hardcopy romantics: cover art

Richard Ford’s Occult Steampunk novel (author’s own genrefication) Kultus from Solaris has had its cover art revealed this week, and the author is clearly pleased. By talented artist Frazer Irving, best known for his comic artwork, the graphic-novel influence can be clearly seen. I love this cover, it’s unique and it’s a world away from other photorealistic genre covers out there, which are even used for fellow Steampunk titles like Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series from Orbit (which are beautiful, striking covers). It also makes a nice change to have the lead, particularly one that is happily described as a ‘bastard’ in the blurb, look like the thuggish fellow he is, instead of Paul Bettany.

Book blurb: Thaddeus Blaklok – mercenary, demonist, bastard and thug-for-hire – is pressed into retrieving a mysterious key for his clandestine benefactors. Little does he know that other parties seek to secure this artefact for their own nefarious ends and soon he is pursued by brutal cultists, bloodthirsty gangsters, deadly mercenaries and hell spawned monsters, all bent on stopping him by any means necessary.

In a lightning-paced quest that takes him across the length and breadth of the steam-fuelled city of Manufactory, Blaklok must use his wits and his own demonic powers to keep the key from those who would use it for ill, and open the gates to Hell itself.

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

Atom: This is the sister imprint of Orbit and it’s mostly known for buying the UK rights to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (it was only a matter of time before that made an appearance here, opinion notwithstanding). But that’s not all they do! No, they also have the foresight to invite bloggers to their offices, feed them buns and give them a presentation on their upcoming titles. Now that is tasty and savvy marketing. But they missed out on a treat (aha) by not having Edward and Jacob faces on each bun and making people choose between them (because this is what people like to do), and have a bun-off. Because visual aids are useful, and I had too much time on my hands, I’ve mocked these up for you. The original photo was from blogger Amanda Rutter, whose Floor to Ceiling books blog is always a good place to while away some quality browsing time. She also talks about the new initiative Atom are starting called the Atomics that involves teenage bloggers – ah to be young. Read more here.

NaNoWriMo: It’s National Writing Month where every kind of (mad) writer sets aside a whole month to write – what, a short story? A poem? A soliloquy? – a novel, of course. It’s an exercise in sheer determination, bloody-mindedness and willpower, and it doesn’t matter what you write as long as it’s 50,000 words long. Even if you’re not participating, you can hop on over to the forum and peruse topics like ‘NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul’, which sounds promising. For SFF, head over to the genre section where you can read threads like ‘Raise someone from the dead, how?’ and, my personal favourite, ‘If you were an abusive umbrella, what you would yell?’

Top 2010 SFF titles announced: Three of the top 5 are Orbit’s - The Bone Place by Amanda Downum about the sex industry and vampires, Feed by Mira Grant (a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire) about zombies and Republicans in the Midwest and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms/The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, two novels about ordinary people being manipulated by gods in a changing world. There’s also Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death by Penguin USA’s DAW imprint (the first ever publishers dedicated to SFF) about a post-apocalyptic Saharan Africa and Pegasus’ A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter by Peter Straub, which is actually only a short story/excerpt from A Dark Matter. The full list can be found here in Publishers Weekly.

Solaris book launch: if you’re lucky enough to live in/around London, rather than the publishing-barren Manchester, then you can go to the FREE Solaris’ book launch event at Foyle’s on the 16th November. More information can be found on the Solaris editors’ blog. It’s The End of the Line edited by Jonathan Oliver, a book of Horror short stories set on the underground. This is exactly the kind of book I love – set in the hidden parts of a city and taking the otherworldly element of the underground literally - and I can’t wait to read it. Just check out the blood-smeared cover. Lovely.

TV review: Misfits series 2 (AKA Barry saves us)

Last night the series two opener of E4’s ASBO-generation superhero equivalent of Smallville aired. For those who missed it, Bandwagoners, Misfits is about a group of five British teenagers performing community service who were struck by lightening in a mysterious storm that left them with superpowers stemming from aspects of their personalities. Mind-reading, sexual prowess and turning back time are just some of the five’s new powers, which aren’t always so much gifts as life-threatening ailments. Try walking through a crowd of men who want to do unspeakable things to you just because your skin brushed theirs, and you have what the beautiful Alisha (Antonia Thomas) has to contend with on her average stroll down the street. She and ex-sporting champion Curtis (Nathan Stewart Jarrett) are forced to maintain a look-but-don’t-touch relationship that’s as tender as it is wicked.

The final episode of series one ended with the now immortal Nathan (Robert Sheehan) buried six feet under, his massive ego suitably justified since finding out his power (unfortunately for the others). This episode begins with the not-so-typical chav-esque Kelly (Lauren Socha), who can read thoughts, following an anonymous tip-off from the biker we saw at the end of series one and getting the group to dig Nathan up. Once that’s out of the way, we’re back to the (brutally unrequited) sexual chemistry between the atypical pair.

Group dynamics re-established, they return to their community service for this week – a device which throws up unique possibilities for each episode – helping at an art class for the mentally ill. The brilliantly awkward, sometimes invisible Simon (Iwen Rheon, last seen sending himself up in Simon Amstell’s Grandma’s House) recognises an old love interest from his time in incarceration and the shenanigans begin. Suddenly there’s too much soft-focus on the lens and nobody is quite sure who anybody is.

As far as Fantasy goes, this is realism. If superheroes exist they aren't off saving the world at the expense of love and life. They're sunbathing on concrete rooftops, they're abusing their powers, they're finding out your worst secret and telling everyone so they can all have a good laugh about it. They're propping up their latest victim in the freezer so they have some company while they eat a chocolate bar. At least, these ones are.


Rather than suffering from hype-raised expectations, this excellently executed opener proves that Misfits was not a flash in the pan. With a razor-witted script, darkly unique SFX (the shapeshifting bathroom scene is terrifying) and fast-paced, intelligent narrative, what makes this series great is that its central characters really are misfits – who wouldn’t balk at eating a cornetto that’s shared a freezer with a dead woman - but they’re misfits we genuinely care about. Even the smart-mouthed Nathan has a vulnerable centre and Simon is a beautifully constructed exercise in facial tics and painful, relatable awkwardness (pyromania and murdering aside).

Ongoing from the first series, the mismatched group are still trying to shake the police after their tendency to accidentally kill their probation officers and their mysterious black-clad saviour makes another appearance. Who is this person who has suddenly stepped up from riding a bike quite well to being able to leap over rooftops and throw paper aeroplanes really, really far? Stay tuned and find out, it’s so much better than you might think.

TV review: The Walking Dead

I love a big budget. AMC/FX’s The Walking Dead has seen a lot of publicity, not least because Simon Pegg has been tweeting his little heart out about it. Has it been worth the characters spent though?

This new zombie/Horror series is based on the black and white comic of the same name by writer Robert Kirkman. To sum: it’s the zombie apocalypse and deputy sheriff Rick James (Andrew Lincoln – more pointy and more American than I remember) has awoken from a gunshot-induced coma to discover that the world has been overrun by zombies. So far so an American 28 Days Later. It’s like the horror version of Sandra Bullock’s While You Were Sleeping only with less hilarious misunderstandings and more gunshot wounds to the head. After the shock of this new world (dis)order sinks in, Rick begins the trek to the standard utopia that exists wherever the people are not, as cleverly mocked in Zombieland, in order to find his wife and young son, picking up other survivors along the way.

The 90-minute opener, 'Days Gone Bye' (see what they did there?), aired over the weekend on FX in the UK and it was good. The SFX are amazing and the creators have got the fast-zombie vs slow-zombie issue sorted. They’re slow when they’re just meandering about, feeling a bit peckish and mooching for live flesh to munch on. But the moment they hear a loud noise – a gunshot for example – or they spot their elevenses - you - they’re loping towards you faster than you can crawl beneath a vehicle to await your inevitable demise.

I’m looking forward to 'Guts' next weekend – it sounds quite promising in the gore department (not that seeing a horse get eaten alive didn’t satisfy my bloodlust – although who knew they are much roomier on the inside than the out? Those zombies got the loaves and fishes of a gut-medley).

review: Robert Jackson Bennett's Mr Shivers

I chose to review Orbit’s Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett because Orbit were doing their usual persuasive hype for this title, putting their all into marketing it at every stage, including a ‘create your own hobo signs’ competition, and with Creative Director Lauren Panepinto’s ability to get excited about a huge spectrum of Orbit’s titles and subgenres, it was hard not to get caught up by it all.

Way back when in September 2008, then-new Editor Dongwon Song flagged up Mr Shivers as his first requisition, calling it ‘chock full of hobos and murder and blood’.

And it is. This thriller/alt-history Horror is set in Depression-era America, but not as we know it. All across America people are travelling in droves, leaving their homes and belongings behind them to seek out a better life. Marcus Connelly is also blazing a trail through America’s dustbowl, but not to seek his fortune. He only wants revenge; to kill the mysterious scarred man, the stranger, Mr Shivers, who murdered his little girl. Connelly has left his wife behind and family home to become one of the new generation hobos. Risking the perils of riding the trains, of hunger and thirst, of the strange company he keeps, Connelly relentlessly hunts the shiver-man through the sightings and folktales of the people he encounters along the way. Like his companions, Pike, Roosevelt and Hammond, who have also lost loved ones to the mythical killer, as he gets closer to the legend, he must also come to terms with his mission, and whether he can commit the murder he desires more than life itself.

Mr Shivers has a simple but effective plot. Although at times it felt frustrating that the characters continued their relentless pursuit at the expense of all else, including plot intricacies and character development, this is a feeling that the book is supposed to evoke. The characters don’t have much in the way of background or personalities, and Connelly is barely there at all. But this is because they are victims of their own grief, their twisted journey across a barren land a metaphor for how they’ve sacrificed their own lives to this all-encompassing emotion.

I love the world that Bennett has created. You can practically feel the heat from this red-tinged, dust-ridden, dry desert landscape rising up from the pages. The land has a personality, and a cruel and pitiless one at that. It reflects the despondent age of the Great Depression, and the desolate shells of human beings navigating across its pitted surface.

Like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods-lite, Mr Shivers deals with mythology and the creation of folklore through oral tradition. This slight book doesn’t have the scope of American Gods however, merely hinting at a deeper mythology beyond the basic goings-on, and it would have been fulfilling to have seen more done with this theme throughout the narrative, as opposed to it cropping up in odd, but effectual, places.

This is a thriller/Horror but there are times when you want it to be more horrific than thrilling. There are key moments throughout the narrative where the writing pulls away from the ‘big reveal’, missing out on the pay-off at the end of a gripping, tension-inducing set-up, leaving the average Horror reader no doubt feeling slightly cheated. This is also, however, another mark of debut-author Bennett’s writing prowess, as he deftly manipulates and builds his readers’ frustrations, so that they mirror his characters’ own lack of fulfilment.

Unfortunately, there is a turning point towards the end in Mr Shivers where reader sympathy with the lead protagonist, Connelly, shifts. The way the book is going to end from then on seems like forgone conclusion and, ultimately, this is where the book lost me.

You can read an extract of it on Orbit’s site. It is well worth a look as overall I really enjoyed this book; I just prefer my protagonists to retain my sympathy until the last possible sentence.

The next tile by Bennett is The Company Man, again set in an alternative history of America, but is not a sequel to Mr Shivers. It's a detective noir in the Horror genre. I’m genuinely excited to read this author again (plus I’m an old romantic when it comes to alternative detective noir, like Malcolm Pryce’s underrated Aberystwyth series).

7/10

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

SF Signal: I’ve been enjoying this week’s Mind Meld. They’ve been discussing what fantasy books or series are better than LOTR. Personally I find Tolkien to be more sprawling and languorous than an Ent family reunion, so for me it’s a bit of a balm to see other authors being recommended. Mine would be most things, but primarily Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, George R. R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire series and Robin Hobb’s (getting on for) 12-title-epic, starting with The Farseer Trilogy. Based on one recommendation, I’ve picked up a copy of T. H. White’s compilation The Once and Future King, which I suspect will provide more of a thorough telling of the tale than the BBC’s thoughtful and compelling take on Arthurian legend, Merlin (tragically, I actually love this series).

Angry Robot Books: I’m really excited about this publisher and if you’re a blogger you can join their Robot Army for free eBooks or hardcopies. Launched in 2009, Angry Robot Books state that they are a ‘global imprint dedicated to the best in modern adult science fiction, fantasy and everything in-between.’ So far I’m a failed recruit but my next book to review is going to be the new UK Science Fiction release Amortals by Matt Forbeck (who has 8-year-old quadruplets, Fact Fans). Apart from Douglas Adams I haven’t read any SF, and this seems a pretty good (free) place to start.

Neil Gaiman: It was the House on the Rock weekend over Halloween, so above is a lovely picture of Gaiman on the World’s Largest Carousel. For a slideshow of photos from the weekend, go to the Huffington Post and indulge in full geek-out session of wishing you had been there. I would have ridden the zebra. Hopefully he’ll blog about it this week.

Roc (Penguin USA): Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files short story collection Side Jobs is out now in the USA , which includes two novellas from Thomas' and Murphey's POV. I wish I knew how to order a new copy of this title from Roc because I lust after Chris McGrath's artwork. See Butcher talk about his short stories (which he describes as ‘trying to have a knife fight in a phone booth’) and his short hair at the NYCC here.

good place to catch a train

I’m currently coming to the end of Orbit Horror Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett. I get to the train station early every weekday morning in order to get a parking spot, which is fine because the precious pocket of time this creates is for reading. Today I was so engrossed in Mr Shivers that I managed to miss my train, despite turning up 25 minutes early for it.

Orbit have set up an ace site for this title, where you can click on all of the ‘hobo’ symbols – placed throughout the book too on chapter headings – and unlock different parts of the Mr Shivers mystery. This appeals to the part of me that likes to think I could have been a detective. For example, I have ‘discovered’ that the symbol on the front cover of the paperback version means ‘Get out fast, hobos are not welcome in this area’. I like the thought of someone taking the time to put this in a visible spot despite the danger that requires any hobo to exit at speed.

Instead of chapter titles there are symbols, for example the chapter I’m reading at the moment has the symbol for: 'Hit the road! Quick!' If you’re interested (and you should be), have a look here. The hobo language is beautiful.

As a side note, ‘hobo’ feels like a terribly un-PC term to use, however as practically everyone in the America portrayed in Bennett’s title is homeless, the term hobo takes on a whole new meaning. Review coming soon.