BOOK REVIEWS: Road Kills, by Isaac Thorne; Abandoned, by Tim Walker; The Ballad of Halo Jones, by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson; Generational, by Norman Turrell; Light's Rise, by Yvette Bostic; The Lift; Darkly Dreaming, by Chloe Hammond

Welcome, readers! Our latest selection of reviews covers Roman history and roaming killers, soaring space ships and snarky space heroines, angelic warriors and, perhaps, a devilish girl. But first, let's hit the road, with Isaac Thorne. 

Road Kills, by Isaac Thorne

I had the pleasure some time back of reading and reviewing Diggum, a short story by Isaac Thorne about a gravedigger with murderous intent - and promised myself I'd come back for more of his work.
Road Kills is a collection of his short stories, neatly ordered with a theme of tales that could take place out on the road, where the flash of headlights up ahead could bring a welcoming face or a dangerous stranger.
Some tales are linked - such as the saga of the pretty girl who snaps and goes on a murder spree through several of the stories here - others are standalone.
Particularly creepy was Bedside Manner, telling the story of a little boy haunted by the literal ghost of his father's past mistakes, full of the cloying fear that comes with a childhood bedroom plunged into darkness and parents absolutely failing to realise that the monster really is in the closet.
Hoppers is a revenge tale... about bunnies. For Buffy fans, maybe Anya's fears were well founded.
And sometimes the road is less travelled, such as the detour into space for Safety First, a story of first contact about to go horribly, horribly wrong.
Diggum reappears here too in two forms, both the original short story and a screenplay version. It's the best of the tales to be found in this collection, still as creepy as the graveyards its words frequent, but Bedside Manner is a strong challenger. Not all tales quite caught me - I wasn't keen on the social media-inspired Dislike, and the trio of stories about the killer girl Tiffany weren't my bag. But that's okay, any short story collection will have tales you love more than others.
Sometimes, you catch a single work by a writer and investigating further disappoints - that's far from the case here. I want more.

AI Rating: 4/5

Road Kills is available on Amazon here.

Abandoned, by Tim Walker

Blimey, this is thorough in its exploration of British history! Much credit to author Tim Walker for a well researched story looking at the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain - and the consequences it means for both sides involved.
Abandoned looks at the early part of the Dark Ages, and you can see the amount of effort the author has put in to ensuring accuracy.
The story hops through several of the characters involved in the era - which while helping to cover the scope of events of the time does have a tendency to dilute how we feel about the central characters. Also, I felt it could have used, to quote Elvis, a little less conversation, a little more action. The early part is slow but picks up as sides move into conflict with one another.
Stick with it and you'll find yourself drawn into the details of the battle, as the cut and thrust moves beyond the shaping of empires to the visceral desire to protect family.
In the end, this is a love letter to history, and a credit to the author's passion for his subject.

AI Rating: 4/5

Abandoned is available on Amazon here.

The Ballad of Halo Jones, by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson

I'm not even going to pretend this is a new book to me. I read this first of all issue by issue back when it first appeared in 2000AD. Those issues were much treasured, and well thumbed - so when the complete collection appeared on Kindle, I wasn't hard to convince.
Halo Jones is the heroine we need. Caught in a dead-end world with a family of best fit rather than genetic history, she's trapped. Bored. Almost numbed by an environment that stifles innovation, crushes emotion, drowns out aspiration in a mire of vid soap operas and at its worst leaves hollowed out drum-drum-drummers tuning out the world to listen to a non-stop beat.
But Halo Jones is different. Halo Jones wants out.
It's glorious to revisit the story after all this time, seeing the sub-plots as they play out, noticing the groundwork being laid for tragedy.
Through it all, Halo shines. It's a darn shame that Halo hasn't soared beyond the boundaries of the comic pages - barring for a title appearance in a Transvision Vamp track. She's kickass without being obviously badass. She's a feminist hero in a time when they were few and far between. She's the girl who got out.
The complete collection features three books in total - and they are left poised waiting... waiting... waiting for more. They'll never come now, I'm sure. Moore and Gibson have spent too many years since they left Halo hanging, and rights squabbles seem to have abandoned her on the shores of a distant planet.
But it's brilliant. She's one of the finest comic book characters ever created, and I've loved every moment of being able to hang out with Halo Jones once more.

AI Rating: 5/5

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available on Amazon here.

Light's Rise, by Yvette Bostic

Recently, I read the prequel to the Light in the Darkness series - of which Light's Rise is book one, and it was so entertaining I wanted to read more.
It's an innovative series - starting in the Napoleonic War when a young Austrian soldier finds himself confronted by literal demons. Not inner demons, but the human-consuming kind, and is soon enlisted in a war very different from the one he enlisted for.
He becomes part of a somewhat-superhuman team doing battle with demons across continents and across decades as the underworld creatures seek to subvert the world locked in warfare for their own ends.
The soldier, Darian, finds himself imbued with his own powers which he can use in the battle, as he and his comrades strive to save humanity.
The story is Christian-themed, but not heavily so. The hints of good v evil in the story are subtle and not preaching, and the whole thing reads as a light adventure - I could see it doing awfully well as a manga.
Dashing along at a fair clip, it's a real page-turner - and the finale sets up the next step in the series with... well, that would be saying, wouldn't it?

AI Rating: 4/5

Light's Rise is available on Amazon here.

Generational, by Norman Turrell

Norman Turrell is a thoughtful writer - and Generational is a tale that asks questions of our future.
Set aboard a colony ship orbiting Earth and preparing for its voyage, the story dwells less on the nuts and bolts of the science of the ship, and more on the social science of the humans aboard it.
An early, off-kilter encounter introduces lead character Leyton to a young woman whose role is, as she puts it, a breeder. Or more colourfully a "ghetto-ho" or "ship's bike". She seems unstable, and Leyton is whisked away from her - an early sign that not all is well aboard the ship.
Leyton becomes the explorer guiding the reader as the slightly twisted society on board is revealed - freed from the structures of society down below, the ship has developed its own paths, becoming possibly a powder keg ready to blow... or the only hope of Earth's survival.
It's an unusual story - and I think of that as a good thing. What shape will our future be, what route will our philosophies take us? These are the questions at the heart of Generational - a tale that asks the unexpected.

AI Rating: 4/5

Generational is available on Amazon here.

Darkly Dreaming, by Chloe Hammond

This is an unusual vampire novel. Two divorcees (or near-divorcees) are wrestling with the problems of mid-life, jettisoning their unfulfilling husbands and struggling with work and the prospect of trying to have children - when an encounter leaves them forever changed. They become vampires. Beautiful, ravishing vampires.
They proceed to try to make sense of their lives as they chart their unlife. Their vampire existence brings new passion, occasional accidental lesbianism, and a desire for growth. Eat, Prey, Love, you might say.
I must say this book is not for me - I feel I'm very much not the target audience. It's mildly racy and it's deeply wish fulfillment at work, but if that's what appeals to you, you might want to dip into the first pages preview.
I'm giving it three stars - but not being the intended reader for this, I wouldn't take that as a criticism. I like my vampires darker and more dangerous, whereas with this, being undead has never been so life-affirming.

AI Rating: 3/5

Darkly Dreaming is available on Amazon here.

The Lift, 9 Stories of Transformation

The Lift started life as a spin-off from the Wicked Library podcast - which I've reviewed elsewhere on the blog - but now it has sprung into life as a collection of short stories. Volume one of such in fact, with the tantalising promise of further volumes. 

There is more than a theme at work here, with each story revolving around the character of Victoria, a little girl who plays a music box and offers people a ride in her lift to places which... well, which vary according to the passenger. 

In Brothers' Keeper, for example, two bickering brothers relive the spectres of their carnival past, while creator Daniel Foytik takes a swing at Trump in Buying America. Human Monsters, meanwhile, ventures into an apocalyptic landscape. The settings are abundant, Victoria is the constant. 

The highlight stories for me were Meg Hafdahl's The Barren, a hard-hitting contemplation on infertility and the choices we make; the splendid Cake, by Nelson W Pyles, with that conversation we can never have, with one we have lost - even harder, with one we lost long before their death to the bitter split of a family; and The Final One, by Charles Rakiecz, a time-twisting tale of cause and effect in the crucial moments of personal history. 

Much love has also been poured into the anthology in terms of its presentation - artwork of the music box, poetry and sketches, and even the sheet music for the theme tunes of Victoria, and the sound of the music box itself. 

For that extra love, the book earns an extra star in my ratings - bringing it to a hearty five out of five. 

AI Rating: 5/5

The Lift is available on Amazon here.

You can hear the podcast here.

BOOK REVIEW: A Glitch in the World by Alex Drozd; Transient by Zachry Wheeler; Have Space Suit - Will Travel, by Robert A Heinlein; Necrotic City, by Leland Lydecker; Druid's Portal, by Cindy Tomamichel; A Glitch in the World, by Alex Drozd; Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book Three, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's been a busy few weeks over here at AI - a bunch of editing in the works and some exciting things to share soon, but also a lot of paperwork to juggle in real life. A new baby in the household means a lot of things to sort out, and adjusting to how things are done in a different country can throw a spanner in the works! In the meantime, here's a catch-up on the latest round of reviews from myself and regular guest Brent A Harris. 

Transient, by Zachry Wheeler

Transient is a terrific book. It’s a gem that shows how much raw talent lurks within the Indy Writing Community. And I heartily recommend it.

We follow the life of an outsider, Jonas, as he navigates the modern and sophisticated world of Vampires who now exist in modern cities, where what remains of the human population is spread out and hidden among the mountains. Jonas is a human infiltrator - a transient, who passes as a vampire to bring back intelligence to his human compatriots in order to destroy the Vampires and allow humans to once again claim dominance over the Earth.

What makes this book so strong, however, is not just a gripping storyline of tension and deception. It has a message and it speaks to the best and worst parts of humanity. Transient is more science fiction in that regard in that it questions deep themes of love, betrayal, and family. I like how humans are contrasted against the peaceful and technologically advanced Vampires. It says a lot about human history and its recurrent violence. The vampires are used as a reflection of our society, as in the vein of any good classic sci-fi.

However, even books as good as this can still contain missteps - unpolished bits that can creep in to any book - Indy or Mainstream Press alike. In this case, Wheeler tends to over-explain this strange new world rather than let Jonas (and therefore the reader) encounter it organically. In one instance, Jonas joins a group at a blood bar, which pretty much speaks for itself. Yet, because much of the book (indeed, perhaps even half of it) is told through diary entries, we get pages on how blood bars operate, their history, and how they evolved to fit into this advanced Vampire society.

Yet, I found myself engaged in many of these diary entries. They were insightful, and often had a deeper message (especially toward the end of the book). They read briskly, like the rest of the book. But, these odd chapters, combined with sporadic bits where the storyline devolved into a narration of sorts, still pulled me out of the story enough times to bear mention in the review.

Even still, Transient is an enjoyable read. Wheeler won’t be on the Indy scene for long. He has talent, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Transient is in production to be a feature film, and when it releases, expect Wheeler to make an Andy Weir-like trajectory. So, make like a hipster at a record store and ‘discover’ the book before it blows up big-time. It’s well worth sinking your teeth into. 4.5 stars (for the forced world-building) rounded up to 5.

Vampires as a reflection of our society places Transient in the vein of classic Sci-Fi

AI Rating: 5/5

Brent A Harris

Have Space Suit - Will Travel, by Robert Heinlein

I reviewed RAH’s Have Space Suit - Will Travel because I’ve wanted to read classic SF to see how the masters did it before I resumed writing more of my own. I picked Space Suit because one of my favorite science fiction authors, GRRM (yes, he’s written more than just Game of Thrones) hinted that this book had influenced him when he was young. Also, Robert A Heinlein is considered the ‘Dean’ of hard, 1950s pulpy science fiction, and I wanted to find out why.

After reading the book, it’s not hard to understand. Heinlein is a master. I don’t know what I was really expecting when I started this story. But one thing I found frustrating and riveting at the same time was Heinlein’s complete disregard for the rules. The first 30 pages are exposition-heavy. There times where the main character addresses the reader. For heaven’s sake, the book is loaded with mathematical formulae and pages of musical notes! But it was all deftly done. The pages kept turning, the characters (though firmly stuck in their 1950s worldview) were interesting, and the conflict kept coming.

Space-Suit follows the life of Kip, a bound-for-college-kid, who wants nothing less than to travel to the moon. This is a wish-fulfillment story, and like any good wish fulfillment story, the protagonist is given much more than they asked for. After Kip rebuilds an old, worn-out space-suit, he soon finds himself in trouble when he’s abducted. He’ll realize he’s in much more trouble when he’s thrust into a hostile alien plot that lands him on the moon - and beyond.

This is aimed for young adult readers, and it’s better balanced than Heinlein’s more infamous Starship Troopers (seriously, all these famous authors really do have more than just one book/series). It’s a perfect jumping off point for kids to moon-jump in to some rollicking good science fiction that’s more than just entertaining pulp. At its core, it asks some tough questions, which still resonate 60 years later. You can see the impact the book has had - as its heady themes have inspired storylines that I recognized in at least Star Trek (Next Generation) and (new) Battle Star Galactica.

All that from one simple book. I suppose if I’m to emulate the best of SF writers, I have my work cut out for me. Perhaps I should build me a space-suit and travel to the moon. 5 stars.

AI Rating: 5/5

Brent A Harris

Necrotic City, by Leland Lydecker

Necrotic City is a Cyberpunk dystopia set firmly in the worlds of Blade Runner/Electric Sheep and others that have come along since, hinting at stories like The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell and a touch of a Chuck Heston movie I dare say no more of, lest I spoil.

Adrian is a Company Man, a Hero with the pre-built, programmed instructions to save others, genetically grown by the same company responsible for these dystopic conditions. Heroes help others, in particular, Jumpers, that have no where else to go when their credits run out. Jumpers jump from the heights of the city, and Heroes must do whatever they can- including jumping after them themselves - to save them.

While seemingly altruistic, the reader soon realizes there’s a darker purpose to saving those who would end their lives on the streets below. Everybody can serve The Company, even in death, so long as their remains remain intact. But, when the cost to maintain the Hero force is insufficient to the amount of nutrients preserved by their heroic deeds from their daily duties, the Hero programmed is scrapped by The Company, and Adrian is left adrift, bouncing from one dangerous situation to the next.

While the setting is immersive, the characters felt real, and the reader feels thrust into Adrian’s plight, I felt his character arc was a little flat, with real no objective in sight. Adrian is reactive throughout the story. Even as a Hero, he has no choice but to respond as events unfold, it’s in his programming. As a drifter, he stumbles from one encounter to the next, often having to be saved time and time again with no real agency of his own.

As a Captain America-type do-gooder, he’s unable experience any significant change in character. He ends the story pretty much the same as he started - a story that simply ends as his encounters draw to a close. I would have liked to have seen him a bit more perceptive and a bit smarter at figuring things out and I expected the story to wrap back around to the set-up given in the beginning, but I assume that’s for a later book. Still, if you don’t mind a fairly mild and unengaging character reacting to a mostly listless story, Necrotic City does offer up some strengths. It’s a story mixed with a strong setting and solid sci-fi elements. At its core, Necrotic City provides a glimpse into a startling cyber-punk world that could easily become our own. 3.5 Stars rounded to 4.

AI Rating: 4/5

Brent A Harris

Druid's Portal, by Cindy Tomamichel

I was keen to read Druid’s Portal because I love stories about time-travel. And, who doesn’t like ancient Rome or stories about Celts and Druids? My favorite is Household Gods, by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove. So, I dove right in to Druid’s Portal.

What I got was perhaps heavier on the romance and less on the time-travel, but there are some interesting time-travel concepts at work here, which I fully appreciated. Druid’s Portal is not an Outlander knock-off; instead it is a straightforward portal fiction romance between a Roman soldier and Druid scholar Janet.

If anything, Druid’s Portal is perhaps too straightforward. There’s no real twist to the tale, no deviation from the standard, steamy romance story. I would have like to have seen the characters a bit more fleshed out. The antagonist needed to be someone who did more than sneer and cackle and call the heroine vulgar names. There was an opportunity to make the villain grounded and real, but it was lost in the twirling mustache and one-dimensional dialogue. Most character choices were made for the convenience of plot, with decisions often running counter to the character - for example, our Roman hero seemed adept at adopting modern morals, rather than acting as a Roman soldier. And Janet, a college professor, doesn’t figure certain things out until well-after an exasperated reader is yelling the answer at her.

I would have also liked to have seen a tighter focus in the narration. It’s written in third-person omniscient (think a camera hovering overhead) which made all the head-hopping a bit difficult. The dialogue, at times was off (though there are some really, really good lines that balance this out) and each character had an odd habit of talking to themselves for long stretches; telling the reader what they were thinking/doing. At the same time, the narration was also distant, quite often using phrases like ‘there was’ or ‘a sound of’ rather than creating an immediacy within the scene.

In general, the book is well researched (there will always be anachronisms that slip by), and I liked the path our heroine took, even if she played the damsel bit a bit too much. However, Janet’s journey changes her, and I quite liked the last bit of the book where the new Janet was on display (though the ending seemed to break a rule, or I was just confused). Druid’s Portal is a fun romp through time toward a steamy romance, where Celtic myth meets Roman bravado. 3 Stars for fans of SF and Time-Travel, 4 for Romance, where character counts less than steamy scenes.

AI Rating: 4/5

Brent A Harris

A Glitch In The World, by Alex Drozd

It's hard to sum up A Glitch In The World without straying too much into spoiler territory - for there is so much about this novel that is wrapped up in questions of identity, the uncertain nature of reality and issues of mental illness that it is difficult to say too much about it without giving the game away. 
Let's start at the beginning. Stuart is a school student on a distant world, a colony that is wrestling with its own identity separate from Earth. Issues of politics swirl in the air around Stuart, with matters such as universal income being debated on the colony. 
A lot of this doesn't matter to Stuart - who has his own issues. He is depressed, he has no real drive to commit to anything in his future, and finds himself pushed along by the people and circumstances around him. He turns to experimenting with drugs with his best friend - but that way lies tragedy and Stuart finds himself in a disintegrating spiral, with his only lifeline being the pretty girl who pays attention to him at school. Then comes the glitch. A flaw in the world around him, that means some of the things he depended on as he clung to reality might not even exist at all. If you're thinking that this has echoes of some of the work of Philip K Dick, you wouldn't be wrong - albeit more in a young adult kind of setting. 
This is a novel exploring two possibilities - the breakdown of its lead character, or the collision between two universes as opposed to one another as matter and anti-matter. 
Along the way, we explore philosophical issues, such as the value of life, the nature of mature societies versus those rising up, and the question of reality. With such weighty questions in the air, it is perhaps no surprise that we are left with more questions than answers, but the book is an intriguing glimpse inside the fragmented world of a youth as he struggles to understand it, and his place within it. 

AI Rating: 4/5

Stephen Hunt

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

I've been reading through quite a lot of Black Panther collections before and after watching the movie - and man, the work by Ta-Nehisi Coates is both tantalising and frustrating. 
This is the third collection from his Black Panther run, and while I enjoyed a great deal about the ideas and philosophies explored within the book... man, it just didn't hold up as a comic story. 
I honestly grew very, very tired of seeing the characters either sitting around or standing around talking. There's a dearth of action in here - Brian Stelfreeze is a smashing artist, but you've got to give him more to do than drawing conference room tables. 
The Black Panther movie clearly draws on some of the ideas from this run - questions about Wakanda's role as a nation and what path its future will take, and T'Challa's dual position as both king and hero - but the movie wrapped that all up in a bundle of action, threat and purpose that this third book rarely manages. There is one superb section in here - but that issue is written by Jonathan Hickman. 
The ideas that Coates showcases will make a great comic book one day, an awesome one - but this isn't there yet. 

AI Rating: 2/5

Stephen Hunt

BOOK REVIEWS: Elvira Wonders, by Sanna Hines; Monkey's Luck, by Bonnie Milani; Just A Minor Malfunction issue 3; Bloodchild, by Octavia Butler; Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A new year, a new selection of books up for review. First up, regular guest Brent A. Harris reviews Elvira Wonders, by Sanna Hines, before I hop in with my latest round-up - including two Black Panther graphic novels as the countdown is on to the new Marvel movie. 

Elvira Wonders, by Sanna Hines

Elvira Wonders is, at times, an unfocused entangling of the lives of too many characters overstuffed into a disarray of storylines. It doesn’t know what story it wants to tell, so it instead tells all of them. I got the sense in reading this, that perhaps Hines had hoped to create a TV series out of the town of Elvira. If so, that makes sense. There’s a loose thread involving a murdered fairy that could connect the pilot to the end of the first season, with subsequent chapters/episodes producing their own mini-threads and soap-opera antics before stumbling back to the murder mystery bits.

Now that it’s been quite a few years since True Blood has left the air, this book may quench the thirst of those looking for more Sookie Stackhouse. And make no mistake, Elvira Wonders takes its cue from the series: Fae, Werewolves, Vampires, Ghosts all exists as obstacles to each other on the streets and entangle in the sheets. Fans of the former who’ve run out of mystical material may wish to sink their teeth into Sanna’s story.

However, where True Blood takes its time developing the monsters, mayhem, and ahem - romantic encounters, Elvira Wonders takes everything at once and plunges it into the first book. Every fae and fable that exists in stories lives in the sleepy town of Elvira - whose residents decide to capitalise on the mythic creatures by opening sightseeing tours. However, not all of these creatures get along, and the tourism is threatened by infighting and murder.

It’s therefore up to Josh, car mechanic, ghost hunter, and Fae investigator (nobody is just one thing in this town, it’s an odd mixture for sure) and full-time leer-er of Elviran women, to solve the murder of a Red Fairy. Why the police are unconcerned over the death is a bit odd, nor do the Fae themselves lend a hand. So, it’s not surprising Josh gets distracted by relationships, as do all the other denizens of the city, while the story dissolves into a dozen characters, toys around with different genres (romance, horror, family drama, etc) until Josh basically stumbles onto the murderer. At no times are the characters tasked with providing reasons or motivations behind any of their actions, nor is the reader asked to consider any deep themes or dwell on any subject matter. It’s Vampire Diaries for the page.

Elvira Wonders isn’t a deep look into social strata, nor does it take time to flesh out any of its characters like the Stackhouse novels do. However, Elvira reads briskly, the characters function as quick go-to figures that are easily distinguishable from one another, and the world-building is fun and at times a good type of campy. It’s not a serious book - one of the most consistent storylines is the continued destruction of a Hummer and another features a writer who constantly complains about her critics. It’s a book that could be read through in one or two sittings. If you’re missing some Sookie, and you want something fast and light, I would check out the Wonders Elvira has to offer. 3.5 Stars, rounded to 4.

AI Rating: 4/5

Brent A. Harris 

Monkey's Luck, by Bonnie Milani

Bonnie Milani is a smashing writer. If you haven't discovered her before, then really, you have a treat awaiting you. I still say the best place to start to discover the universe she has created is her novel Home World, but Monkey's Luck is a rollicking bit of action to jump into too.
Kat is a wayward refugee, survivor of torture and space marine, caught up in a whole new world of hurt when the spaceship she's serving on gets blasted to hell and pitches her into an uneasy alliance with the ship's only other remaining crew member and a menacing Lupan named Romeo.
Lupans recur regularly in Bonnie's tales - an offshoot of humanity with wolf DNA wrapped in the mix. Both Kat and the other crew member have their own altered DNA cocktails going on, each bringing with it certain behaviour patterns and strengths - or weaknesses.
This is one of the nicest things about this tale - in that, despite rattling on at a fair old pace with explosions aplenty, there's a consideration at the heart of it of what makes us who we are, and what drives us to fight, or to love.
There's romance, betrayal, drama and stakes that grow increasingly higher as the story goes on - all told, my only complaint is that I wish it was longer so we could spend more time with this intriguing trio.

AI Rating: 5/5

Just A Minor Malfunction, issue three

Twitter's a wonderful place for connecting with authors - and it was out in that digital playground that I discovered the Just A Minor Malfunction magazine.
It's reached its third issue, and it's bristling with tales from contributors. Now, as devotees of short stories anthologies know - and goodness knows I'm one - some stories you'll love more than others, but there's a good mix in here.
The opening tale is a cracker, Left To Her Own Devices, by James Armer, about an expedition to a planet where the ship's AI is perhaps more adventurous than the crew. I really liked this one, pulling together some neat character work in its short span and doing what good sci-fi should do, making you ponder wider horizons.
Editor Michael S Alter has two tales of his own here - both good, but the pick of them is The Disappearing Cube, a story of a science experiment into folding space that has unexpected consequences for the scientists involved.
If you're looking for light-hearted tales, then Kim M Watt's Anatidaephobia, which certainly fits the bill.
A couple of the stories feel a little underdeveloped, but all told this is a nice addition to the magazine landscape. I'll certainly be looking to go back and check out issues one and two, so look for reviews of those in the future as I play catch-up.

AI Rating: 4/5 

Bloodchild and other stories, by Octavia E Butler

I feel it is a terrible sin of omission on my part that until now I have never read any works by Octavia Butler.
I mean, sure, everyone has their gaps in their reading history, where there's an author here or there who you've always meant to get round to reading but just haven't. But Butler has been a glaring hole in my reading - until now.
She freely admits in her introduction to this short story collection that novels are where her heart truly belongs, but this is a good way to delve into her writing, a gentle starter with the main course ready and waiting to follow, if you will.
There are seven stories and two essays in this collection, kicking off with the award-winning title story. Bloodchild is a complex story of interdependent relationships, with humans being used as hosts to nurse the infants of an alien species, but at a cost. There are questions of what one is willing to exchange in order to survive, issues of abusive relationships and personal sacrifice, all heady topics swirling within the confines of a short story.
Award-winner that it is, though, personally I prefer another story in the collection, The Evening and the Morning and the Night. It's a story of a society where a drug created to cure ailments such as cancer has after-effects, with the descendants of those who took the drug affected by a condition which can cause them to "drift", losing touch with the society around them and slipping into dangerous psychosis. Told from the perspective of the children affected by this disorder, as they face a future which seems inevitably to slip towards madness and death, it's a deeply poignant tale of how society deals with those it cannot cope with, and what happens to those individuals themselves - whether they can carve out their own future in a world that offers them none.
These two stories stand out above the others, but there's still plenty of great reading to be had in the collection. There's no binding theme - though a recurring focus is on issues of biology and illness. One nice feature is that each story has notes after it with the author detailing her thoughts on the tale. For example, she addresses the fact that many think Bloodchild is about slavery - it isn't, though talk in the story of selling people hints that way. It's more complex than that, though, and very much worth discovering if, like me, you've been lagging behind on exploring Butler's work.

AI Rating: 5/5

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Black Panther, A Nation Under Our Feet, books one and two, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

With the new Black Panther movie looking astonishingly good from its trailers, a timely Amazon sale sent some of the recent comics starring the King of Wakanda tumbling my way. 

Well, I suppose from 2016, so not the most recent - but the run by Ta-Nehisi Coates has been raved about by fellow fans of T'Challa so it was about time I took a look. 

I've long been a fan of Black Panther - I tend to gravitate towards heroes who aren't mighty gods or universe-menacing Phoenixes - and so the combination of genius scientist and stealthy warrior has long appealed. 

I'll confess, though, that I'm awfully glad that I bought book two at the same time as book one. Coates takes his time to find his feet with his story - or rather, more to the point, he has a big story to tell but sometimes in volume one rushes through the actual telling, and you end up piecing a couple of the parts of the tale together in your head rather than reading it on the page. He's much more in his stride by the second volume, so if you find yourself put off a little by the opening collection, stick with it, it comes together much better as the issues go by. 

The story itself tackles the tale of Black Panther as king, fighting to hold together his kingdom from threats within and without. He isn't all-seeing or all-wise, rather he's a man underneath the legend, making political choices that might not always be for the best, but are mostly made with the best intentions. 

The tale tackles issues of nationalism, identity, monarchism and democracy - weighty matters that go beyond the usual supervillain hokum of many comics. Sometimes, that strays into territory of infodumping, but as I say, the method of telling the story keeps improving. 

I'm not terribly sure it will serve as a great introduction to readers for the Black Panther movie - but it's a powerful look at the world the comics character inhabits - with a wider landscape than his stories are often afforded. 

AI Ratings

Book one: 3/5

Book two: 4/5

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Lineage: A Beginning, and A Blessing in Disguise, by C H Clepitt

I review a lot of podcasts - but I've seldom delved into the world of audiobooks. I'm not entirely sure how much that will change, but it's not for a lack of love for the format. With a house full of family and a work full of busy, it's rare I get the chance to hear audio narration, let alone concentrate on it. So this might be a very irregular feature on the blog where I cock an ear towards storytelling off the page. 

I got lured in by the appearance of Lineage: A Beginning on Audible. It's from CH Clepitt, who is something of a favourite of mine from her Crew Chronicles series. 

She has a knack of making you want to read more - or in this case listen more. Lineage does just that. This is a tale of vampires and vagrants, in which a down-on-her-luck girl who makes bad choices in boyfriends ends up caught between gang bosses and something a whole lot more dangerous - and the key to her survival lies in, fittingly enough, her blood.

For Emma, the lead character, has an ancestry - a lineage - that marks her out as more special than she believes herself to be.


It's a touching tale - full of neat little touches, such as the explanation for why vampires don't go out in daylight being that natural sunlight shows them as they would look at their true age.


The end - without offering spoilers - gives a launch point from which I want to know more, and look forward to finding out where this tale will go next.


It's only a short story - probably about 5,000 words or so - but great for a quick read for the bus or train, and even I managed to listen to a good chunk of the narration in my short commute to work. 

A particular shout out to the narration, by Alicia Rose, which I didn't settle to at first but the more I listened, the more she nailed the mood of the piece. She has a voice that reminded me of Natalia Tena - who played Osha in Game of Thrones - with a hint of danger in her narration. 

A Blessing In Disguise is a very different affair - in fact, something of an affair of the heart.

It's the first book in a series that sees the first sparks of a middle-aged romance. Linda finds herself being made redundant and, in short order, having to move back to her childhood home after her mother has a stroke. That might sound less than cheerful, but then romance twinkles as a possibility for Linda - and something absent from her life becomes a tantalising possibility.

I can't lie - this isn't at all my genre, but the writing is brisk and spritely, and the delightfully measured narration by Margaret Ashley fits the bill neatly. It's quite short again, and you could listen to both if you have an hour to spare. If gentle romance and light comedy are what you look for, then this might well be the kind of thing that makes people look across at you as you chuckle away with headphones clamped firmly over your head.

While Lineage is more my kind of book, I can't separate the two in terms of rating - so an AI rating of 4/5 for each.

Both audiobooks are available at the links below:

My top five books of 2017

2017 was a busy year in many ways for me - especially on the editing side. Somewhere in between the day job, writing and juggling editing, I managed to squeeze in quite a few books that I read and reviewed - you can check out my full Goodreads challenge list here. There's a few others that didn't fit on that list as they weren't on Goodreads, so all told there were a little over 100 books read and reviewed. And one book I reviewed just before the end of the year snuck under the wire too!

Picking a top five from that lot is no easy task, but here, as I sip a glass of New Year rum, are my best reads of the year. The books are presented in no particular order - and all are well worth your attention. When you've done, well... a new year of reviewing awaits. I'd love to hear the books you've loved in the comments below as I load up my Kindle for 2018. May it be a year of great reading!

Prometheus and the Dragon, by Eric Michael Craig

One of my top reads of 2016 was Stormhaven Rising, and this is the sequel to that story. 

That first book told the tale of the discovery of an asteroid headed on a collision course for Earth - but that was a distant threat throughout the story, with the real focus being how different factions mobilised to try to deal with that menace. More particularly, there were the political machinations that took place as different groups vied to take the primary role in tackling something that could prove catastrophic for Earth. 

This book picks up where that left off - with two major plans in progress to try to deal with the incoming rock. Prometheus is a beam weapon designed to push the asteroid onto a new course that would miss Earth, but that beam needs to be sustained over many days to be a success. Meanwhile, a Chinese plan, The Dragon, is to launch a massive warhead that would shatter the rock. Both projects are operated from bases on the Moon - and the teams behind them are not on friendly sides.

Political manoeuvres on the surface see nations trying to settle old scores before the asteroid can hit - while a back-up plan of scrambling people to colonies on the moon in case the worst happens faces hazards of its own, with too many people and not enough room. 

As below, so above - and ensuring safety on the Moon for both people and the projects that could ensure Earth's survival becomes a challenge. 

This book really takes up the gauntlet cast down by the opening book in the series and runs with it - it's an absolute thrill ride full of hard decisions and harder consequences. More than a few times I cursed at the book as I turned pages filled with moments that bit deep. Then against those there are moments where you punch the air - such as when the Flight Infantry deploys in a skirmish on the Moon, tumbling out of the back of the vehicle carrying them at hundreds of miles an hour. It's the kind of kickass moment that reminds me of the Orion Ship in Niven and Pournelle's Footfall - a spaceship propelled by dropping nuclear bombs underneath it. Science kicking ass. 

The latter half of the book sees the asteroid getting ever closer - will humanity overcome its divisions to succeed in preventing its impact?

That I won't spoil - but I will say you've got a great read ahead of you as you find out. 

Songs of Insurrection, by JC Kang

Years ago, Dungeons and Dragons was my first roleplaying game. Back in the 1970s, I played my first game of the old blue book basic D&D by lamplight, and an addiction was born. Over the years, I played various versions of the game - including some fun off-shoot campaign settings, such as the Dark Sun setting and Oriental Adventures. I strongly suspect JC Kang dabbled in those two, for this novel enjoys the same strong feeling of a rich campaign setting as those two.
Picture a fantasy world but with an Eastern influence front and centre, and you have the world of Songs of Insurrection.
This is no by-the-numbers rewrite of a gaming campaign, though - indeed, it kept confounding my expectations as I read. The major focus of the story is on Kaiya, a musician coaxed into playing the Dragon Scale Lute, which in the hands of a master has the power to drive away a dragon with its music. She may also be falling in love with Hardeep, the paladin guiding her talents.
The characters are well-drawn, and far from stereotypical - and the fantasy elements of elves, dwarves and orcs are actually rather played down. It is the Eastern setting that really steps forward into focus, and that makes for a fantasy read with a really different feel from the usual. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed this - very nicely done.

Remanence, by Jennifer Foehner Wells

Remanence is the sequel to Fluency, a splendid space opera about first contact with an alien spaceship adrift in Earth's solar system. One NASA mission later and... here we are, at the point where you probably should stop reading if you haven't read the first novel. You can read my previous review of that book here.
So, spoiler warning duly given, we now have a slimmed down crew of humans in charge of the vessel and lead character Jane Holloway having gone beyond her role as team linguist to have become the commander of the new vessel, with a mental bond with the tentacled creature that controls the vast spaceship.
That connection has given her a new mission - to take the ship back to the race that created it, a voyage to the stars with an undermanned vessel and unprepared for what comes next.
In the same vein as the book it follows, it's very much a fun adventure, but what's really nice about the book is that underneath the soaring opera are some really nice ideas about language, gender, cultural differences and the nature of communication itself with the alien navigator able to telepathically communicate with the crew - sometimes with a power so raw it can override their own motives. Throw in a frisson of romance and the occasional - sometimes awkward - sex scene and it's a real mix of light adventure and thoughtful exploration.
By the end, answers that were sought have been replaced by new questions, new alliances have been forged and new enemies discovered, and the mission has taken on a much broader goal.
Book 3 awaits.

Karl Drinkwater's Horror Collection

Karl Drinkwater wants to scare you. Come on in, close the door behind you, he's got something to tell you.
This horror collection brings together three of his previous publications - the novel Turner, the short story collection They Move Below and the novella Harvest Festival.
Let's start with Turner - a novel that is equal parts The Wicker Man and The Crazies. There's an island off the coast of Wales where unwary travellers become targets, where they become hunted. We find ourselves alongside three of those travellers - a policeman, a teacher and a criminal - thrown together as they try to stay alive while crazed killers try to track them down.
It's a brutal tale, full of blood and gore and grue. Think of the likes of Stephen Gallagher or James Herbert, and that's the realm we dwell in, where flawed people with imperfect motives try to make the best of a bad situation. It's certainly not for the squeamish. If there's one flaw, it's that it takes a while for the reader to meet the central cast of the story - there's some bloody shenanigans before we get to that point - but when we do, it's a solid thrill ride as people scramble to find a way out, and maybe to find revenge along the way.
The short stories and novella that make up the rest of the collection are, by their nature, a mixed bag. With short stories, there will always be some you love more than others. It's nice to see Drinkwater playing around with form here - with some stories framed around internet chat logs, others in the shape of police interviews. Sometimes those work, sometimes not, but experimentation sometimes pays off.
For me, the best of the short story collection was an unexpected one - Web tells a tale of a Somali woman who has been subjected to genital mutilation, and the mental illness she appears to be suffering from. It's a tough tale emotionally to read, but brilliantly done. The harsh honesty of the tale almost feels out of place alongside the fantasy horrors of the other stories - but it's perhaps the most horrific of all for that.
Other excellent tales in this set are the nightmarish cave journey of Claws Truth Forebear and How It Got There, which is a treat in this collection particularly for readers of the opening novel. Harvest Festival rounds out the book with a splendidly horrific alien adventure that makes me think of the old Quatermass series. And heck, if anyone can make you think of Gallagher, Herbert and Quatermass in one fell swoop, that's practically a guided tour of the classics of British horror.

A Time of Need, by Brent A Harris

First things first, I need to make full disclosure. I've been following the creation of this book for some time as Brent A. Harris has chiseled words out of his brain. He even mentions me in the thanks at the front of the book, so be aware that I may be a little bit biased. But I'm biased in favour of quality.
A Time of Need tells the tale of an alternative America. In this tale, George Washington sides with the British and Benedict Arnold becomes the figurehead for the US forces aligned against Britain.
Instead of the course that history took, we instead see a new shape to the battle for the continent, with Arnold's ruthlessness put to a new use.
There's a real depth and thoroughness to this novel - I freely confess not being an expert on the history of the period, but Brent really brings the period to life, and you can tell the amount of research he has put in to get the details right.
Beyond the battle between Washington and Arnold, the parts of the novel I really loved were those focusing on the soldiers underneath the generals, as they faced difficult choices about where their loyalties should lie, and the reasons for making the choices they do. The character of Stevens, particularly, struck to the real heart of the novel. Just as he tries to decide his path, so too this young nation is working out where it is going to go, and what exactly it will be when it gets there.
The novel is unflinching in some of the horrific parts of the nation's history, such as the way in which slaves are treated, but the better for that. No one in the cast is wholly virtuous, but neither is anyone entirely villainous. Brent has created a story of the red, white and blue that is made up of many shades of grey.
In the end, I can heartily recommend this novel - it's an alternative history that taught me real history, and which brought to life the throes of a nation truly being born.