile, but above all it's an epic story - epic not in the "ten thousand warriors thundered across the plains" sense, epic in its humanity, its sympathy and its empathy.

Read it!