KILLING PRETTY By Richard Kadrey – Reviewed

There are some books you just can’t review, because you experience them. You don’t read them, you live them. They impact you and affect everything that follows. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are those kind of books. You don’t come across those types of books very often.

Most recently Kadrey’s Sandman Slim did that to me. This is the seventh book is the continuing saga of the man who escaped hell.

Jim Stark, AKA Sandman Slim, is hired as a Private Investigator to save the angel of death, who was forced into a human body and had his heart cut out. Stark’s investigations will lead him to ghost fights, neo-nazis and hedge-funds…

No summary of the Sandman Slim novels manages to capture the essential attitude of our anti-hero Stark, and the random collection of waifs and strays he calls his friends, including a former pornstar and zombie killer, his demon girlfriend, an immortal Frenchman, and Samael the ex-devil.

The impact of the novels, the freshness of the characters and the stories, continues to decrease ever so slightly in each successive instalment. It’s not new anymore. But it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. These are the kind of books you race through at the beginning of the story, glad to be in it, and you slow towards the end as you savour every page and don’t want it to end.

Kadrey has developed an amazing formula, brilliantly realised characters in a dark and gritty world of LA that is wholly recognisable, but strangely shifted beyond our reality. Death, danger, demons and hideously corruptible humans.
Anyone willing to give this series a try is likely to get their mind-blown. This is urban fantasy as it’s shocking best.
Keep up the good work, Mr Kadrey.

OUT OF THE DARK By David Weber – Reviewed

How do I review this book without ruining the surprise ending that lets it all down? Ok, let’s start off with the good, there’ll be plenty of time for the bad in a minute.

Aliens decide to invade Earth.

This is an ensemble piece, following not only several human characters but also the aliens, giving us an insight into the politics of the Shongairi (a dog-like race) and their Hegemony (universe-wide coalition). The problem is that there is a little too much going on and none of the characters are well developed, or even developed a little bit.

Straight to the bad stuff. The characters are merely cardboard cut-outs. The world is half-destroyed by the alien race but who gives a shit, there is nothing in this book that really presents this as a bad thing and certainly nothing to make us care about it. For an “advanced” race the Shongairi are pretty stupid, and when they invade they are ill-prepared and equipment for infantry warfare, which is explained easily enough, but not entirely convincingly. Then we have Weber’s obsession with weaponry. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except when it overpowers the story. Instead of being told how a something grain bullet travels faster in one weapon than another, how about telling us why we should care about the marine in Romania, or the rednecks in the hills, or anyone in this book.

Ok, now for the spoiler alert: The Earth and whatever is left of humanity is saved from the alien invasion by Dracula about twenty pages towards the end, with no signposting or anything to make me believe this is in anyway real. I can accept alien races invading Earth, that’s fine, I can suspend disbelief because the author has sold me that story and I’ll willing to buy it. What I’m not willing to buy is a writer throwing in a deus ex machina. I feel robbed.

Not the story I was looking for, not the writer I was looking for. Disappointing on all fronts.

GEMINI CELL By Myke Cole – Reviewed

The fourth book in the Shadow Ops series moves away from our regular cast of characters as this one is a prequel. Before Shadow Ops was established as the military’s de facto X-Men-like squad, they were experimenting with “gifted” individuals.

If you haven’t read one of Cole’s books before this is the perfect book to start. Imagine if the X-Men was run by a fairly ruthless military group rather than Prof. Xavier, and you pretty much have a good idea of what’s going on here.

Navy SEAL Jim is brutally killed by a crack assault team seeking revenge for his last op. His body is torn apart, but the military bring him back to life, a kind of life, except he has to share his body with another soul, one that has an uncontrollable blood lust, a demon. Can Jim control the creature he now shares his body with? Can he complete the missions the military expects of him? Can he get revenge for his murder and the murder of his family? Can he trust his handler?

As usual Cole serves up a great big helping of action, some nice moral questions, and a military conspiracy. This, like the other books in the series, is fast paced and action filled. The love story at its core seems like a side-plot. The characters aren’t as strong here as in the trilogy that set up this universe, but they serve their purpose.

Cole writes thrilling military SF and this is another really solid edition to his world.

I’ll be eagerly awaiting the next one.

Taboo Special Issue

I’m delighted to announce that my story “The Tape” has been published in the Morpheus Tales Taboo Special issue, edited by the multi-talented Sheri White.

To give you some idea of the content of that very special issue, my story about a young Hitler and his mother was rejected. “The Tape” is a more subtle tale about a couple of teenage boys finding a VHS tape in one of their parent’s bedrooms. I bet you can imagine what’s on that secret tape… You perves! 😉

Nope, that’s not it. It’s something much more disturbing…

The free preview of the magazine is available here:

Try not to be too disappointed but there’s no preview of my story as it’s pretty short and it would give too much away. You’ll have to buy a copy to get your hands on my bit…

 

The ebook in various formats is available here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/648109?ref=morpheustales

The ebook is available on amazon for the kindle.

The printed digest size edition is available here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue/paperback/product-22778122.html

The printed perfect-bound edition is available here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue-perfect-bound-edition/paperback/product-22778129.html

WAR DOGS By Greg Bear – Reviewed

The Earth has been invaded, but the aliens (Gurus) are friendly and offer technological assistance and warnings of an impeding invasion by evil aliens (the Antags), who start the war against humanity on Mars.

The desolate planet is a battle-ground into which Master Sergeant Michael Venn is ejected, but the drop with his fellow marines and their supplies and weaponry goes wrong. Venn finds himself on the planet with little air or supplies, and just a few rag-tag remnants of his platoon.

Up until this point it’s kind of like a more military version of The Martian, it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s desperate and kind of scary. But about half way through the novel Bear seems to lose the plot a bit, adds in more politics as some officers turn up, and a local human Martian who takes them to a shelter, where they are soon the target of the infamous Antags.

Then the book goes completely off the rails, adding in more politics, conspiracies and things that complicate the book no ends and serve only to distract from what could have been an excellent military adventure on the desperate wind-swept planet of Mars.

This is not the novel you are look for, if, like me, you wanted some action adventure military SF. Starts well, ends badly.

WEED SPECIES By Jack Ketchum – Reviewed

I don’t know how Ketchum does it, but he does it every time. He has a way of saying stuff that just makes it feel really really wrong. And although the stuff would be wrong anyway, it feels really wrong when Ketchum says it in his raw, open-wound kind of style.

Here we follow the sordid adventures of Sherry, who starts off by drugging her teenage sister so that her husband can rape her. You see Sherry has been helping her husband rape for a few years, and they’ve also been murdering these girls, and now that young Talia is of a certain age, and Sherry is getting older, she’s just not doing it for her husband anymore and is going to help him rape her little sister. Except that things swiftly go wrong and the girl ends up dead.

This short book chronicles the further adventures of Sherry and the consequences of their sordid escapades.

This is pretty nasty stuff, and Ketchum shows us the true horror of the world, despicable humans. Horror has never been quite so nasty as when Ketchum writes it. The man is a devil, he is truly terrifying, by showing us the capacity of humanity to do wrong. A nasty little book, such great fun!

CONAN AND THE TREASURE OF PYTHON By John Maddox Roberts – Reviewed

Maddox Roberts has a lot to answer for. When I was fourteen years old I walked home from school past the local WH Smiths, and had a look at some of their books. I picked out Conan the Valorous because I liked the cover. I bought it and went home, started reading and nine pages in I put the book down, went back to WH Smiths and bought a couple more.

Since then there has rarely been a time when I’m not reading a book. And although I’ve come to realise that the newer Conan novels aren’t really a patch on Howard’s originals, they are still great sword and sorcery.

Conan is bored having a drink at an inn when he takes on the job of escorting a beautiful woman, her brother-in-law and their scholarly friend, deep into the mysterious Coast of Bones to help find her husband.

It rapidly becomes clear that Conan has been lied to about the purpose of their journey; they are in fact in search of treasure, as well as the missing husband/brother. With a gang of cut-throat pirates to try to keep control of the Cimmerian must also travel through strange forests, cannibal-infested lands, and jungles, all the while followed by murderous Stygians.

The Conan books offer adventure, exploration, and excitement. There is fighting, sorcery, beautiful women, and evil. They are simple, enjoyable, entertainment.

Roberts does it again, another exciting fantasy adventure. More Conan please!

THE TECHNICIAN By Neal Asher – Reviewed

This is the book that got me reading Asher’s books. Jon Sullivan’s cover of the titular beast is incredible, and his other covers for Asher’s other books are pretty damn good too. Can you pick a book by its cover?

Although this book is set in Asher’s familiar Polity world it is a stand-alone novel and can be read independently. But, if you have read some of his other novels this will inform the backstory of some familiar characters.

Masada is home to the hooders, a set of deadly creatures, the Theocracy (a strictly religious group who have enslaved some of the populous), the gaggleducks, and the Technician, a near mythical creature who not only attacks humans but turns their bodies into works of art.

When the Technician allows one of its victims to live, Jeremiah Tombs, a member of the Theocracy, it changes him in ways that even the advanced technology of the Polity cannot determine.

Twenty years later the Theocracy is no more, Tombs escapes his Polity captors and goes in search of the truth, a band of rebels called the Tidy Squad are out to kill him, and the Technicians is still out hunting…

Apart from that there are war drones, a dragon and his ancestors, a modified human studying the Technician, and alien races that have destroyed themselves to muddy the waters further.

There’s a lot going on here, as there is with most of Asher’s novels. His intricate plots draw you gradually deeper into his worlds. The characters are barely memorable, but it is the story, the plot and the incredibly well crafted world that really drive this novel.

Asher writes proper SF, intelligent, insightful, and passionate. The world he has created in this novel and the other Polity books (and the Scatteray series) are incredibly complex and detailed and yet don’t overwhelm the intense and sometimes complicated plots. The story drives along swiftly, there are multiple layers, and everything comes together in a riveting but mildly disappointing climax. Can any ending really live up to the rest of the novel?

Asher is the master of intelligent SF. The Technician is a great novel to start your Polity education: jump straight in, the water is thrilling.

THE SUICIDE EXHIBITION By Justin Richards – Reviewed

Hmmmm…. Where do I start with this? Should I start with the title, which is good and what drew me to buy the book but is barely mentioned? Do I start with the fact that this is the first part of a series and barely has enough of a story for one episode? Do I start with the potential this series has, but that it fails at the first instalment?

This book makes me angry. The first half of the book is pretty slow and boring as the various characters are introduced. If these were great characters, if we were given some insight into them, if the background of the second world war was convincingly portrayed, you might forgive a slow start.

The second half does ramp up the action a bit. We have a secret government organisation usurping Foreign Office officials, army personnel, Bletchley Park code-crackers, and American female pilots, attempting to infiltrate a secret Nazi conspiracy to use ancient burial grounds and UFOs against the British. The first half merely hints at this and introduces the characters, the second half of the four hundred page novel (it seems like so much more!) sees our intrepid team venturing into enemy territory and making some headway in their investigation into the Nazis’ obsessions.

Just as everything starts getting exciting, there a reasonably entertaining climax, left open-ended obviously, and we’re expected to stump up the cash for the second instalment.

I’m afraid I won’t be there. I’m assuming this will be a trilogy, but there’s not enough of a story in the first book to fill the whole of it. Pretty much the first two hundred pages of this book could have been covered in a quite interesting prologue.

Barely memorable characters, a half-baked plot, and loads of potential do not make for a good read. This took me a month to finish because I was just so bored of it. Towards the end I was reading loads just to get it out of the way.

Another failed attempt at a world war two alternative world series. I wish someone would just write a damn one-off novel for once. I don’t want to have to read three books to get a single story.

Unimpressed and disappointed.

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE By Neil Gaiman – Reviewed

How does he do it?

As a reader he manages to captivate, inspire and surprise me. As a writer he terrifies me. How can I compete?

Our narrator is a middle-aged man who visits what’s left of his childhood home and remembers a brief episode: after he sees a man commit suicide in their family car, he runs away to the house at the end of the lane, and in that house is a family of women, including a young girl slightly older than him, who have been there since the Doomsday book was written (who have a duckpond that they call an ocean). After a magical trip with the young girl our narrator returns home to find things have changed… When he gets a new nanny, she turns out to be some form of magical creature and is intent on imprisoning him in the attic.

Gaiman weaves tales like no one else. This book most reminded me of Hansel and Gretel, it’s a modern-day fairy tale. It’s riveting, absorbing, poignant, intelligent, and captivating. It’s a fantasy like a Roald Dahl book. A book of memory and the fantastic, it’s beautiful and heart wrenching.

Mr Gaiman is a true genius. It’s impossible to review his books with any kind of critical eye because he just sweeps you up in the story and characters. This isn’t his best book, American Gods and Anansi Boys both have more depth, and I’m not sure any book could better The Graveyard Book. But this is an amazing book. It’s simple and straightforward and brilliant. It’s short and insightful and poetic.

The modern teller of fairy tales has created another masterpiece of fiction.

I will follow Mr Gaiman (not in the stalker sense, just his writing!) wherever he goes and I have no doubt I will enjoy every step.

Fantastical genius.