HARBINGER OF THE STORM By Aliette de Bodard – Reviewed

With the kind permission of Morpheus Tales. This review will appear in the April issue of the  MT Supplement.

You know how sometimes when you meet someone for the first time, for absolutely no reason that you can put your finger on, you have an instant dislike – like a kind of anti-chemistry – and as you get to know them a little better you find out your initial instinct was complete and absolutely correct? (Lots of people who meet me for the first time get this impression.) That’s what happened with this book.

It should have been fine. A murder mystery set in Aztec Mexico at the height of the Aztec empire, somewhere around the fifteen century. Sounds interesting enough. Except that it’s really not. It’s not a murder mystery for a start; it’s more a political drama with a few deaths and murders thrown in. This is not Poirot. The story is much more reminiscent of Macbeth or Hamlet as it follows of the political intrigues when the ruler dies and his replacement must be found.

The minutiae of finding the new leader is epic, on a scale that even those not taking an instant dislike to, will find hard to bare. De Bodard, in her afterword, says herself that the process would likely have been shorter than she’d written it. Of course it would. The only things that would feel longer would have been having my fingernails removed with pliers, or my testicles boiled on a low heat.

One of the problems with the book is that you just don’t care. The characters, with their incomprehensible and mispronounce-able names, are interchangeable, having no distinguishing characteristics. The fact that half of them are priests and the other half are imperial family doesn’t help matters. There’s so little tension that a couple of deaths acts only to wake you up a little.

The fantastic Aztec Mexican setting is ruined by keeping everything within the courtly areas of the temples. There’s no jungle, no danger, no atmosphere. The Aztec setting, rather than spicing things up just adds to the confusion with the many-syllable names and a little of their religion. For one of the most blood-thirsty warrior nations in the world there’s little blood-shed, only once is sacrifice mentioned, and there’s absolutely nothing to help alleviate the boredom.

Can a book really be that bad? Everything good you might imagine should be contained in this book has somehow been removed. It’s rather like my mother’s cooking, when at her worse she manages to remove everything that’s good from every single ingredient until what you end up with is a vapid, insipid, flavourless slop. De Bodard seems to have fashioned this book in the same way. What should work just does not, and it doesn’t work unrelentingly. A failure of epic proportions, but a book that can be read. Probably the worst book I remember finishing, but finish it I did, and I feel quite proud to have suffered such torment and survived. I can only hope that Volume 1 in the Obsidian and Blood series was very different, and that the following third volume won’t make the same mistakes as the second.

Of course there are worse fates than having to read this book again, waterboarding or the aforementioned bollock boiling. Both of which I would recommend before attempting to read this.

www.angryrobotbooks.com

DEATH’S DISCIPLES By J. Robert King – Reviewed

Printed with the permission of Morpheus Tales. This review will appear in the Morpheus Tales #12 Supplement, out in April 2011.

I do enjoy a novel that starts with a mid-air explosion, and continues with the action, developing twists and turns that keep you entertained and off-balance all the way to the end. A book that doesn’t hold back, a writer unafraid to go places you don’t expect.

Susan Gardner is the only survivor of the aeroplane crash, the sole witness to the destruction of the plane by terrorists calling themselves Death’s Disciples. There’s only one problem: Susan has amnesia and can’t remember anything before the incident. There is another small problem: the Death’s Disciples aren’t finished yet, and Susan’s about to be attacked, from every possible direction…

To give away any more of the story would take us deep into Spoiler City, and with a novel like this – where half the enjoyment is the discovery of the next plot twist – that’s not a place you want to go.

King ramps up the tension steadily, drip-feeding the twists and turns of the plot, and despite the incredible and almost impossible leaps of faith the reader is expected to take, it actually works. You’re happy to go along with the continuing craziness of the plotting because it’s so much fun, and your suspension of disbelief hangs on (just) throughout.

A quietly incredible novel on a grand scale.

www.angryrobotbooks.com