News Flashing | Joe Abercrombie To Work On A New Trilogy

Feed Reader used to be my RSS feed reader of choice. I think it was the first thing Google coughed up, back when I began looking for an app to alert me to new posts from all the blogs and news sites I follow. A little while later, I moved over to Newz Crawler, and that was pretty decent as a desktop PC experience -- except, of course, for the z in the title, which annoyed me every time I remembered it. Even now, just thinking about it, it annoys me.

But we're not talking about my pet peeves. And anyway, since took the plunge on my eee Pad Transformer a few months ago, I've moved over again, and found an experience so convenient, immediate and accessible - not to mention beautiful to look at - that now I don't know if I could ever go back.

I've been using Newsr for Honeycomb, via Google Reader, and though it means I only ever see what folks have been blogging about when I'm done working for the day and I've settled down in the evening with my tablet and a nice cup of coffee, it's just such a wonderful experience that I can't bring myself to mind said shortcomings. So if any of you are looking for a better way, there you are.

Otherwise, please do excuse the digression -- I actually do have some news to share. Huge news... I think. See, yesterday evening, I was scrolling through my 300-odd feeds, and I came upon this post on the Orbit Books blog, wherein the following was said:

"Orbit US has signed for four new novels with Joe Abercrombie. The first will be a standalone and then a trilogy -- all set in the same world as The First Law trilogy."

We knew, of course, that Abercrombie was working on another standalone fantasy novel to follow The Heroes with, set in the same shared world as all his works to date, but as for afters? I know I didn't have a clue. Did you?

We all adore Joe Abercrombie, right? By the dead, we certainly should.

So is this huge news...

...or is it just news to me?

Giving The Game Away | Songs Of Cats and Croats

Hey, remember a couple of weeks ago, we had a grand old giveaway?

Well, I'd meant to announce the winner sooner -- in fact I did the random draw last weekend, then I saw three more entries flashing away in my inbox, and it felt a little mean of me to cut the cord so arbitrarily. But they've been trickling in since, too - a couple a day all through the week - and this can't go on forever. So.


The time has finally come to announce our winners.

First, our three runners-up, each of whom will receive a gorgeous Songs of the Earth bookmark just as soon as I can talk the post office camels to heading out your way. They are:

• from Ohio, Andy Campbell
• from Manchester, Daniel Franklin
• from Croatia, Tomislav Tkalec

But our grand prizewinner, who gets a bookmark AND a signed and inscribed copy of Songs of the Earth direct from Elspeth herself, is...


*dramatic pause*


Simon Holland, who hails from Cheshire, where all cats are happy. As well Simon should be. :D


I'll have email to all our winners in a moment to collect address and inscriptions. Well done, everyone!

Book Review | The Mall by S. L. Grey

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Dan works at a bookstore in a deadly dull shopping mall where nothing ever happens. He's an angsty emo-kid who sells mid-list books to mid-list people for the minimum wage. He hates his job.


Rhoda has dragged her babysitting charge to the mall so she can meet her dealer and score some coke. Now the kid's run off, and she has two hours to find him. She hates her life.


Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the neon-lit corridors behind the mall, disturbing text messages lure them into the bowels of the building, where old mannequins are stored in grave-like piles and raw sewage drips off the ceiling. The only escape is down, and before long Dan and Rhoda are trapped in a service lift listening to head-splitting musak. Worst of all, the lift's not stopping at the bottom floor...

***

I was a wee tearaway, once upon a time. Weren't we all?


Me, I'd strategically steal away from school to waste away my days in and around the local shopping centre, with all my mallrat friends. Me and mine... we would prop up Burger Kings and internet cafes for hours on end, nursing a couple of Cokes with six straws in each, or spend entire afternoons gravitating from one shopfront to the next, and the next after that.


In retrospect - hell, I knew it then - we were probably something of an annoyance, so it was not uncommon for security guards to move us along, thinking out of sight, out of mind or some such rubbish. From time to time we'd be thrown out of the shopping centre entirely - whereupon, wickedly, we would "accidentally" blockade the entrance... so that didn't happen too much. But there was this one guard in particular who - for good reason, I don't doubt - kind of had it in for us. No doubt we'd chanced our luck with him too often as was, so on this occasion he marched us all to the security office proper, the better to bestow upon us the sort of telling off he believed we needed away from prying ears.


That's a walk of shame I've never forgotten, not because anything untoward happened that day - turned out we were just getting another lecture - but because the security office was secreted somewhere above or below the aisles I thought I knew like the back of my hand, through a network of corridors and stairways impossibly vast and labyrinthine to boot. The idea (far less the fact) that there was this whole other mall, behind and between and beneath the shopfronts I'd been haunting my whole adolescent life... it was deeply unnerving knowledge. I don't set foot in a shopping centre these days without wondering about its hidden darker half.


Evidently, S. L. Grey and I share a certain terror, for The Mall is a deeply discomfiting descent into the bowels of just such a nightmare, by way of broken mannequins, horrifying hobos and psycho spam on jelly cellphones. It is too a biting satire of consumer culture, capitalism and advertising which gives customer service a whole new meaning, and bestows upon the act and the art of shopping the very element of insidiousness I've always suspected it had. "Fucking malls," one of our protagonists puts it, "with their mirrors on every available surface; beautiful girls beautifully dressed telling me with every sexy spike-heeled step that I have no chance." (p.74)


Alternating between chapters in the company of Rhoda, a British runaway with a drug habit and an appetite for self-destruction, and Daniel, a miserable bookstore employee who still lives with his mum, The Mall is ragged-sharp and cynical - a short, smart horror novel which begins and ends with such unbridled energy as to ensnare as if by accident:

"My first instinct is to grab his hand, snap back his index finger, and floor the fucker. Instead I keep absolutely immobile, sucking in deep jags of oxygen to try and still my heart. It's jack-hammering like it does when I've taken too much MDMA, but it's vital I get my shit together and calm the fuck down." (p.3)

Which Rhoda does... eventually. But only after she's taken Dan hostage at knifepoint, bullied him into helping her find the boy she was meant to be watching who went missing while she was scoring some coke. It makes perfect sense when you think on it: the boy - whose name our expat is so strung out she can't recall - looks to have wandered off into the nether regions of the mall, and Rhoda needs Dan to get her through the security doors. See?


What they find in the abandoned levels beneath the shopping centre, however - what unspeakable horrors await the pair in this black hole full of FUBAR - will cost the both of them dearly. Rhoda is suddenly "as serious as someone who's fucked up her life for five hundred rands' worth of blow can get," (p.81) and she'll need to be, to survive.


Rhoda and Dan play off one another terrifically. Though their relationship is initially adversarial - what with the hostage-taking and all - they quickly realise they will have to work together to stand a chance of escaping this squalid sub-urban nightmare. As their friendship deepens, out of necessity at first, then by way of an attraction that seemed to me a touch too easy, there remains always an edge to their dialogue, a barb to their every encounter which keeps one's blood up when from time to time the awfulness of the Other mall takes a back seat.


It rarely does. The Mall is on from word one, and the excruciating tension Grey so cannily establishes only down-shifts when our unlikely pair must take stock. Mostly they're running. Mostly they've good reason to be running, for "this place, this world, this reality - whatever the fuck it is - is twisted. Seriously twisted. Sick." (p.147)


You can reduce the vast majority of horror novels to one of a few formulae: there's the end of the world, of course... there are the ghost stories, hauntings of objects of all sorts... there are the vampires and the zombies and the werewolves. And that's pretty much it. The Mall fits into no such narrative mold. If it reminded me of any one thing, I'd have to say the Silent Hill video games, except here the hill is the fucked-up underbelly of a shopping centre, and I'll tell you now: it's anything but silent. Crazed, sure... cacophonous, absolutely. But never quiet, except perhaps in the ominous silence heralding the arrival of yet another new nightmare.


The Mall is the best horror novel I've read in 2011, not least because it's so original. Don't be dissuaded by the dime-a-dozen premise; from the tragicomedy of errors set-up on out, S. L. Grey - the pseudonym of South African authors Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg - really brings it. Thanks to pitch-perfect pacing, a couple of characters you can really get behind in Dan and Rhoda, and an impressive repertoire of cruel and unusual sure to wipe the smile right off your face, The Mall is a lunatic thrill ride through a hellish tableau from which all your worst fears will burst, writhing like maggots on a hunk of week-old, mechanically recovered meat.


Muzak to my ears, in short.

***

The Mall

by S. L. Grey

UK Publication: June 2011, Corvus


Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Meme, Myself and I | Which Alien Are You?

io9 had a neat little game up on the front page yesterday: some cod-psychology about what your favourite Alien film says about you. Whatever my misgivings about the untouchable mentality they have over there, I have io9 and a bunch of other aggregators' RSS feeds ticking away at the top of my browser window, and if I haven't waxed verbose over my undying love for (most of) the franchise on the blog before, well...  let's take it as said, shall we?

To make a needless long story moderately less long, when I saw this particular article pop up before bedtime last night, I couldn't not click it. And would you credit it, I came away baffled at the accuracy - at least in my case - of this simple little meme. I'd recommend you head on over to io9 now and see how your favourite Alien film reflects your outlook on life.

As for me?

Well, I have no shame admitting it - I've seen the error of my ways since, after all - but coming up, far and away my pick of the four core movies was Alien 3. That means, and I quote:

"You believe in the cult of nothingness. Just like there is no escape from the Xenomorphs for the prisoner monks, there is no escape for you either. The world is a bleak place. Love, family, hope, it's all just waiting to be thrown into the fire. What is the use in taming the love from a feral child or rescuing potential mate Hicks, when life will just murder them while you sleep? You are not a glass-is-half-empty kind of person. You are a half-a-Lance-Henriksen kind of person. Sure, every once in a while there's time for a bald-headed romp with another doomed inmate (inmate of life, that is) but not even a wise, bespectacled black Jesus can save you. In the end, we're all just meat for the festering monster asleep in our guts."

I've had reason to reconsider my taste in Alien films in the aeons since attaching myself to David Fincher's unfortunately botched debut like a barnacle to a naked sailor. Every so often I'll pop the ol' Quadrilogy into the DVD player and let rip, and these days, I'm an Alien man all the way - that is to say, a devotee of the one and the only, the original Alien, which I think the best by at least a light year.

And that says what, exactly, about The Speculative Scotsman?

"If the you're a fan of the first Alien, you respond to the cold, dark world of the unknown. It drives you like the Nostromo, plowing through the big black of space. You like your horror Paxton-free, there's no time for humor when people are dying. You also may have a few trust issues, as you should. Is this just a regular dinner, or will this meal end with one of your mates strewn across the table? Thankfully this also makes you a bit of a survivor. When the end-of-the-world is nigh, you're the best equipped to make the big decisions. Who's going up in the air-shaft to find out what's making all that racket? Not you. A cat lover, you have a calm that propels every decision, even in the face of unthinkable madness."

Well I'll be...

Damn and blast it - it's all true! Right down to the cat thing, and the subsequent unthinkable madness. I didn't realise I made for quite such easy reading.

But off with you all to Meredith Woerner's article, to see which Alien archetype you are. And please, do feel free to share your results - perhaps with a word or two as to their accuracy (or not) - either in the comments, or else on your own blog. I mean, if you can think of a better way to get to know people on the internet, you're either a filthy fibber, or a far smarter human than I.

###

Source: io9

Book Review | Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Charlie Hardie, an ex-cop still reeling from the revenge killing of his former partner's entire family, fears one thing above all else: that he'll suffer the same fate.

Languishing in self-imposed exile, Hardie has become a glorified house sitter. His latest gig comes replete with an illegally squatting B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, it's the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.

It's nothing personal-the girl just happens to be the next name on their list. For Hardie, though, it's intensely personal. He's not about to let more innocent people die. Not on his watch.

***

Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski is only the second novel to come from the garage-full of talent driving Mulholland Books, but already the imprint - sprung fully-formed from the Hodder & Stoughton stables - has established for itself, and consumers too, a identity all its own: of quality, high-octane crime thrillers from American writers. Only last month, Marcia Clark set the bar sky-high with Guilt by Association, a pulse-pounding legal procedural, but with a leap, a bound, and a lizard man called Charlie Hardie, Fun and Games raises the standard still higher.


Hardie is an accidental hero in every sense of the phrase. A policeman until some unspeakable crisis stole away his family, and his faith in the institution of law and order, he's taken to serial house-sitting in the three years since: watching over luxury condos while they're otherwise unoccupied for bourbon money and not much more. When he's not mainlining old movies one after the other after the other, he whiles away the time before, during, and after assignments drinking and navel-gazing - but however out of shape Hardie may be, he's still got some of the old officer in his DNA. To wit:

"Like most Philly cops, Charlie had taser training. And if you have Taser training, you have to ride the lightning at least one. It's a rule. Just so you know firsthand what you're dishing out.

"Hardie's first time became a kind of legend in law enforcement circles. Because just a few seconds after the training officer put the contact pads on Hardie's back and gave him a fifty-thousand-volt kiss and started to explain the effects of the shock, Hardie coughed and began to stand up." (pp.101-102)

Charlie Hardie has been through the ringer in his time, but whether through luck or resilience or sheer, unadulterated stubbornness, he just keeps on keeping on. "Unkillable Chuck," (p.118) as a local reporter dubs him, had "tried his best and lost - just like Rocky. That didn't mean he didn't give it his all. And that was something to be commended." (ibid) And something that comes in hella handy when our misbegotten drifter stumbles into the scene of a crime... in progress. For in the abode of his latest client, away from it all on the hard-to-find Alta Brea Drive, Hardie finds fallen starlet Lane Madden.

Shellshocked and strung out on a speedball, Lane has taken refuge in this seemingly secure apartment after narrowly escaping a car crash contrived by The Accident Men, a company of assassins who treat each kill as if it were a Hollywood production, tailor-making from their subtle slayings narratives fit for the tabloids. Lane was supposed to have taken a nose-dive into the treacherous Decker Canyon, but by the skin of her teeth she managed to get away to the house on Alta Brea Drive, where she and Hardie will have to survive the home invasion from hell.

And for once, the marketing is on the money, because Fun and Games is exactly that: fun and games. Short at less than 300 pages and sweet, if by sweet we agree to mean action-packed, thrilling - damn near addictive, even - this first escapade in Charlie Hardie's winningly witless company makes for an exciting and singularly satisfying evening's reading.

So much so that I begin to think all authors should do a run on Deadpool or Punisher before they publish books, because Swierczynski, with a wealth of such experience behind him, brings certain essential lessons of sequential art to the table in Fun and Games. Namely a sense of what is strictly necessary, and the brutal kill-your-children willingness to strip away all else; and a notion of pace and flow, of high beats and low, that has this first of three Charlie Hardie novels pumped up from the word go, and never less than high-octane thereafter.

Of course, with comic book highs come comic book lows, and alas, there is in Fun and Games something of a dearth of characterisation - a common problem in the medium aforementioned, though assuredly not an inherent one. In any event, Swierczynski spends too long dishing out precious tidbits about who Charlie Hardie is and what terrible thing happened three years ago to make him this hopeless semblance of man; piecemeal reveals where an actual character arc could and should be. The only other issues I would raise with regards to Fun and Games are a couple of awkward narrative contrivances, such as the inability of Chuck and Lane to call for help, whether by hook (no landline and a power cut which puts paid to the internet) or by crook (terrible cell reception means mobile phones also so happen to be out of the question).

But contrivances along those lines are par for the course; let's not be pedantic about them. Anyway, the pace of Swierczynski's first novel for Mullholland Books is such that there's not often the opportunity to stop and wonder about such nominal things. And lest we forget, this is only the first of three misadventures starring house-sitter come accidental hero Charlie Hardie, the second of which - Hell and Gone, due out in October - is sure to answer many of the questions Fun and Games leaves one with. Fun and Games is in every other respect a mile-a-minute crime thriller - fearless, funny and utterly accessible - fit to leave you breathless by its last, explosive moments.

***

Fun and Games

by Duane Swierczynski

UK and US Publication: June 2010, Mulholland Books


Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

 

Books Received | The BoSS for 12/06/11

Met the old BoSS? Well, let me introduce you to the new BoSS - same as the old BoSS, more or less... except less is more. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

All caught up? Good. Let's get on with it, then.

Superheroes, super-volcanoes, super-Scots and super zombie bloggers make for an altogether super week of books received.

***

Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 21/07/11

by Bantam Press

Review Priority

5 (A Sure Thing)

The Blurb: What if Cleopatra didn’t die in 30 BC alongside her beloved Mark Antony? What if she couldn’t die? What if she became immortal? Queen of Kings is the first instalment in an epic, epoch-spanning story of one woman’s clash with the Roman Empire and the gods of Egypt in a quest to save everything she holds dear.

As Octavian Caesar (later Augustus) and his legions march into Alexandria, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, summons Sekhmet, the goddess of Death and Destruction, in a desperate attempt to resurrect her husband, who has died by his own hand, and save her kingdom. But this deity demands something in return: Cleopatra's soul. Against her will, Egypt's queen becomes a blood-craving, shape-shifting immortal: a not-quite-human manifestation of a goddess who seeks to destroy the world. Battling to preserve something of her humanity, Cleopatra pursues Octavian back to Rome - she desires revenge, she yearns for her children - and she craves blood...

It is a dangerous journey she must make. She will confront witches, mythic monsters, the gods of ancient Greece and Rome, and her own, warring nature. She will kill but she will also find mercy. She will raise an extraordinary army to fight her enemies, and she will see her beloved Antony again. But to save him from the endless torment of Hades, she must make a devastating sacrifice.

A Scotsman's Thoughts: I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself - BoSS or no BoSS, I've started in on Queen of Kings already. A three-headed hybrid of historical fiction, dark fantasy and romance, it's not my usual sort of novel at all. So why couldn't I resist it?

Well, Neil Gaiman is why - mostly. As I understand it, he rarely blurbs a book, so whenever he does, I sit up to take note.

...also, the pretty lady on the front cover was looking at me.

But let's say Neil Gaiman was the reason for the season and leave it at that. :)

Deadline

by Mira Grant

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 02/06/11

by Orbit

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organisation he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has. But when a researcher from the Centre for Disease Control fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun's relieved to find a new purpose in life. Because this researcher comes bearing news: the monster who attacked them may be destroyed, but the conspiracy is far from dead. Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.

A Scotsman's Thoughts: For a book about bloggers and zombies on the campaign trail, Feed made for damned compelling and very relevant reading - to my and much of the community's surprise, it seems. In fact so much so that there was something of an outcry from those readers who had overlooked it based on appearances when Feed was nominated for a series of awards.

So... what? All genres are equal, except some genres are more equal than others, is it?

But I digress. I had a whale of a time with Feed in any event - my review went up just a few days ago - and without giving too much away, the shocking events of its last chapters left me wondering how the story could possibly go on. From the sounds of Deadline's blurb, much changed is how. I can hardly wait to see how it all pans out, so next time there's a nice day - where did all the nice days go, anyway? - this is the book I'm taking out into the garden with me.

After the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

Vital Statistics

Published in the US

on 12/04/11

by Tor

Review Priority

3 (We'll See)

The Blurb: Can an accountant defeat a supervillain? Celia West, only daughter of the heroic leaders of the superpowered Olympiad, has spent the past few years estranged from her parents and their high-powered lifestyle. She’s had enough of masks and heroics, and wants only to live her own quiet life out from under the shadow of West Plaza and her rich and famous parents.

Then she is called into her boss’ office and told that as the city’s top forensic accountant, Celia is the best chance the prosecution has to catch notorious supervillain the Destructor for tax fraud. In the course of the trial, Celia’s troubled past comes to light and family secrets are revealed as the rift between Celia and her parents grows deeper. Cut off from friends and family, Celia must come to terms with the fact that she might just be Commerce City’s only hope.

This all-new and moving story of love, family, and sacrifice is an homage to Golden Age comics that no fan will want to miss.

A Scotsman's Thoughts: If the weather holds for long enough, After the Golden Age is the next novel I'll be sharing a sun-chair with, after Deadline. For various reasons I opted not to get involved in the Kitty Norville novels, but I'd certainly like to see if Carrie Vaughn's work is to my tastes, so this standalone could be the ideal opportunity for me to wet the ol' whistle.

That said, though I don't mean to let them sway me, the comments on Amazon page - including such gems as "serviceable," "mediocre" and "not so incredible" -  don't bode terribly well for After the Golden Age.

But hey, it has superheroes! What could possibly go wrong? :P

The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

Vital Statistics

Published in the UK

on 05/05/11

by Hamish Hamilton

Review Priority

4 (Pretty Bloody Likely)

The Blurb: Enter the world of Evie Steppman, born into the dying days of the British Empire in Nigeria. It’s loud and cacophonous. Why? Because Evie can hear things no one else can. Although she’s too young to understand all the sounds she takes in, she hoards them in a vast internal sonic archive.

Today, alone in an attic in Scotland, Evie’s powers of hearing are starting to fade, and she must write her story before it disintegrates into a meaningless din. But the attic itself is not as quiet as she hoped. The scratching of mice, the hum of traffic, the tic-toc of a pocket watch and countless other sounds merge with the noises of Evie’s past: her time in the womb, her childhood in Nigeria, her travels across America with her lover...

A Scotsman's Thoughts: Warning! Scottish novel alert! Warning! Scottish novel alert!

Though you know, The Echo Chamber sounds superb irrespective of its country of origin. Perhaps deeply literary fiction such as this Luke Williams makes for an... an odd counterpoint to the likes of Deadline and Queen of Kings, but what can I say? I don't discriminate. I imagine The Echo Chamber will be a challenging read; with a little luck, it'll be rewarding in equal measure. Fingers crossed for that.

All the Lives He Led

by Frederik Pohl

Vital Statistics

Published in the US

on 12/04/11

by Tor

Review Priority

3 (We'll See)

The Blurb: When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. it gave so little warning that Pompeiians were caught unawares, and many bodies were preserved in volcanic ash. Two thousand years later, in 2079, Pompeii is a popular theme park eagerly anticipating Il Giubeleo, the Jubilee celebration of the great anniversary. But Vesuvius is still capable of erupting, and even more threatening are terrorists who want to use the occasion to draw attention to their cause by creating a huge disaster. As the fateful day draws near, people from all over the world - workers, tourists, terrorists - caught in the shadow of the volcano will grapple with upheaval both natural and political.

A Scotsman's Thoughts: You might recall from the other week that I really rather enjoyed Man Plus. Sure, it was silly Mars SF, and I don't know that it entirely deserves its status as a classic, but if profundity was beyond its reach, fun certainly was not, and we need be careful, I think - as per my digression on Deadline earlier - not to undervalue fun.

However, the muted response with which All the Lives He Led has met leaves me a little dubious about the latest Frederik Pohl. At the very least it'll be interesting, after reading Man Plus and this in such quick succession, to see how Pohl has - or has not - grown as an author in the space of--- what? Nearly 40 years?

***

Now then. Back to vampire Cleopatra!

Thereafter, well... it all depends, curiously enough, on the weather. See, if the sun cares to put his hat on, Deadline will be next up, but if the skies stay grey, I'm thinking to spend some quality time with The Echo Chamber.

How about you guys? Do you ever find your reading patterns influenced by Mother Nature and her damned contrary ways?