Book Review | The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

In life I was a scientist called Fanning...

...then, in a jungle in Bolivia, I died...

I died, and then I was brought back to life.

Prompted by a voice that lives in her blood, the fearsome warrior known as Alicia of Blades is drawn towards to one of the great cities of The Time Before. The ruined city of New York. Ruined but not empty. For this is the final refuge of Zero, the first and last of The Twelve. The one who must be destroyed if mankind is to have a future.

What she finds is not what she's expecting: a journey into the past, to find out how it all began, and an opponent at once deadlier and more human than she could ever have imagined.

***

The epic journey that began in The Passage finally comes full circle in The City of Mirrors, a proper doorstopper of a novel that satisfies somewhat in spite of its sheer size and a hell of a hammy bad guy.

I have such fond memories of the beginning of this trilogy, which paired an awesome and expansive apocalypse—one up there, in my estimation, with the end of the world in Swan Song and The Stand—with a truly heartbreaking tale of loss on the small scale. By the denouement of that book, I had no idea where the story as a whole was going to go, but I knew that I wanted to know. And then... well.

The Twelve wasn't terrible. It had a couple of a kick-ass action scenes, and some stirring slower moments that allowed Justin Cronin to explore the emotions of his vast cast of characters. But almost every other inch of that many-inched monolith of a novel felt like filler; texture at best and time-wasting at worst. In that respect, The City of Mirrors splits the difference. It doesn't meander as much as its messy predecessor did, but nor, on the back of such bloat, and with more of its own to add to the tally, can it recapture the magic of The Passage.

"Three years had passed since the liberation of the Homeland" (p.18) that ended The Twelve, and almost a hundred thousand souls now call the walled city of Kerrville, Texas home. Considering how catastrophic the survivors' situation seemed until recently, that's reason enough to be optimistic, never mind the fact that there hasn't been a single viral sighting since:

The age of the viral was over; humankind was finally on the upswing. A continent stood for the taking, and Kerrville was the place where this new age would begin. So why did it seem so meager to [Peter], so frail? Why, standing on the dam of an otherwise encouraging summer morning, did he feel this inward shiver of misgiving? (p.15)

Perhaps because Peter—the leader of the resistance that took down the Twelve viral progenitors, and in turn the millions of vampires they had sired—has lost his sense of purpose. Or perhaps because "people had begun to openly talk about moving outside the wall," (p.15) and he can't believe that the threat is actually at an end.

Book Review | Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper.

When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris’s ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik—a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multigenerational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return.

Rising above them is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful alien entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness—are just the beginning of irrevocable change.

At Central Station, humans and machines continue to adapt, thrive... and even evolve.

***

World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar rewrites the rules of the short story collection in Central Station, an ambitious assemblage of thirteen tales tall but indubitably true that are all the more remarkable when read together.

"Substantially different versions" (p.251) of eleven of the efforts it collects were previously published, in various venues, between November 2011 and September 2014, and the handful of them that I read then impressed me immensely. 'The Smell of Orange Groves' and 'The Lord of Discarded Things,' for instance, represented intimate glimpses into the lives of a few of the disaffected folks who call the "bordertown" (p.34) at the base of the Central Station spaceport home.

In one, after decades in the Belt, birthing doctor Boris Chong returns to his roots to tend to his ailing parent, only to end up hooking up with his childhood sweetheart Miriam Jones, who's grown older in the intervening years—as has he—and adopted a boy. In the other, Ibrahim, an alte-zachen man, or "junk gypsy," (p.48) finds a genetically modified messiah in a small shoebox, and resolves to raise him himself—free of his fate as far as is possible in a place like Central Station, which is so rife with religion that it boasts a "faith bazaar." (p.23)

They were little things, those stories; lovely, and lively, and large of heart, but little, admittedly. Not so in Central Station, which generously extends the two tales I've touched on at the same time as seamlessly stitching together their characters and narratives with those of the other eleven featured here.

Book Review | Slade House by David Mitchell

Turn down Slade Alley—narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies.

A stranger greets you by name and invites you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't.

This unnerving, taut and intricately woven tale by one of our most original and bewitching writers begins in 1979 and reaches its turbulent conclusion around Hallowe'en, 2015. Because every nine years, on the last Saturday of October, a 'guest' is summoned to Slade House. But why has that person been chosen, by whom and for what purpose?

The answers lie waiting in the long attic, at the top of the stairs...

***

Though there have ever been elements of the speculative in David Mitchell's fiction, his Man Booker Prize longlisted-last, released in 2014, was the first to fully embrace the form. Section by section, The Bone Clocks revealed itself to be "a soaring supernatural sextet" somewhat taken with time travel and very interested indeed in immortality. Unfortunately, the protracted finale of Mitchell's sixth made a middling meal of the same fantastical flourishes that had been so appealing when presented with more measure—an oversight I'm pleased to say he sets right in his laconic new novel.

Comprised of a collection of interlinked short stories, Slade House shares a world with The Bone Clocks—such that the Shaded Way has a pivotal role to play and Spot the Horologist is the game of the day—but where said setting was once an expansive canvas spattered with the stuff of science fiction, in this book it becomes the close-cropped backdrop of a hypnotic history of haunting.

For all that it has in common with The Bone Clocks, Slade House's characters and narrative notions are its own—excepting, perhaps, the presence of little Nathan Bishop, the central character of the first section of this text: an extended version of the same short Mitchell shared by way of the "diabolical treble-strapped textual straitjacket" of Twitter in the lead up to the publication of its predecessor. 

Reiterated, 'The Right Sort' does not stop with Nathan lost in the gorgeous grounds of Slade House, which, like the text itself, are basically "a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever." (p.119) Instead, he ends up in the Victorian property proper, where the owners, Norah and Jonah, proceed to essentially sup his soul.

"It's not as if Norah and Jonah go 'Wooooooh' or drip ectoplasm or write scary messages in mirrors," (p.63) but they are, as it happens, as good as ghosts—or rather as bad.

Book Review | The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for asylum. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking...

The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up—a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes—daughter, sister, mother, guardian—is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

***

An exquisite exploration of the beauty and the tragedy of mortality, The Bone Clocks is a soaring supernatural sextet split into sections carefully arranged around the novel's initial narrator.

A baby-faced runaway when we meet in the mid-eighties, Holly Sykes has become a wistful old woman by the book's conclusion in the year 2043. Between times David Mitchell depicts her diversely: as a friend and a lover; a wife and a mother; a victim and a survivor; and more, of course, as the decades prance past. The Bone Clocks is, in short, the story of Holly Sykes' life: a life less ordinary that leads her—as if by the whims of some Script—into the midst of a macabre conflict between eternal enemies fought in the farthest fringes of existence.

But that doesn't happen until the last act. In the beginning, Holly is no more and no less than a normal girl in a normal world with normal problems—like the backstabbing boyfriend she left the nest to take up with. Too proud to crawl back to her family after a screaming match with her Mam, Holly hightails it as far away from home as her aching feet can take her—pretty much to prove a point:

Six days should do it. The police only get interested in missing teenagers once a week's up. Six days'll show Mam I can look after myself in the big bad world. I'll be in a stronger, whatchercallit, a stronger negotiating position. And I'll do it on my own, without a Brubeck to get all boyfriendish on me. (p.40)

Even as a teenager, Holly's pretty together, so she manages to make ends meet in the interim. Furthermore, she finds a few ways to extend her experimental independence... if not indefinitely, since the Script we learn about later has other plans for our protagonist.

Book Review | A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick

I've chased him for over twenty years, and across countless miles, and though often I was running, there have been many times when I could do nothing but sit and wait. Now I am only desperate for it to be finished.

In 1944, just days after the liberation of Paris, Charles Jackson sees something horrific: a man, apparently drinking the blood of a murdered woman. Terrified, he does nothing, telling himself afterwards that worse things happen in wars.

Seven years later he returns to the city—and sees the same man dining in the company of a fascinating young woman. When they leave the restaurant, Charles decides to follow...

***

I've often heard it said that the littlest things in life can have the biggest impact—an assertion evidenced by Charles Jackson, a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps whose subsequent career in the field of haemophilia springs from something seemingly insignificant. Celebrating the liberation of Paris from the hands of the Nazis, he hunkers down in a bunker, only to half-see something weird: someone gulping blood from the warm body of a woman.

A vampire? Perhaps. But more likely a mere madman. "It was ludicrous; it was, as I’ve said, something I should not have seen, something wrong. Not just violence, not just murder, but something even more depraved than those acts." (p.28) Absent any evidence that a crime has been committed, Charles does his level best to dismiss this wicked thing he's witnessed. But the damage is done, and the unsettling story told in A Love Like Blood begun.

A period of years later Charles' work brings him back to France, where he is surprised to find the focus of his all but forgotten fascination at lunch with a lovely lass hailing from the Hamptons. In the first, he follows her hoping she might tell him more about her benefactor—an Estonian Margrave, apparently, looking to learn the language—but before long Charles realises he has feelings for Marian... feelings she seems ready to return.

Alas, their chance at romance falls apart practically before it's started. When she suddenly stops replying to his regular letters, he asks after her at her former haunts, where he's made aware that Marian has a heart condition, and has had to head home to seek treatment. He never sees or hears from her again.

Book Review | Anno Dracula by Kim Newman

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel follows vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders.

Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London.

This brand-new edition of the bestselling novel contains unique bonus material, including a new afterword from the author, annotations, articles and alternate endings to the original novel.

***

The first chapter of Anno Dracula is taken directly from the diary of Dr. Seward. Herein the practitioner prowls the shadowy alleys of Whitechapel in search of a vampire to victimise, and in this strangely changed London, he isn't looking long. All too soon he happens upon Lulu Schön, and haunted by the loss of Lucy, the love of his life, Seward proceeds to systematically separate her head from her neck with a sharp silver knife.

Unaccustomed as we are at this early stage to the new world order of Kim Newman's 1992 novel, said slaying seems normal enough for a nosferatu narrative, but the inversion of this penny dreadful premise immediately realigns it in our minds. Had Lulu been a lone vampire stalking the seedy streets - as one presumes though the prologue - there would perhaps be a certain method to Seward's murderous madness. In Anno Dracula, however, she is merely one of an increasing number: the get of Vlad Tepes - now crowned Queen Victoria's royal consort - are everywhere, thus this third cold-blooded killing threatens to tear undead London asunder.

"Everyone began their arguments by declaring that it was about more than just three butchered harlots. It was about Disraeli's 'two nations', it was about the regrettable spread of vampirism among the lower classes, it was about the decline of public order, it was about the fragile equilibrium of the transformed kingdom. The murders were mere sparks, but Great Britain was a tinderbox." (p.109)

To bring the serial killer quickly christened Jack the Ripper to account for his crimes against inhumanity, the Diogenes Club dispatches Charles Beauregard, a rather dashing yet halfway hapless spy. Undertaking the subsequent investigations alongside the aforementioned agent of the Empire, the conflicted vampire rights activist Geneviève Dieudonné - an elder like Vlad Tepes herself - pursues Seward for her own reasons.

These, then, are our primary perspectives - exemplary and complementary, even as romance blooms between the pair like a puddle of blood - though we observe the unfortunate events of Anno Dracula from a few other points of view too; including the British Prime Minister's, and of course our killer's. But Charles and Geneviève are the heart and soul of this dark yet delightfully affectionate diatribe. They are fundamentally decent yet fittingly mysterious people who chaperone readers respectfully rather than condescendingly through the many complexities of an initially dense setting and the intense tale which plays out later.

The world, meanwhile, is built magnificently. Cribbing as much from fiction as history, Newman allows us ample opportunity to luxuriate in a wonderful London - conjured whole cloth from a vast patchwork of fabrics - that is at once familiar and different from the city we've all visited, if not literally then in literature, at least. It comes across convincingly, and comprehensively thought-through - such that the author's extensive annotations, aside the other stocking stuffers new to Titan's essential edition, make for rewarding reading in their own right - but neither overbearing nor, crucially, convoluted.

"It still seems to me something of a disappointment that Stoker's villain, after all his meticulous planning and with five hundred years of scheming monstrousness under his cloak, has no sooner arrived in Britain than he trips up and sows the seeds of his eventual undoing by an unlikely pursuit of the wife of a provincial solicitor." (pp.450-451)

As to the idea animating Anno Dracula, encapsulated by the author above: I admit it might not seem so novel in this over-saturated day and age, but fully two decades ago, upon the original publication of Newman's pitch-perfect pastiche, I warrant it was exactly that. And even now, this fiction is so rich and well-wrought that it stands head and shoulders (not to mention necks) above the most considered contemporary contenders.

A magnificent mash-up of fantastic fact and fantasies derived from fiction, Anno Dracula by Kim Newman is an enthralling alt-historical horror novel from word one, and it only becomes more glorious as it goes. One wonders how a chronicle of this caliber could possibly have fallen out of fashion in the first! If there's any justice in the world, its revision and reissuing in the modern marketplace in anticipation of Johnny Alucard's release next year should serve its author as well as this edition indubitably does us.

***

Anno Dracula

by Kim Newman

UK & US Publication: May 2011, Titan Books

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review | The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition 

The end of the world was only the beginning.

In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Passage, Justin Cronin constructed an unforgettable world transformed by a government experiment gone horribly wrong. Now the scope widens and the intensity deepens as the epic story surges forward with The Twelve.

In the present day, as the man-made apocalypse unfolds, three strangers navigate the chaos. Lila, a doctor and an expectant mother, is so shattered by the spread of violence and infection that she continues to plan for her child’s arrival even as society dissolves around her. Kittridge, known to the world as “Last Stand in Denver,” has been forced to flee his stronghold and is now on the road, dodging the infected, armed but alone and well aware that a tank of gas will get him only so far. April is a teenager fighting to guide her little brother safely through a landscape of death and ruin. These three will learn that they have not been fully abandoned—and that in connection lies hope, even on the darkest of nights.

One hundred years in the future, Amy and the others fight on for humankind’s salvation . . . unaware that the rules have changed. The enemy has evolved, and a dark new order has arisen with a vision of the future infinitely more horrifying than man’s extinction. If the Twelve are to fall, one of those united to vanquish them will have to pay the ultimate price.

A heart-stopping thriller rendered with masterful literary skill, The Twelve is a grand and gripping tale of sacrifice and survival.

***

Sometimes it feels like the world has been ending forever.

Alas, I haven't been around that long, so let's begin a little less expansively. In recent years, at least - in fiction and in film; in video games, comic books and on TV too - there has been an interest in the apocalypse that borders on the obscene. A fascination has emerged fully fledged, an obsession if you will - and for some folks it is exactly that - with how the world will end, and what, if anything, could come after.

Safe to say, surely, that this premise has been more prevalent than ever this century. Every week, another iteration of the apocalypse: in our mind's eye the world has already ended every which way except in actuality, such that a dead or dying planet no longer requires much imagination on our part, nor is this a theme deserving of attention in itself. In a sense, the end of everything has become the new normal. More often than not, it goes unremarked upon.

Unsurprisingly then, in the summer of 2010, the world ended... again. But this time, folks noticed. A consensus arose that this was an apocalypse with panache. Like Swan Song, or The Stand, The Passage envisioned the loss of life as we live it on a vast canvas, yet found its power in the particulars. In the tale of Amy, otherwise known as "the Girl from Nowhere, in whose person time was not a circle but a thing stopped and held, a century cupped in the hand," (p.532) and Brad Wolghast, a company man whose job it was to bring her in, but abandoned the task to spend his last years as a father to this immortal orphan.

This was but the first of The Passage's many parts, and in retrospect, it was the book's most affecting segment — though there were moments in those that followed, which revolved around the rise of the First Colony established after the virus, its fall some hundred years on, and the pilgrimage made into the wider world by several of its survivors. Come the conclusion, The Passage's core cast had learned - at long last - how they might go about fighting back.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves already, because before the story can end, it must begin again — or so Justin Cronin supposes.

Thus, The Twelve too hearkens back to the dawn of this dark new era in human history, with an opening act reminiscent of its successful predecessor's prolonged prologue. Herein we meet Wolghast's estranged ex, Lila, and spend some quality time with one Lawrence Grey, "a model citizen, at least by the standards of a chemically neutered child molester" (p.141) who awakens in Year Zero a changed man — or else a monster merely remade. As with Amy and her adopted daddy in The Passage, Lawrence and Lila have a part to play in the larger narrative, which is more than can be said for most of the characters we're introduced to during this pivotal period.

In any event, the bulk of hulking tale told in The Twelve occurs long after this origin story of sorts. Come to that, another five years have passed since the climax of The Passage, during which time the aforementioned survivors have gone their separate ways. Our leads Peter and Alicia are working with the Expeditionary, hunting down the eleven master vampires - sorry, virals! - that remain of the titular twelve established in the last novel — though beyond Babcock's demise they have had precious little success in their expensive endeavours, such that the operation has become unsustainable according to the Army.

Meanwhile, Michael has made a new life for himself as the man in charge of a dangerous biodiesel plant; Major Greer has found inner peace in prison, where he was sent for disobeying a direct order during the attack on Babcock; grieving over the loss of the love of his life, Hollis has surrounded himself with sin in a den of vice on the fringes of the city of Kerrville, TX. As to Sara herself, well... she's dead. Isn't she?

As it happens, she's not, no. On the other hand, she's hardly happy to be alive. During the destruction of First Colony, Sara was snatched by the henchmen of Horace Guilder, the despicable Director of a totalitarian territory known as the Homeland. However, all is not lost: insurrection is in the air, and soon - remembering that all things are relative in a book of this breadth - Sara finds herself involved with the rebels.

Nor is Sara's the only surprise revival. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say another fallen figure from The Passage returns, albeit briefly, in The Twelve. Sadly, this second coming, as appealing as it is initially, only serves in the end to cheapen the impact of that character's passing.

Long story short, Cronin's core cast members have moved on. They're all over the place, both figuratively and literally — and so too, in turn, is The Twelve. A stupendous proportion of it is spent simply getting the gang back together; adding insult to injury, almost nothing of note happens until they are. And then?

"Everything possessed a striking familiarity, as if no time had passed since they'd faced Babcock on the mountaintop in Colorado. Here they all were, together once more, their fates drawn together as if by a powerful gravitational force, as if they were characters in a story that had already been written; all they had to do was act out the plot." (p.622)

Questions of agency aside, this excerpt is typical of The Twelve's heavy-handedness. Excepting sections at the very beginning and end of the text, Cronin's prose is considerably less... considered than it was at the outset of his epic. Characters new and old are developed in broad strokes only; the plot progresses in frustrating fits and starts; the sense of tension prevalent in The Passage is practically absent; meanwhile book two of this trilogy just hasn't the heart of the first part.

Credit to the author, then, that even in light of this laundry list of issues, The Twelve compels — to the point that I had a hard time putting it down. There exists an addictive quality to this increasingly Pez-esque apocalypse that means the majority of its excesses are easily overlooked. Cronin keeps us on our toes by shifting perspectives regularly, and however contrived the cliffhangers that end each chapter are - and they are - they do exactly what they're supposed to, leaving the reader immediately eager for more.

There's no shortage of action, either; set-up for the summer blockbuster this book could easily be, if Ridley Scott would only exercise his option. The Massacre of the Field is memorably horrendous, as is the bombastic attack on the Oil Road, and the explosive final showdown unfolds in exquisite slow motion.

Unlike The Passage, which made so much of so little - and so very well - The Twelve is at its best in the throes of such spectacle, and if in the periods between these superb set-pieces it seems shallow, and somewhat self-indulgent, rest assured that soon enough, there will be blood. And when it comes, you'll understand exactly why this sequel is worth reading.

In the beginning, The Twelve builds brilliantly, and the end - which is both "a beginning and an ending, standing adjacent but apart" (p.666) - is excellent. Regrettably, the intermediary episodes are substantially less successful, and to make matters worse they represent the length of any normal novel. But do push on through. Think of these dreary doldrums as the dead calm before the perfect storm, because in spite of its missteps, this isn't an apocalypse you can afford to miss.

...

The review was originally published, in a slightly altered form, on Tor.com.

***

The Twelve
by Justin Cronin

UK Publication: October 2012, Orion
US Publication: October 2012, Ballantine Books

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

Coming Attractions | Blood Oranges by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Caitlin R. Kiernan has ever been awfully forthright about the publishing process, and brutally honest about the act of writing too. So going into her masterful last novel - that's The Drowning Girl: A Memoir for those of you who missed it - we knew in advance that it marked the end of an era.

Sad, but true. And some might say overdue.

Anyway, as in the tarot - not to speak of The Smashing Pumpkins' back catalogue - the end is the beginning. The beginning, in Kiernan's case, of a series of three all-out urban fantasies published under an open pseudonym. 

You must be wondering: why the half handle, when Kiernan's own name is so critically (if not commercially) credited? Well, here's her explanation:

"I do not hate this novel. It's this novel's sequel, Fay Grimmer, that's giving me fits. [...] But this book, Blood Oranges – though it's nothing even remotely like The Red Tree or The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, it's fun. Mostly, it was fun to write. It's a popcorn book. It's funny. It's a satire with an undercurrent of bitter disillusionment. It's candy bars with razor blades hidden inside them. It gives the middle finger to 'paranormal romance' and its corruption of urban fantasy. So, yeah."

This description puts me in mind of nothing so much as The Mall and The Ward. The work, you will recall, of another invented personage: the great S. L. Grey.

Here's the cover, in any event:

Hmm.

Then again, given what Kiernan's trying to do with this book - namely break into the mass market for urban fantasy - it fits, I think.

And Amazon has a blurb to boot!

My name’s Quinn.

If you buy into my reputation, I’m the most notorious demon hunter in New England. But rumors of my badassery have been slightly exaggerated. Instead of having kung-fu skills and a closet full of medieval weapons, I’m an ex-junkie with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time. Or... whatever.

Wanted for crimes against inhumanity I (mostly) didn’t commit, I was nearly a midnight snack for a werewolf until I was “saved” by a vampire calling itself the Bride of Quiet. Already cursed by a werewolf bite, the vamp took a pint out of me too.

So now... now, well, you wouldn’t think it could get worse, but you’d be dead wrong.

A moreish premise, no? Here Kiernan appears to be baking all the genre's essential ingredients in a single tray. What the resulting concoction will taste of is anyone's guess - my money's on something bittersweet, like treacle - but typically this author's work is deeply, darkly delicious.

So I have hope.

There's no UK publisher in place to date - nor would I expect there to be one, unless Jo Fletcher jumps in (on you go, Jo!) - but Blood Oranges is coming out in North America from Roc next February 5th.

Comic Book Review | Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight Vol. 1 - The Long Way Home

Some among you may recall that I went cold turkey on comic books for a good long while there. Among the many and various reasons I came back to the fold, with my tail between my legs, yes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight. Which is to say the continuation of the television series that pretty much made my teenage years.

I adored Buffy all those bygone days ago, and my passion for it, half a lifetime on, remains largely unfettered. I love the series still... though I'll admit I've not dared to rewatch it since its misfiring final season aired in 2003. What if the (arguably) more adult me thinks it ridiculous, in retrospect? What then?

That's an eventuality I needn't fear for the moment, because I have Season Eight to take me back. And what a terrific trip down memory lane it is!

The Long Way Home picks up a year on from the events of season seven of the series in its original iteration. Buffy Summers has raised an army, and having quite exploded Sunnydale and its surrounding area, she and the surviving Scoobies - so Xander with an eye-patch, and Willow and Giles, though they've both AWOL at the outset - have taken up residence in a citadel in Scotland, the better to train their legions of baby slayers in peace and quiet. Or so they hope.

Oh, and Dawn - Buffy's little sister - is a giant. So not so little any longer.

This first collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, which ran for forty issues between 2007 and 2011, contains two stories, one short and one long; Joss Whedon writes both. The longer of the two stories - that is the titular tale, "The Long Way Home" - serves to demonstrate that here in the Buffyverse, it's business as usual. Familiar old enemies return, if only to be handily dispatched by this older and in many senses wiser ensemble of idiots as Whedon refamiliarises his reader with the way things are.

And that isn't to do a disservice to the way things were. The Long Way Home is very faithful to the television series in that sense. The experience of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is intermittently thrilling and winningly quick-witted: it's fresh, funny, exciting, and good to look at, too... as ever, except now we've the art of Georges Jeanty to thank for that. I should say his pencils are a little too rounded for my tastes - all soft curves with nary an angle in sight - but he does the Scoobies real good, all growed-up as they are now, and frankly that's what matters.

The only issue I'd raised with regards to this fantastic first installment of Buffy the Vampire: Season Eight is that it relies perhaps a little too heavily on the reader. Evidently the author assumes readers will have a detailed knowledge of the littlest things in the Buffyverse as it was, and though I am, as aforementioned, a dyed-in-the-wool devotee of Whedon's wonderful worlds, and this one in particular, it's been a while, and several story points - not to mention one of the little big bads who kicks off in the introductory arc - completely passed me by. So it goes without saying that complete newcomers need not even apply. 

Then again, I have an awful memory, a quick look at the Wikipedia page wouldn't have been such a horrendous hardship, and once I'd gotten back into the swing of things... well, The Long Way Home felt to me a lot like coming home.

Besides the fact that this show I adore is now a comic book I can learn to love all over again, the best thing about Buffy the Vampire: Season Eight is evidenced in the last story of this first collection. In "The Chain" - penciled by Paul Lee, who did fill-ins on Conan - Whedon is belatedly, brilliantly unbound. Able now to focus on characters other than the staples who make up the central cast, he explores the life and times of a potential new to the canon: an impromptu Buffy body double, not long for this world if certain dastardly dark forces have it their way. "The Chain" might be the most impressive single issue of any comic book I've read all year.

With such incredible new avenues for the series to explore, as it surely should, and Whedon in fine form - and moreover seemingly in control of where Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight goes, now that it needn't be about the same old Scoobies year in and year out - The Long Way Home makes for a fantastic start to an alarmingly smart comic book based on an alarmingly smart television series. 

Welcome home, folks!

Book Review | The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Venice, 1407.


The city is at the height of its powers. In theory, Duke Marco commands, but Marco is a simpleton so his aunt and uncle rule in his stead. They seem all powerful, yet live in fear of assassins better than their own.


On the night their world changes, Marco's young cousin prays in the family chapel for deliverance from a forced marriage. It is her misfortune to be alone when Mamluk pirates break in to abduct her - an act that will ultimately trigger war.


Elsewhere Atilo, the Duke's chief assassin, cuts a man's throat. Hearing a noise, he turns back to find a boy drinking from the victim's wound. The speed with which the angel-faced boy dodges his dagger and scales a wall stuns Atilo. He knows then he must hunt him. Not to kill him, but because he's finally found what he thought was impossible - someone fit to be his apprentice.

***

 

There's enough going on in the first hundred pages of The Fallen Blade that I honestly had trouble keeping track; enough character, atmosphere and narrative in that short space to fit out a swathe of less ambitious fantasy sagas from top to tail. Overwhelming is what it is, initially, and for its density - for its complete and utter abundance from the word "go" - The Fallen Blade will very likely haemorrhage readers of a certain type. For myself, only rarely will I think to put a book down without sticking with it till the bitter end... and I nearly did this. Nearly... but not quite.


Imagine my astonishment, then, that having resolved to give Jon Courtenay Grimwood's dark fantasy debut a little longer to find its feet, and taken the opportunity to realign a few of my own key expectations, I found in The Fallen Blade the first act of a trilogy with such tremendous promise that at this point, its difficult beginning be damned, I wouldn't hesitate to proclaim it the finest new series of the year to date.


Perhaps the problem I found myself facing, starting in on book one of The Assassini, was a lack of familiarity with the author: an award-winner, at that. And here I hadn't read End of the World Blues, or The Arabesk Trilogy -- more fool me, from where I stand now.


But I don't think that was it.


I think the trouble was, I came to The Fallen Blade expecting a certain standard of fantasy -- which is to say, politely put, standard fantasy. We all know the like, no doubt. And what with the uninspiring blurb and cover art adorning Orbit's edition of The Fallen Blade, it's surely fair to say I had my reasons. Namely a city teetering on the brink of collapse, with a war in the offing, a history of horrors and a proliferation of political strife. Want to bet a pretty boy with incredible supernatural powers will somehow save the day?


Well, not so much.


Tycho - he of the aforementioned angel face (p.43) - is assuredly our protagonist for the macabre entertainments to come throughout the remainder of this stunning introduction to the world of The Assassini, but let's be clear here: he's no sweet cheeks, despite sharing a name (somewhat distractingly) with one half of renowned internet funmongers Penny Arcade. Either a fallen angel or a risen devil, Tycho is at the outset of The Fallen Blade as new to the filthy 15th century Venice of Grimwood's trilogy as you and I; and as new to himself, too, for he's an amnesiac when we meet, only lately freed from a voyage to the city spent in cruel and unusual captivity. Or so one gathers.


You might think his gradual awakening, both to who he is and to the festering wonders of the world around him, would work as an ideal means of introducing the reader to this "city of gilt, glass and assassinations," (p.28) and so it serves to... eventually. But in the early going this is assuredly not that sort of novel. Much in the mode of the hard SF this author cut his teeth on, Grimwood courageously refuses to pander; his priorities at the outset of The Assassini are of a grander order than the offering up of accessible worldbuilding and an array of relatable characters. Inevitably, readers used to the baby's-first-fantasy chaperoning of so many genre novels will find themselves floundering for a foothold through the first act of The Fallen Blade. For me, my own frustrations are evidence enough of that disheartening fact.


But I wouldn't change it if I could. Grimwood might make you work for it - for an understanding of this murderous, Machiavellian society wherein "the briefest glimpse of lovers, seen through the window of a candlelit room overlooking the Grand Canal, carried more interest than prices murdered on Venetian orders miles away," (p.145) check your undivided attention in at the entrance - but the end result of all your effort is a red-wine rich and resplendent sight; a measured assault on the senses which only a precious few fantasists are capable of accomplishing in fiction.


The Fallen Blade is many things, and if there's any justice in the publishing industry - and I dearly hope there is - it will be many things to many people. At first, it's hard work; I make no bones about that. Having come to fantasy only after sharpening his storytelling skills as a science fiction author, working in a field esteemed for its intelligence and density, Jon Courtenay Grimwood's prose in The Fallen Blade is so finely honed as to seem a point... a point which some readers will struggle to see past. But at the last, The Fallen Blade is a darkly remarkable first fantasy, featuring goodly amounts of sex, death and other assorted grimnesses, set in a squalorous city the equal of Styria - from fellow filth slash fine art purveyor Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold - and starring in Tycho a character handily up to the task of carrying a thickly political narrative with such boundless ambition as to recall no-one more than George R. R. Martin.


It really is quite good, shall we say.

***

The Fallen Blade

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

UK Publication: February 2011, Orbit
US Publication: January 2011, Orbit

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review | Thirteen Years Later by Jasper Kent

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"1825, Europe - and Russia - have been at peace for ten years. Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is peaceful. Not only have the French been defeated but so have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside, and then against, ten or more years ago. His duty is still to serve and to protect his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but now the enemy is human.

"However the Tsar knows that he can never be at peace. Of course, he is aware of the uprising fermenting within the Russian army--among his supposedly loyal officers. No, what troubles him is something that threatens to bring damnation down upon him, his family and his country. The Tsar has been reminded of a promise: a promise born of blood...a promise that was broken a hundred years before.

"Now the one who was betrayed by the Romanovs has returned to exact revenge for what has been denied him. And for Aleksei, knowing this chills his very soul. For it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he believed in and all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later..."

***

The trouble with Twelve was it was slow.


Forget the fact that the cover had a vampy dude on it. Forget that any bookseller or blogger who wrote up the first volume of this projected quintet talked about the very fellows, and that the blurb made quite plain the decidedly undead nature of Twelve's antagonists: it took fully 200 at-times wearisome pages for Jasper Kent to pull back the curtain on his ambitious narrative to admit that yes, the premise was essentially vampires do the Soviet Union.


Once that was out of the way, Twelve got good. It got fun, and exciting, and if its belaboured first act had proven a bit of a chore, it served at least to acquaint one with Aleksei Danilov and his merry men - an elite band of Russian soldiers who to turn the tide of battle against Napoleon's invasion force unwittingly enlist the assistance of the Oprichniki. Which is to say, a gang of vamps. However, as his squad were picked off one by one, Aleksei came to understand the nightmarish truth of these grimly effective mercenaries, and made it his mission to repel the forces of darkness from his beloved country's borders.


Thirteen Years Later, the Oprichniki are all dead - as are Aleksei's friends and fellow soldiers. Still balancing two love lives, with his young son Dmitry no longer so young and now another offspring to consider, Aleksei has spent a decade chasing ghosts, working in the erstwhile as a double agent on behalf of Tsar Aleksandr. But now a plot to supplant the Tsar is sketched out - somehow Aleksei must intercede - just as an impossible message arrives from a former squad mate still close to Aleksei's heart... and long presumed dead.


Thirteen Years Later is a longer book than its forebear, relating a narrative more ambitious still, and I had, truth be told, high hopes for it. The end of Twelve left me with the sense that what was to come would take the baton and run with it, forgoing the dreary beginning which was surely Twelve's weakest aspect. Sadly, I tend to think Kent's decision to kill off so many of book one's heroes and villains works against him come to book two; without that backbone, the author has all the same busywork to attend to. He must come up with a whole new cast, develop between them a cadaverous new conflict, and more besides what with the events of Twelve - as well as all that's happened in the intervening time between the then of that novel and the now of Thirteen Years Later - to recount.


I say "he must." I should really say Kent feels he must, for much of the time he spends bringing the reader up to speed on the Story So Far is a real drag. And Kent misspends a lot of time in that regard. Credit where it's due: rather than infodumping en masse he opts to parcel out those nuggets of knowledge he deems relevant to the events of Thirteen Years Later over the entire first half of this overbearing sequel, and though the attempt is an admirable one, it's woefully misguided. Kent is so set on making sure we have all the facts - and I do mean all the facts - that he sacrifices the sense of momentum which propelled the latter part of Twelve. As a result, Thirteen Years Later feels slow and stuttering by comparison, only gaining the impetus to move forward in the very late-game, and by then, it feels too little too late.


Which isn't to say I'll be giving up on this series. When Jasper Kent's on, he's on, and though his throwback storytelling technique might prove an acquired taste for some, it's one I share - and indeed delight in sharing when at last things heat up for Aleksei. It's just a shame it takes so bloody long for them to do so. They say it doesn't do to presume too much; I would add add to that, presuming too little can be equally problematic. Here's hoping lessons will have been learned come The Third Section.

***

Thirteen Years Later

by Jasper Kent

UK Publication: April 2010, Bantam
US Publication: February 2011, Pyr

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review | Twelve by Jasper Kent

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"On 12th June 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee forded the River Niemen and crossed the Rubicon - its invasion of Russia had begun.

"Charged with delaying the enemy's inexorable march on Moscow, a group of Russian officers summon the help of the oprichniki, a band of mercenaries from the outermost fringes of Christian Europe. As rumours of a plague travelling west from the Black Sea reach the Russians, the Oprichniki - twelve in number - arrive. Preferring to work alone, and at night, they prove brutally, shockingly effective against the French.

"But one amongst the Russians, Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, is unnerved by the mercenaries' ruthlessness, and as he comes to understand the true, horrific nature of these strangers, he wonders at the nightmare they've unleashed in their midst..."

***

Vampires, eh? After a long, dark night spent recovering their strength in the coffins they call home, the enfanged are everywhere these days. On the telly, in our books, at the cinema... if you're not a member of Team Eric or Team Jacob, what are you, exactly? Discerning, I'd say; I'm no fan of Stephanie Meyer. Nor, indeed, is Stephen King, who's on the record as asserting, somewhat comically, that "she can't write worth a darn." But then, however dubious its appeal, Twilight is far from the beginning and the end of this contemporary vampire vogue. There's The Vampire Diaries, too; 30 Days of Night and the Sookie Stackhouse books to speak of.

It's safe to say, I think, that never have vampires possessed such mainstream appeal as they do today. Whether we can thank more enlightened attitudes towards gender and sexuality or simply some attractive young actors for this upsurge in interest, there exists, in this era of widespread identity crisis, an undeniable attraction to the Transylvanian terrors Bram Stoker popularised so long ago. And if the likes of True Blood and Twilight represent vampire pop, Jasper Kent's gritty historical thriller Twelve stands to symbolise the opposite extreme of the movement: vampire punk, you might say. Or, perhaps more presciently, vampire grunge. Where the Sookie Stackhouse books are camp and sensual, Twelve is blunt and boisterous; it substitutes, too, the glittering cleanliness of Stephanie Meyer's single white vampires with blood, and dirt, and death.

Twelve is great, fun vampire fiction - some of the best I've read in ages. Certainly, I found it to be head and shoulders - and heart, har har - more mature and involving than any of the aforementioned series. Kent tells a relatively simple tale in this novel, the first of a reported quintet which will chronicle the life of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, the philandering Russian spy from whose perspective Twelve is told. Alongside three fellow friends and officers, Aleksei is charged with beating back the French invaders Bonaparte steers ever further into the motherland - but their small-scale sabotage is no match for the countless thousands of Napoleonic soldiers marching inexorably towards Moscow. All hope is not lost, however, for when Aleksei's commander Dmitry calls upon a band of twelve mercenaries to assist the saboteurs in their underhand endeavours, unbelievably, the crimson tide of battle begins, slowly but surely, to turn. But how can so few men possibly have such a dramatic effect on so many?

Well, because they're not men, of course; the twelve are voordalak - vampiric creatures sprung from the folklore of Eastern Europe - and the plague of blood and bodies they leave in their wake is testament to their superhuman capabilities. Tellingly, 200 pages of the narrative have passed before that revelation, and though there's plenty to keep you interested in the interim, even if by some happenstance you come to Twelve unaware of its dark vampiric heart, the jig is up long before Kent finally comes clean.

Treat the first half of the novel as an opportunity to get to know Aleksei and his companions, however, and it's a misjudgment easily overlooked. Maks, Dmitry and Domnikiia are well characterised throughout, lending depth and complexity to Aleksei through the development of their relationships with him. The vampires are less noteworthy, though given that there are twelve of them, it would perhaps be asking too much for each to come into their own. That said, as their numbers are whittled down, Iuda in particular rises quickly to the top of the metaphorical food chain. He is not so clear-cut an antagonist as Aleksei's opinion of him dictates, nor quite so complex a character as Kent would have us believe, but he is nevertheless an excellent foil for Twelve's recalcitrant protagonist.

Twelve has its faults, then, but Kent is a very fine storyteller, and the narrative he has crafted goes from strength to strength, leaving me in little doubt that if Thirteen Years Later picks up where this first volume leaves off - figuratively rather than literally - it will surely be a superlative reading experience. Already, Kent's characters are memorable, his setting stark and authentic, his old-school storyteller tone absolutely spot-on. Dirty, blunt and brutal, Twelve is the ideal antidote to the trite and tiresome likes of True Blood and Twilight - and things, I would wager, can only get better.

***

Twelve

by Jasper Kent

UK Publication: January 2009, Bantam
US Publication: September 2010, Pyr

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading