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.

GUN MACHINE By Warren Ellis – Reviewed

Ellis writes comics normally, and not your average superhero fair, but intelligent and thought-provoking action driven comics. Like Red, that the Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren film was based upon. This is Ellis’ second novel, the first being a really weird, sex-fuelled road-book across the US.

This novel has its own share of weird too, but this time the plot is a little (really little!) more traditional. Detective Tallow watches as his partner is shot by a crazy man with a shotgun and shoots the man dead. In the apartment across the hall there is a hole in the wall caused by the shooting. On further investigating Tallow finds the mother-load of weaponry, an entire apartment decorated in guns of every kind. When he enlists the help of two CSIs to help test and record the guns they find that each of the hundreds and possible thousands of weapons have been involved in a murder. Tallow has just fallen into investigating one of the worst ever serial killers New York City has ever seen…

And that’s just the start of it: native American Indian history, conspiracies and corruption, this book contains a riveting mystery and a mass of detail that draws you in.

The first few pages of this book are quite shocking brilliant, as Ellis shows off his imaginative turn of phrase and pours on the style, which drifts into an intricate plot. Tallow is the down at heel cop who needs the brutal murder of his partner to bring him back to life, and his slightly depressive, possibly suicidal tendencies manifest in a compulsion to catch the killer at any cost, including his own life, and make the dramatic chase all the more exciting.

This is not your standard crime thriller, this is a whacked out, dope-fuelled hurricane of a crime thriller, a strange and compelling mystery. Ellis writes like a demon possessed and I can’t wait to read his next novel, bring it on.