Fantasybookspot - Post-Apocalyptic

Eternal Vigilance: From Deep Within the Earth

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:38:19 -0400

We awaken with Tynan Llywelyn from a hundred year's Sleep. Tynan is no Rip Van Winkle, however, but a powerful vampire who is not eager to return to the vampire community who shunned him. The world that greets him is vastly different than what he left behind. Society has crumbled and humanity is being controlled by a domineering techno-government called the Tyst. A small group of rebels, the Phuree, are fighting back as best they can. The Phuree have taken a radical step in allying themselves with the Predators who feed off them - the vampires. Tynan finds himself embroiled in a power struggle between vampire and human players alike.

I knew I was in for an incredible read when I became captivated by the Acknowledgments page. Ms. Faust's talents as a wordsmith far surpass anything I have read in some time. Her depiction of vampires is a delicious exquisiteness that at times had me running my tongue over my teeth to insure fangs had not appeared! She creates these beings with a deft hand, stitching common myths together with her singularly modern twist, providing a seamless and completely believable existence.

Next to such thoroughly real characters, the Tyst and Phuree pale by comparison. The Tyst are nameless and faceless; although characters are mentioned we never really get to know them. These are the Big Bad Guys, yet they seem completely untouchable and almost nonexistent. The Phuree are also a bit out of reach. Teirnan, their leader, and his sister Khanna are stereotypical and rather predictable. They appear small and ineffective somehow. This book is the first in a series, however, so perhaps the next installment will focus more on the other characters. If Faust can bring them to reality as she has her vampires, this will be a knockdown-dragout favorite!

The overall sensation of the story is very focused on Tynan, his tough and (unusual for the Living Dead) his emotions. In fact, Tynan's emotions are a pivotal point of the entire storyline. Faust captured his moral writhing quite well. He is struggling with a moral crisis, one that led him to abandon his Dark Brethren and sink into Eternal Sleep. But his despair only kept him for one hundred years, not forever. With prose the texture of deep velvet, Faust draws us down to the depths of a story as old as fear, as dark as sin, and as deep as Satan's heart. The lines between friend and foe are re-drawn. She captures desperate obsession and hunger, outlining each with the passion for existence that burns in all beings.

In spite of a lack of character development in some areas, I was very impressed with Gabrielle Faust and Eternal Vigilance. I eagerly devoured the book from cover to cover in one sitting and felt bereft when I was finished. This is not an airy-fairy, "rescue the damsel"-type of story. Gritty and dark, readers will begin to understand the "un"life of a vampire.

The Sunrise Lands

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:44:53 -0500

Stirling is the author of the Nantucket series and Emberverse series of books that have now become collectively known as the Novels of the Change. Not having read those previous six books, I can only surmise, based on my reading of The Sunrise Lands, that “The Change” occurred in our world sometime around 1998 which somehow took away electrical power and nearly all other technology effectively negating the advances of the last two hundred or so years.

The Sunrise Lands begins twenty two years after the Change during which a generation of children have been born and raised, and are completely adapted to this new way of survival, of life. The United States is divided into several different political factions, each self-governed and quite unique. Most conspicuously, there is the Clan MacKenzie that harkens back to the ways of old Gaelic culture with their pagan religion, plaid kilts, and affected brogues. The Portland Protective Association, a society emulating seventeenth century England, a former Army officer now in command of his own sizeable military force seeking to reunite the United States and known as Mr. President, and the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religious cult with aims of uniting the country under the rule of their own Prophet.

A stranger arrives at Clan McKenzie in his search for the Sword of the Lady that he must bring back to Nantucket, a place of some unusual happenings. This sword turns out to actually be Rudi, the son of the clan's High Priestess. With a few trusted friend, Rudi sets off from Oregon to cross the country with this man, Ingolf Vogeleer.

One of Ingolf’s first impressions of Clan McKenzie:

“The towers along the wall had pointed conical roofs sheathed in green copper and shaped like a witch’s hat, which was appropriate if the wilder rumors he’d heard were true. There were two hills showing above the ramparts, off west to the other side of the town. One was crowned by a huge circular building without walls, just pillars supporting a roof, he could see the outline of it because a great bonfire blazed there, and even at this distance he could catch a hint of eerie music and dancing figures. He crossed himself by conditioned reflex at the sight, but without real fear--he’d never been excessively pious, even before he became a wandering freelance.

Maybe the rumors are true, but nobody said they set on visitors here.”

From here, the novel explores the different societies that have emerged since the Change. A great deal of attention is given to how people have adapted to living without power, how they raise and gather food, how they arm and defend themselves, the cultural traditions and religions they observe. Much of the story telling is dedicated to describing the military powers and political strategies employed. However, my attention tended to wander during these parts as they read more like reference material. Stirling has quite the eye for detail, be it in the description of a late supper or the maneuvers of soldiers on the battlefield. But yet again, I often found these descriptive passages interrupted the flow of the story, and I tended to skim through these paragraphs to get back to the story.

Rudi’s half-sisters introducing themselves to General Thurston, also known as the President:

The twins smiled sweetly, and Ritva spoke before he could ask: “And we’re the cuckoos who live in the wood and think they’re elves,” she said politely. “Though really that’s just a scurrilous rumor and a narrow, bigoted stereotype.”

The Sunrise Lands starts off in an exciting flurry of mystery and action, then shifts down to a more leisurely pace as the group travels across the country. At the end, the status quo is once again shaken up, and just as my interest has been reignited, I’m left hanging without any resolution. It would seem that The Sunrise Lands is meant more as a stepping stone to bridge the gap between the books of the Nantucket and Emberverse series and the planned novels for the Change series.

Host

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:24:56 -0500

Thorn is a neomage, a non-human descended from the unfortunate infants conceived before the first plague of the End Times destroyed life on Earth as we know it. These infants developed abilities to manipulate energies left from creation. They are believed to be soulless beings, less than human Only able to reproduce when aroused to mage heat - and this only happens in the presence of angelic beings - the mages are scorned by humans and live isolated in enclaves.

In this third installment of the story, Thorn has found a home in a small mountain village and is accepted by the humans around her. Her semblance of balance is rudely cast aside, however, when a mage shows up in her village for no reason. Apparently, the demon dragon she assisted in locking in metaphoric chains has almost broken free. At this point the story rockets out of control, demons and angels popping in out of nowhere and Thorn doing her best to protect the humans in her care.

The book culminates in a mighty battle that exposes the strengths and weaknesses of all involved. Because it is written in first-person, the reader sees inside the head of the main character. Her fears, motivations, all laid out for us as readers to judge. Faith Hunter does something with her characters I always appreciate - they are fallible and scarred by their experiences.

I found this book intriguing, a completely different blending of post-apocalypse and fantasy. While a little dark, I loved the juxtaposition of mage magic and angelic magic with a little human conspiracy theory thrown in (some humans believe the angels are really aliens bent on total domination of Earth). This may sound complicated, but at its heart Host is all about the battle between good and evil fought by the ones caught in the middle. Even though I know how this story ends, I will look up Seraphs and Bloodring (the first two books) to know more about Thorn and her angelic and human friends.

Spaceman Blues: A Love Story

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:54:40 -0400

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults.

As far as I can remember the science-fiction/fantasy genre hasn't ever really had a novel written in this style before. A jazzy, beat-like rush of words that wash over you and result in a total immersion of the environment. This bop prosody style is also very musical. It attains its own rhythmic quality with chord progressions, riffs and multiple layers that may not reveal themselves upon first listening errrrr reading. Every single page is filled with exuberant and intense prose that leaves you breathless.

The news spreads in a widening circle of shock, people are talking about it up and down the street, voices crackle across the air and over wires. He's gone, he's gone, it goes in letters, in words flashing across flickering screens, it is written by planes in the sky. It spreads from the city and moves to the end of Long Island, into New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate, across New England; it moves across the continent over the miles of thrashing grain, the ragged heights of the Rockies, down into the deserts and dense forests and to the opposite shore, where men hear it on shortwave radios at the place where the Mexican border falls into the Pacific Ocean, and the waves roll in gigantic and break against the rocks and sand with a force that ensures compliance. It passes along the piers of Eastern Europe, syllables slipped between knife points and rusting rifles; on the shores of Angola they wail at the ocean, beat their feet into the sand, turn back toward crumbling cities. The news burns bodies in the Bronx, things are cast adrift in the deep water of the East River, people depart into the sky, there are meetings in drainage systems, encoded signals broadcast in the flight patterns of birds, machines stir, motors grind into action at frequencies only subterranean people can feel. And people begin to congregate in the places that Manuel loved. They want to know what happened, they want to understand, but being the kind of people they are, all that wanting turns into partying. In Astoria, Egypt Cafe is jammed to the ceiling, people walk over other people to get inside, they spill out onto the street in front of the laundromat, they raid the delis and liquor stores and close down Steinway, they make a party so big that the police see it and just throw up their hands, set up roadblocks, join in when they get off duty. At the Maritime Lounge in Red Hook, some Congolese soukous band appears out of nowhere and plays for two days straight, they have to coat their fingers with glue in between numbers to keep the skin on, and the crowd crashes in and chokes on seven different kinds of smoke and laughter, they pour beer and whiskey all over each other and dance to break floorboards. The place runs out of alcohol after eighteen hours but people keep bringing in more, they toast Manuel again and again, wish to God you were still here. They end up in the water of the harbor, holding their drinks high and setting them on fire until the end of the second day rolls by and they go to sleep in the street, they crawl home in a blind drag. They pass out in subway cars, they wake up feeling like their brains are cut in half. They go home in pairs and wake up naked with each other, their furniture upended, dishes broken, sheets ripped into long shreds, clothes plastered somehow to the ceiling.**

Mixed up into this Cosmic Slop is a story that manages at times to bring about both the ordinary and the fantastic. Wendell, as our gay Orpheus who must descend into the depths and transform himself to save the man he loves, is indicative of this dichotomy. The transformation of his ordinary being into the superhero Captain Spaceman is total and complete. Its a palpable and very real change but at the same time it really is just a strength training regiment, a make-over & rampant rumors. But to summarize it like this may give off the impression that it is mundane and maybe even boring. That's not the case though and Slattery manages the high-wire act of making us believe that he really is a superhero.

The news flies from the tugboat, streaks out across the cables, on the rocking rafts, in the oily air. They are talking about it on the docks, Darktown Market throngs with a stew of information and gossip; it is the topic of bars and the conversation around portable generators, the speech of middleman waiting for shipments. The smugglers won't talk about anything else. The rumors say the Spaceman is bionic, that he is made of titanium; they say that he has extra appendages hidden under his clothing, his glasses conceal mechanical eyes that allow him to see infrared light and throw out ropes of electricity. How could they not, they say. How could he beat the Horsemen otherwise? This is the only fact about Captain Spaceman that the storytellers of Darktown do not change, because it is so foolhardy, so brave and stupid: Captain Spaceman is looking for for the Four Horsemen, to challenge and best them in single combat.**

Another thing that's interesting about these characters is how much we get to know about them. The narrative plays it fast and loose with time and space and we are assaulted with all of the thoughts, actions, histories and movements of every single character. It makes for an intense broad experience that revels in and proudly displays the, at times, near-forgotten immigrant heritage of America.

A century ago, the shores of Manhattan thronged with ships, the piers bloated with sailors and wares and the dreams of women and dead boys, and the freight rails ran in droves down the west side of the island, bringing in goods, taking out goods; the tracks were lines of food and wealth that, during the Depression, grew thick with shantytowns and roving workers trying to grab a piece. Soon the air reeked of feces and desire, hunger strong enough to break horses. The landed complained; the authorities tried spreading dissent in the camps, they tried to bust the squatters out of there, but they would not go. At last, the government built stone shells around the tracks and buried the shantytown in piles of earth, rock outcroppings, planted it over with grass and trees, lines it with walkways and stone balconies, and called it Riverside Park. But the trains still ran, the food and wealth was still there, so people still went to live in that dark shelter under the gardens, cobblestones, and dog runs, they lined the sides of the tunnels with houses first of cardboard and pressed Styrofoam, then bricks and plaster. They began to burrow deeper. They dug into the soil that had displaced their grandfathers, they broke boulders, they drilled into bedrock. At night they dynamited, hallowed out great spaces, and began to move in there, by the hundreds, by the thousands. The trains stopped, the entrance was boarded up, but by then there were hundreds of other entrances; the people had already torched holes out of the ceiling of drainage pipes, smashed them out of the basements of buildings and the back ends of alleys, installed hatches under the benches in the parks, put hinges on manholes. There were hundreds of ways down in the walls of subway tunnels, and the people kept coming. They stole construction equipment and jackhammered deeper, they kept going until they hit the water table and the floor flooded; then they brought in boats, rafts, anything that would float, hung their dwellings from the ceiling by steel cables, connected it all with ladders and chains. They built a civilization down there and they called it Darktown.**

Oh yeah, and did I mention the alien invasion, the destruction of NYC, the secret cults and societies, the metaphysical police detectives, the sidekick, the master who teaches our hero how to fight and an Australian pop band from the 80's (who had one hit in China called 'Don't Try to Box (A Kangaroo)?') turned smugglers? All of these, and more, are here.

Spaceman Blues is a novel that begs to not only be read out loud but demands to be performed, maybe at a slam if the poets of the Nuyorican Cafe collaborated on a novelization of Parliament songs and the soundtrack was played by Fishbone. If ever a novel left you with the mussed hair, quickie-in-the-elevator-between-floors feeling then this book is it.

--Brian Lindenmuth

A quick side note. While I do love the cover of the book I can't help but think there was a missed opportuinity in not having someone like Pedro Bell do an original piece instead. It would have been an inspired choice that would have fit the tone of the book beautifully. Just an observation and didnt affect how I felt about the book.

**Yes, I realize that the excerpts are longer then the actualy review. Spaceman Blues has a distinct style and I think a review of this book is best served by extended excerpts, which I have tried to be generous in providing. Moreso then what I write they will probably help you decide if this book is for you.

Exodus

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:28:13 -0400

Exodus is book one of three of a Hellgate: London series based upon the video game of the same name. I generally stay away from discussing plot of the book in a review, but if one is going to read a book based upon a video game, they should know a bit about it. Unless of course they are reading it strictly because they are fans of the video game.

In 2020 London, the Knight’s Templar is alive and well, having staked out a large and advanced operation in the London Underground. Their duty is to train and be ready to defend the world from demons if and when they should attack the world. They have been vigilant for hundreds of years, and now they design and train with the most advanced weapons and armor that technology and magic can create.

The hero of our story is Simon Cross. After years of a life defined by training and living secretly in the London Underground, he decides that there is more to life than giving it over to some myths and legends that he no longer believed in. So he left London and went to South Africa, where he was a safari guide.

When news reports said that London had been overrun and decimated by aliens, Simon knew what had had happened and that the stories were real. He knew he had a duty to perform. He also knew that is father was still in London.

What would Simon find in London other than possibly a quick death?

I will reiterate that this book is based on a video game. I’m not familiar with this game but I imagine that it’s similar to Halo, Half-Life, Doom, Quake, or any of a host of first person shooters. The Knights are clad in high tech armor augmented with magic, and rely on weapons that are the same. There is much combat in this book. Scenes of combat, carnage, death, and destruction fill the book. There is nothing upbeat or cheery about the apocalyptic London landscape. In that regard it is a video game. If you don’t want a book that focuses this heavily on these elements this one won’t be for you.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some interesting characters. Simon became progressively more interesting as the story went on. There was also the development of a nemesis and possible villain for this series, as well as a couple mystery groups with unknown intentions in this world that is being newly re-written. I wouldn’t say there were any bombshell surprises but the story continued to build up and move along as the book progressed. Character concepts were not incredibly original but they worked well in this setting. I saw a lot of Raistlin in Warren, our rising villain, not that I minded. That said, the story was not dull. I did find myself rooting for the main character, and pitying the circumstances of the villain even as, through desperation and manipulation, he became increasingly more and more unlikable as the story went on.

I admit that I was dubious of reading a book based upon what looks like a first person shooter video game. The concept of demons overrunning London didn’t seem like a particularly appetizing plot to me. But the two main characters in the story were interesting enough to me that they overcame that. I think I would give the other two books that will be coming in this series a read to see how the saga ends. I’ll give this book a solid 7 on the ratings scale.

The Oblivion Society

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:47:39 -0400

Written by a self-proclaimed geek, this is one twisted adventure full of hilarity, gut-wrenching action and gore. In a world bombed to (you guessed it) oblivion, five very different people are all that’s left of a small community on the edge of Florida. In a madcap race of survival, Vivian Gray struggles to bring the other four together to reach what may be a sanctuary somewhere in the distance. Not only do they have to scavenge for daily necessities, but they suddenly realize that there are other life-forms that see them as possible prey.

With shades of old-fashioned horror movies popping up here and there, you never know what to expect when you turn the pages of this book. The blend of pop culture and locker room humor somehow work, especially when placed on top of the fast-paced race to stay alive. Marcus Alexander Hart has found his niche in science fiction.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the development of the characters in this book. I was, by turns, laughing out loud or groaning in disgust. In spite of the their less-than-admirable traits, or should I say very human traits, the characters somehow captured my attention. I didn’t always like what happened but I kept reading, which is one mark of good writing.

Aimed at adults, the story contains cursing, adult situations and the pre-requisite gore. Oblivion Society is a non-stop romp that will satisfy readers looking for something different than the average story. Be prepared and have no preconceptions, this is one wild ride.

Gaea, Beyond the Son

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:48:09 -0400

Doyle is an experienced space traveler who has agreed to do one more test run of the galactic space ship Gaea-02. Life on Earth has become unbearable with the shortage of drinkable water. The solution is to send the ship to a far off planet covered in water, a trip that will take ten years. Doyle has agreed to spend six months training the new pilot and then retire. But life didn’t work that way. When he wakes up from his three month hibernation he and the crew discover that a nuclear war has occurred on Earth. They have a deadly decision to make.

I was pumped to read this story. Here is a debut author creating a new world, with innovative technology and a different take on science fiction. His first chapters showcase deep emotions and relationships, not just “shoot’em up” space opera. I was a little disappointed. P.D. Gilson gives us a great back story and allows the reader to meet each one of his characters, explaining their viewpoints through the use of flashbacks into their past. However, the potential greatness of the book was lost due to very jerky transitions and a lack of depth to the plot.

This is a lightweight story. What you see is what you get, much like an episode on television. The bright, almost cartoonish characters never really take on a life of their own. Their actions are predictable and stereotypical. The cadence of the book did finally pick up towards the end and the author managed to surprise me with his wrap-up. But the promise of the first chapters was never delivered.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book. I liked meeting the characters and I hope there will be a sequel. It is a nice way to spend a couple of hours, but I doubt I will ever read it again.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 21:06:04 -0400

Resident Evil: Extinction by Keith R.A. DeCandido is the novelization of the movie by the same name, both based on the Resident Evil video game franchise. DeCandido is well known for his novelizations of many media intellectual properties including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Command & Conquer, and Star Trek to name a few. Extinction marks the third volume in the movie series that DeCandido has written. Extinction follows popular characters Jill, Alice, and Carlos along with a new hero, Claire Redfield. The group of heroes make an attempt to reach the perceived safety of Alaska all the while fighting off the zombie menace, ruthless survivors, and of course the Umbrella Corporation.

Extinction takes a new path in the Resident Evil world: beyond Raccoon City. The T-Virus has been spread across the globe and the world is in a state of apocalypse. Survivors are scattered in tiny pockets, each one trying to fight off the zombies created by the Umbrella Corp. This is quite a departure from the first two novelizations that take place mostly in or under Raccoon City. At the time of the story, thought it is not stated exactly when it takes place, it has been years since the massive outbreak that eventually spread across the map. Food, ammunition, and just about everything else have become extremely scarce fueling feuds and infighting among the survivors. Some of the most dangerous things in the world are no longer the zombies. Extinction has a definite post apocalyptic feel to it and somewhat reminds me of Mad Max meets Land of the Dead mix with a little Painkiller Jane for good measure.

DeCandido continues with the solid characters from the first two films. Extinction doesn’t expand too much on character development. Since this is the third book in the movie series, the lack of development of some of the core characters isn’t as big a deal as it might have been if this was a stand alone novel. Not to be worried, if you haven’t read the other books or don’t know much about the Resident Evil franchise, you should still find the characters pretty well defined. Sure, there are plenty of the clichéd character archetypes present but they are well done and don’t come off as cheesy. The obvious star character is Alice the superhuman badass, but Jill is also an interesting character who fills the “loner” role. The only issue I see with any of the characters is the dialect used for the African American characters is all the same (despite the fact that they are not all form the same area) and over the top to the point of nausea, at times.

DeCandido’s style isn’t one that is likely to wow you , but it is surprisingly clean, quick, and easy reading. This book read especially quick given the writing style and the hardcover print size. The action scenes are well done and are laced from one end of the novel to the other , always keeping me alert and into the book. I was also impressed with DeCandido’s effort in writing a novel more akin to other zombie fiction currently available. He managed to make zombies and a setting that would do Romero himself proud. If there is anything to complain about I’d have to say that Extinction lacks the spine chilling and thrilling twists that would make it a truly great story.

As a hardcore zombie fan I can recommend this book to those with a love for zombies where I could not recommend the other Resident Evil novels. As a fan of post apocalyptic fiction I can recommend this book to those who enjoy dying worlds. Extinction is not a great novel, but the end to end action and stand alone nature of the story makes this fun and entertaining read no matter how much exposure you have to Resident Evil and its T-Virus.

Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:02:58 -0400

Most of us have read a zombie story or two: some good, some bad, and others that made us wretch. We hear the word "zombie" and immediately think of the slow shambling dead of Romero's films. Many of these stories are clichéd and spin tired stories with typical plots, with typical characters, and with predictable endings. Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines by D.L Snell is not one of those stories.

Roses of Blood brings together two of the more popular monsters in horror fiction today: Zombies and vampires. The story follows Shade (the vampire queen and daughter of the slain king), General Frost who is cold as his name would suggest, and Ann a human blood doll left deranged by the horror she has experienced. Shade fights to honor her fathers Kingdom (The City of Roses), while Frost pushes for relocation to the island to avoid the zombie hordes. Ann simply wants to survive, be free, and save her breeding slave sister. As the vampires attempt to fight off the zombies and keep there blood cattle (the humans) alive- betrayal, tragedy, and all-out fight for survival takes place.

The zombies in roses of blood are not your typical Romero style shamblers; they are the result of Nazi experiments. Instead of a virus, which is the common mode in zombie fiction these days, Snell's zombies are powered by parasitic creatures that infect the brains of their hosts. The parasites, tentacled Cthulhu like creatures, have appendages growing from the head of the bodies they invade. The zombies learn and adapt unlike most zombies and that makes them scarier.

Snell's vampires are akin to the vampires in Underworld, with amped up libido, one hell of a mean streak, and downright evil nature. They can be killed by wood spike or sunlight, but regenerate from most other injuries. Largely, the vampires are cruel and cold beings.

Humans are cattle used solely for their blood. Some are taken for breeding purposes and have their limbs amputated and are given a lobotomy. The Torsos, as they are called, are then placed in harness swings where they are breed. The non-breeding humans are used for feeding and repeatedly bitten and drained, but not to the point of death. The humans seem to have been dominated to the point of despair and have become docile pets of the vampires.

The novel takes place in "The City of Roses" which has been complete overrun with zombies leaving their fortified building as the only isle of safety. Snell does a great job weaving description of the setting in without being blatant, but instead by implication. I truly felt the sense of dread and hopelessness that is the existence of few remaining humans and vampires.

Roses of Blood's plot certainly hooked me and the action kept me on my toes. Gun-fu is the order of the day for the pistol, M-16, and Uzi toting vampires and the action scenes are excellently described. The pulse pounding action starts early and powers all the way through the novel. Fear not, if you are looking for character exploration and development, Snell wedged some of that in there as well.

It's hard to find a true weak spot in the novel because Roses of Blood is great example of a subgenre novel. However, I do have an issue with Snell's style. He describes it as a more poetic style ,and I can appreciated what he was trying to do, but in the end it just came off as a little overly metaphoric. The overuse of metaphors at times makes reading difficult and keeping track of what's going on a chore. It's not all bad though because, even if overused, the metaphors did add vivid images throughout the novel. The other minor complaint I have is that gratuitous sex in the novel is a bit off putting. I'm not against sex scenes in novels if they serve a purpose, but I could not find enough purpose to warrant the amount of sex represented. Indeed, Roses of Blood comes out swinging with a savage right hook of the erotic. If the erotic scenes in the beginning don't destroy your interest you should find the rest of the book quite enjoyable. After the first few chapters the sex tones down and the story gets back on the rails. I will admit that someone more into erotica will likely enjoy the same scenes that I found to be gratuitous.

Roses of Blood is a great new addition to the zombie and vampire subgenres. It's clear that this book should be an adult's only type of book with its absolute bestial, brutal nature and vivid sexual content. I can recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an excellent horror novel where zombies and/or vampires are not used in their traditional roles. Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines is a hard charging action packed book where the cruel and unusual are the norm: I liked it!

Xombie Reanimated #3

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:14:24 -0400

What would you do if you found yourself among the legion of the damned and undead? Would you walk lackadaisically and munch on someone's pink thinking machine like it was popcorn or would you chill out to Mozart in your secret lair while simultaneously protecting humans from your kind? Personally I'm rather particular to brains, but that's just me; now Dirge on the other hand, well, protecting humans and listening to Mozart happen to be two of his favorite things to do!

Kitchen's closed, Donkey Kong!

Dirge is the brain child of writer James Farr, this being the first work of Farr's I have read I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which he demonstrates Dirge's wicked tongue. As the above quote demonstrates, Dirge finds the time to not only hack off a zombie gorilla's arm but to also toss out a quip at the same time! The downside to that same wit though is the transparency of it all. Dirge as a character is 2-D and nothing more, he only works on a single level as a sarcastic overprotective older brother of sorts. I can get a kick out of his quick one liners and enjoy the casual mean spiritedness with which he converses with others but he doesn't stray far from those two facets of thinking, feeling, or speaking.

Having said all that, on the flip side of things is that Xombie Reanimated #3 is a quickly paced issue that shoots straight out of the gates throwing exposition to the winds for the most part, making this book an easily read stand alone issue. Going along with that however, issue three also feels a bit like a point A to point B issue to me. There is not much said about what has happened in the previous issues and not much expressed about the future in this issue until the last two pages, which is good and bad as mentioned before.

The pace of the issue is really all thanks to Nate Lovett's crafty penciling. Lovett's style of pencils can be quickly brushed aside as cartoonish or simple but it is that simplicity that makes his technique so sleek. His inks are clean and crisp and work well to demonstrate the feelings of each individual character. For any fan of the first six issues of Image's The Walking Dead and Tony Moore's art therein you may appreciate Nate Lovett's artistry.

Having weighed and measured all sides of the equation the product of my thoughts on Xombie Reanimated #3 are thus: Dirge is a pretty funny character and some of the people he interacts with are interesting, nonetheless this issue is more aimed towards entertainment than any serious storytelling. Ultimately I found these things not to detract enough to make me stop enjoying reading it the entire time I sat there, which is enough to make me want to read the next issue.

~Jason Fahey

Getting to Know You

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:28:59 -0400

Getting to Know You is only David Marusek's second book, but he is already a veteran of the science fiction wars. Marusek's 2005 novel Counting Heads was the subject of the debut speculative fiction column "Across the Universe" in that bastion of mainstream fiction, The New York Times Book Review; the column both proclaimed Counting Heads to be among the reviewer's "favorite books [of 2005] in any category" and yet wondered, "why does contemporary science fiction have to be so geeky" that it becomes inaccessible to readers of mainstream literature? The question helped renew a battle, waged within the science fiction community since the New Wave movement of the 1960s, over how the "science" and "fiction" components of SF intersect. Some (such as Charles Stross) argued that SF should be more geeky, should focus its efforts on the tech-savvy readers of websites like Slashdot and Boing Boing; others (including John Scalzi) argued that what SF requires are more accessible entry points for readers less familiar with science. Sadly, the first point of the NYT column -- regarding the quality of Marusek's fiction -- was largely forgotten in the discussion. Given all this, I'm happy to say that Getting to Know You, a new collection of the author's short stories, in large part bridges the gaps that its predecessor highlighted: it's equally accessible to SF genrephiles and mainstream readers. The collection's defining characteristic is carefully constructed balance.

The "carefully constructed" qualifier is an important one; the balance Marusek achieves in Getting to Know You is based on variety and focus, not a dull sameness. Of the ten stories in the collection (initially published between 1993 and 2003, largely in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine), five strongly evoke distinct, singular emotions; these stories are quite separate and range from the present day to some unspecified far future. The remaining five stories occur in the same near-future universe as Counting Heads and are deeply multifaceted, ambiguous works. These stories present a future history of North America from 2033 to approximately 2600. Nanotech and biotech, along with cloning, artificial intelligence, wearable ubiquitous computing, human augmentation and environmental terrorism -- all are explored, along with their implications for politics, economics, lifestyles and more. It never gets overwhelming, though, because Marusek doles out progress slowly: each story focuses on just a few advances and implications. Moreover each story is grounded by one or two intensely human characters.

Indeed, the "Counting Heads stories" in Getting to Know You illustrate how Marusek's characterization naturally balances competing literary worldviews. Characterization in genre science fiction is largely predicated on ideas of intention, change and growth; mainstream literary fiction in contrast is often centered around the foolish consistency of people and the borders that constrain their growth. Getting to Know You offers up a third model of what is so often called "the human condition" (and rather vacuously left at that). Marusek uses technology to show that while the outward appearance of people may be consistent and monolithic, inside there is a swirling of ideas and beliefs tightly linked to current circumstances. That swirl is rarely glimpsed because once we are convinced of our beliefs, we rarely reconsider them. If we could examine a person's mind in frozen instants of time, however, we -- and they -- might be surprised at the variance of their thoughts from one moment to the next, and what the logical extensions of those thoughts might be.

So for example Vice President Saul Jaspersen, in "Cabbages and Kale or How We Downsized North America," begins to realize how little he knows himself when confronted by a "proxy" of himself -- a holographic copy of both physical features and inner mental state. When asked his opinion of a Procreation Ban that will limit the right to have children to select licensed citizens,

The president eyed the proxy. "Not so fast, Saul. Proxy, please explain why you'd vote for the ban."

"Gladly. As a Gaiaist, I believe that if we don't limit our specioeffluvium, and I mean quick, the Mother will push us aside and do it for us. And her methods, believe you me, are none too gentle."

The president groaned, and Saul went pale. "But I'm not a Gaiaist!"

"How can you be so sure?" said the proxy. "Mother cherishes all her biomass, even you."

This theme recurs in the other "Counting Heads universe" stories within Getting to Know You. In the title story, a journalist covering a new type of "belt valet" -- today's hand-held PDA perfected, combined with an "imprinting" mechanism to mold the belt's AI to the personality of its wearer -- finds that imprinting may represent the perfection of high technology itself. And that for we imperfect people, perfection will be different than what we think we want it to be. That sentiment is echoed in the Sturgeon Award-winning novella "The Wedding Album," where newlywed Anne and Benjamin are cast in a "sim" -- a holographic recording akin to "Cabbages and Kale"'s proxies -- at the happiest moment of their lives. The story then juxtaposes that perfect moment with the rest of their lives, and, in a science fictional twist, against a backdrop some 450 years of human history and development.

The perfectibility of technology is another recurring motif in the "Counting Heads" stories: in "The Wedding Album" the memento is perfected; in "Getting to Know You," the PDA. All five stories also involve the perfection of reproductive technology, and the implications of this on gender relations. At a surface level, the more that technology -- in particular but not limited to reproductive technology -- has equalized the genders in these stories, the more women gain not just equal footing but often an upper-hand on the male characters. But what the later stories in the chronology interject is the niggle that what women may have been doing by relying on laws and legislation is not gaining reproductive control for themselves, but rather transferring authority over their choices from men to the state. Reproductive technology, and technology in general, thus become potential levers of control over women by the state. This can be seen in "A Boy in Cathyland," where a woman struggles to maintain her technology-enabled private utopia. It also appears with more subtlety in "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy," which deals with the more general perfectibility of society. Another set of newlyweds, Sam and Eleanor, find themselves on top of an already utopian world when Eleanor is nominated for a high-level government job and the couple is granted a rare permit to "retro-conceive" a child. Of course there's a price for these gifts, and when it comes due the story becomes at once among the most horrific and optimistic in the collection.

The story of Sam and Eleanor will be familiar to readers of Counting Heads, as it became the beginning of that novel. If there was a common criticism of Counting Heads by genre reviewers, it was that the novel felt fragmented: a mosaic whose pieces were too separate, connected mainly by an overabundance of technological paste. Getting to Know You, however, succeeds in part because the connections that felt fragmented in the novel here serve to add depth and resonance to separate short stories. It's also apparent that in the novel Marusek tried to integrate aspects such as politics and economics across the entire narrative that here appear as the focus of only one or two stories. In Counting Heads for example we are told that "[Eleanor's] celebrity futures are trading at 9.7 cents," followed by a paragraph-long infodump on the celebrity economy; the version in Getting to Know You reads simply "the People Channel has recently tagged her as a probable celebrity." This tighter focus, combined with less reliance on neologisms (there are few of Counting Heads's mentars, fabplats, etc. to be found), makes the stories in Getting to Know You more accessible to a mainstream reader. And finally, the short form may simply be better than the novel at highlighting the ambiguity that pervades the "Counting Heads" universe.

If the five "Counting Heads stories" in Getting to Know You are ambiguous and multifaceted, the remaining five stories balance out the collection's content in more elemental, emotionally evocative ways. "Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz," for example, contributes a vital portion of good-natured humor. It's a metafictional tale centered around a wife's desire to immortalize her husband -- in part through some do-it-yourself cryogenics involving the Alaskan permafrost, in part through the literary efforts of a writer named David Marusek. A different sort of humor is on display in the short-short "My Morning Glory," which Marusek introduces as his only story with "an unalloyed happy ending." The story then proceeds to show just how much an unalloyed farce such a thing would be (it reads like a Stuart Smalley "Daily Affirmation" for the iEverything future). In contrast, the similarly short "The Earth is On the Mend" offers up the most genuine hope to be found in the collection: it's a far-future story about the gradual thawing of the Earth -- and its inhabitants -- following an ice age or nuclear winter.

"VTV" is a near-future story where the media rush to stake out an assassination victim before she is assassinated, in the hope of broadcasting the killing. To reveal what emotion it evokes would spoil the ending, but it felt the most flawed of these stories: the foreshadowing is a bit heavy-handed and it suffers from the near-future curse of already feeling out of date. Partly this stems from its concern with live TV at a time when Tivo has become a verb and YouTube among the top 10 most trafficked websites. Partly, though, it's because while Marusek describes his goal with "VTV"'s musings on filmed violence as "to see just how despicable a picture of humanity [he] could paint," humanity has proven a moving target. That said, it is a hard-hitting story, perhaps the more-so for its heavy handedness. The same can be said for "Listen to Me," where Marusek forsakes the Earth to debunk the romance of space travel. Madness is featured here, the madness of cabin fever projected over a seemingly endless journey.

Endlessness, the drive for immortality and the pitfalls of achieving it: what Marusek is grappling with more directly than in most science fiction are life and death, the primal drivers of story. As with much modern literature, life in these stories is represented by humor -- not laugh-out-loud hilarity, but satire, absurdity, farce. In mainstream literary fiction this humor is often directed at the way people act against life's inexorable movement toward death; here, science fiction allows Marusek to show how people act with immortality in reach, when set against technology's inexorable movement toward the future. Both comfortingly and distressingly, people remain very much people, with the same needs and concerns. The book thus feels true. Science fiction fans will experience the quintessential sense of wonder, awe at the sheer scale of it all. Mainstream readers will be happy to find that the "wow" effect is less caused by the technology itself, and more that the science fictional elements allow character-based moments of wonder and discovery. Despite their inner complexity, people find it very difficult to change; what Marusek suggests is that technological developments may only exacerbate this fact, making any degree of self-realization even more rare and precious. "You are an accurate mapping of a human nervous system that was dysfunctional in certain structures," sim-Anne is told in "The Wedding Album." "The digital architecture current at the time you were created compounded this defect." For readers in or out of the SF genre inclined to see technology as a savior -- or who shy away from imagining the future -- Getting to Know You is a warning shot across the conceptual bow.

Not a friendly place -- the future -- but if [Saul] was honest, was it so different from the future that he, himself, had toiled to create?

Is this a perfect collection? No, not quite. For one, while they help to create a better balance of story and emotion here, the non-Counting Heads stories are still more slight and uneven than the material that helped shape Marusek's novel. Readers familiar with Counting Heads may thus feel that there's a dearth of content that feels new and significant in this collection. The other primary weakness stems from the fact that the excellence of these stories is so centrally contained in their balance. There are fewer surprises than you might expect in a ten story collection, and a corresponding lack of immediacy. These stories work best after you've had time to think about them, not while you are reading them.

That said, here at FantasyBookSpot we recently discussed how we know that we've read a great book, and while others championed the desire to immediately re-read a book, I said that wanting time to think about a book after reading it was the surest sign of greatness for me. Note, then, that I finished Getting to Know You three weeks ago, and have spent the intervening time letting the pieces settle and the connections form. To be sure this is not a light book; accessibility aside, it reads best when met halfway. Just, in a sense, as the future is best met halfway. I would recommend this collection to anyone with an interest in the future -- not the future of a millennium from now, but the future of tomorrow, the next time you speak to someone, the next time you think about where you'll be in a year, a decade. Enjoy these stories now, while they still are about the future. Get to know them, because in the future they will be getting to know you.

-- Matt Denault, Matt Denault, Matt Denault

The Culled

Fri, 18 May 2007 19:04:53 -0400

In the near future, the hideous plague known as The Blight has swept across Earth like wildfire, killing a massive segment of the population with a particular blood type, leaving only scattered pockets of survivors across the planet. In the ensuing anarchy dubbed the Cull by plague survivors, the remnants of humanity struggle for survival. A cult known as the Apostolic Church of the New Dawn (or the Neo-Clergy) has risen, offering "salvation" to its followers and demanding their children in return, and vicious street gangs have carved out their own territories in the rubble of the cities as they squabble endlessly over resources.

In the wreckage of London, a nameless British ex-soldier hijacks a Neo-Clergy plane bound for New York City, intent on a mission known only to him. Meanwhile, a young man of the Native American Iroquois tribe is sent on a mysterious mission to New York by the tribal elders.

The Culled immediately calls to mind Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels, with the story told in first person by the tough-talking ex-soldier protagonist plunging head-first into a gritty world where no quarter is asked and none given. The blasted wastelands of London and New York City are vividly rendered in grimy detail and the action is fast and furious, with blood, guts and explosions aplenty.

Unfortunately, the plot suffers from an unclear motivation for most of the major players, in particular the protagonist. Up until the end, his reason for hijacking the plane and laying waste across New York isn't clearly explained and even then, it seems rather thin and tacked-on, as does the Iroquois nation's reasons for helping him. Still, the author's fantastic eye for description and action helps to carry the story along at a fast pace and overshadows the plot issues.

The previous books I've read from the Abaddon imprint weren't that impressive, but The Culled manages to step up a few notches, in my opinion.

Bloodring

Sun, 13 May 2007 01:39:19 -0400

Faith Hunters’ debut novel Bloodring is set in a post-apocalyptic earth and tells the story of neomage Thorn St. Croix. The main events center on Thorn’s unique magical abilities as a stone mage and the abduction of her ex-husband, Lucas Stanhope. The story is an effective blend of romance and fantasy.

Bloodring starts in high gear. Rather than a using lengthy bit of exposition at the start of the story, Hunter parcels out bits information throughout. While this might annoy some readers, I wasn’t annoyed in the least. The plot moved at a brisk clip, which provided the opportunity to become acquainted with Thorn and her way of life.

Approximately 150 years ago, angels—called seraphs--descended to earth bringing God’s judgment down on the human race. A combination of plagues and nuclear war wiped out the majority of the population and plunged the planet into an ice age. The seraphs formed a new government and insinuated themselves into everyday life. In the wake of the apocalypse new races have emerged, primarily the result of seraph and human couplings.

Thorn’s special genetic makeup has endowed her with the ability to bend leftover creation energy to her will, or in laymen’s terms, the ability to bond with the elements of nature and perform magic. Such natural-born talent comes with a high cost, specifically human fear and hostility and a mandatory life of seclusion living among others with similar abilities. Due to events that aren’t completely made clear, Thorn can’t live safely among other mages. At the age of fourteen, she flees, hiding in a small town nestled in the Appalachians.

Two decades later, Thorn has managed to learn a trade and create a decent life. She works as a jewelry designer and is one of three partners in a jewelry business. She’s also been married and happily helped raise her stepdaughter, Ciana. Everything seems to be going well until her ex-husband’s kidnapping forces her into action. From that point on Thorn increasingly relies on her instincts, friends and innate mage abilities.

Hunter’s descriptions of life in a small town are dead on; down to the small dating pool and the fear of encouraging the wrath of a church elder (minister, preacher, what have you). The secondary characters are multidimensional; everyone from a mule train master to the evil minions of darkness has a distinct personality. The characters also talk and respond like real people with human frailties. Even though Thorn feels alienated in her otherness, she lives in a functional, supportive environment.

When the focus of the novel is on the romantic aspects of the plot, the story looses its flow. Thorn’s spends a lot of time wishing she could rip the clothes off one of the other characters just because of his genetic makeup. It seems that when a mage and an angelic being are in close proximity they both experience an overwhelming desire to have sex - “mage-heat”. It matters very little that she doesn’t seem to like him. The concept is referred to repeatedly; often interrupting the flow of the story. "Mage-heat" seems to borrow shamelessly from other authors, particularly Laurell K. Hamilton and her concept of the “ardeur”. It’s a device that Hamilton has used far too frequently in her recent work to drive the plot and cover radically inconsistent behavior in her character, Anita Blake. I really hope Hunter avoids falling into a similar trap.

Bloodring is at its best when Hunter effortlessly blends classic biblical themes into elements of high fantasy. The easy integration of religion, theology and magic into the every day is reminiscent of Sharon Shinn’s Samaria books and Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series. The world Faith Hunter has wrought is an intriguing one. Deft characterizations, realistic dialogue, and excellent plot pacing combine to create a story that is both gripping and believable.

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:57:39 -0500

To be honest, George Mann's introduction to the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction did little to entice me to continue flipping the pages. Turning in at just a couple paragraphs, it reads more as an introduction for the Solaris imprint than the anthology they are actually launching. I've always enjoyed a little looksee into why an editor picked a certain story, or even seeing them genuinely excited about 'em, and nothing pleases me more analytical dissections of the genre, but alas there is nothing like that within. And because of this, I'm to assume there's no interconnecting theme in the anthology (though there always is a theme, no matter how subtle), and so the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction comes off as more just a bunch of stories collected together in a book for easier distribution, simple as that. Thankfully, these are some damned good stories.

"In His Sights" by Jeffrey Thomas strongly opens the anthology, showcasing a subgenre of science fiction that wavers between cyberpunk and psychological horror. We have Jeremy Stake, a mutant from Punktown who is also a military returnee from a war fought between the blue-skinned Ha Jiin and the humans. Stake wears a mask to hide a power (curse) of his, stealing the faces of others. In this case, he's specifically wearing the face of the last man he killed, a Ha Jiin, which leads to problems fitting back into society. Though there was a section where the POV changed back and forth between two different characters, confusing me in an instant, the story is a good one. There's a heap load of tension, a monsters-living-among-the-humans sort of city à la Perdido Street Station, and in the end, explosive action that has some horrifying outcomes. Well recommended.

One of my favorite stories from the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, "C-Rock City" by Jay Lake and Greg van Eekhout follows a man known simply as Porkpie living on an asteroid-melded planet as he searches for a mother he's never known. Events unfold rather rapidly, but the mystery of how C-Rock City exists and functions helps to fill in the gaps while Porkpie moves closer and closer to finding out where he came from. The characters are fun, and the relationship between Porkpie and Rocky adds a lot to the tension; Porkpie is clearly a loner, but the sort that just needs one person to know him and love him and treat him like he'd treat them. Rocky or his mother, in the end, Porkpie might not have either. I also believe I've spotted a quiet homage to Frank Wu, the Hugo Award-winning artist that has previously worked with Lake. In "C-Rock City" Wu is what Wu already is, an artist with a talent for creating mesmerizing pieces of work, paintings so powerful and telling that they themselves give names to the ships and sectors of the city. It's a nice touch though I doubt van Eekhout had a hand in it. There's enough history and setting in "C-Rock City" for further adventures, and truthfully, the ending didn't feel as complete as it could have been. This is not a complaint at all—I only want more.

"The Bowdler Strain" by James Lovegrove is the sort of story that seems down right silly when its premise is written out (or even described to someone), but the tale of a logovirus that eliminates the ability to properly swear worldwide is executed marvelously. It's Professor Hugo Bantling's fault, letting the virus escape on his watch, and he can only sit back and watch as it spreads from the Ideative Manipulations laboratory in Gloucestershire to soon all of England. Now it's not a deadly virus, killing folks off by the droves. But there is the fear of worldwide panic and all eyes tracing the blasted thing back to Chilton Mead and Bantling and his cohorts. To speak of how Lovegrove handles a story about swearing with swears in it (but not really) would ruin the charm of the "The Bowdler Strain." The ending is quietly done, but it suffices.

Paul Di Filippo's "Personal Jesus" is also another story with a premise (and outcome) that is borderline preposterous, but when handled profoundly within the mold that is science fiction it comes across as ninety percent amazing and ten percent haunting. In the near future, godPods are the latest trend, and everyone in the world seems to have one. Each godPod comes with its own personal deity (Jesus, Mohammed, Budhha, etc.), and it acts as a living conscience, a voice to turn to for advice. Some people never turn theirs off. Shepherd Crooks believes his to be broken, but forgets about that problem instantly as his personal Jesus tells him that he'll finally score with Anna, the woman he's been pining over. Things seem like they're all going to turn out for the better, but the godPods have something else planned. The revelation of what and where and who felt like a throwback to the golden years of SF, back when pulp was all there was to know. Much like Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" from Fast Forward I, he presents another future where the technology has become more important than the users, frightening and plausible and a subject that will never ever go away.

"A Distillation of Grace" by Adam Roberts is a story of scrutinized breeding done through a line of specific generations in order to achieve a Unique, a being embodying grace itself. This is said to happen by the words of Shad (bless his memory!), and the task of overseeing all this falls upon Cole. He is to make sure Medd, a boy of fourteen, impregnates a young girl named Rhess. Unfortunately, Medd claims that he does not love her and will not help to create a being of grace. Roberts' storytelling is fluid and engaging, never losing itself amongst all the religion and theology. There's even the hint of humor sprinkled in, but I did not find the ending to be satisfying after such a tremendous setup. Others might see it differently, and I'd still suggest them reading it even though it didn’t blow me over.

To say I didn’t get a little emotional over Stephen Baxter's "Last Contact" would be a lie. The end of the world is to happen on October 14th, and everyone knows it. To their dismay, nothing, absolutely nothing, can be done to prevent it. Maureen and her daughter Caitlin are doing much like others: living their lives as if they knew nothing at all, but it is much harder on Maureen who is receiving garbled messages from space. There are no twists here, no sudden revelations that make things worse or better. "Last Contact" plays out like you're told it would, with the world ending, but that doesn't make watching Maureen and Caitlin's lives shatter any easier to experience.

Of the longer stories in the anthology, "Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads" by Mary Turzillo (who dropped her middle initial here and is quickly becoming one of my favorite short story writers, closing in right behind Tanith Lee and Ursula K. Le Guin) and "The Accord" by Keith Brooke were the best of the bunch. Turzillo's story is an intricate study of society, traditions, and the adaptations life has to make to survive. Plus, it's set on Mars, which only a confident voice can pull off, and just like she did with "Pride," a far-fetched idea about raising genetically-crafted saber-toothed tigers, she's flows with ease. "The Accord" reminded me a lot of Tanith Lee's earlier novels, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, which revolved around the perfect of most perfect worlds, where one only had to suffer if they chose to. Aldiss' story kickstarts off perfectly with Tish Goldenhawk, a local, encountering a mysterious fellow in her bar who just so happens to bring trouble with him. The twists and turns are plentiful, but more so, they are interesting which kept me turning the page.

Eric Brown's "The Farewell Party" rounds out the anthology, doing a fine job of bringing the book to a close. It's a quiet story set in England about a group of people surviving out their nights through social drinking. A mysterious stranger (aren't they always?) arrives, gives them the name of Gregory Merrall, and is instantly welcomed into their clique. Slowly, the back story of the alien race Kéthani and why they've chosen Earth as their new home is revealed, along with Gregory's secrets. Throughout "The Farewell Party" a thin air of uncertainly hangs overhead, and for good reasoning. Though the ending itself is not something terribly new to the "aliens are invading our planet" bend, it is satisfying in that it confirmed my suspicion of Merrall all along. Definitely worth a read.

Some stories didn't work for me, which does not necessarily mean they're terrible compilations of words and adverbs and plot devices, just tales that didn't quench my SF thirst, so to speak. Neal Asher's "Bioship," a piece that heavily plays out the tropes now associated with the New Weird, did little to impress me and it eventually lost me in its absurdness and unclear characters. The narrative style of Peter F. Hamilton's "If at First…" turned me off. And "Four Ladies of the Apocalypse" by Brian Aldiss, while aptly written and more than effective for its length, felt out of place in a book that seems more focused on science fiction than horror.

There are some strong stories in Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, enough to warrant justified praise, and my only major gripe with the anthology is that it ultimately feels unfocused. That, or I've been reading too many genre anthologies lately and everything is blurring together now. I mentioned earlier how there is always a theme, even if it's very subtle. To say death would be the easy way out; a lot of the stories here were rooted in ideas of people's places in society and learning to adapt to whatever ways they are supposed to. Whether it's coming back from a war with the face of a dead man or learning about alien traditions on Mars, it all comes back to being human, reacting naturally, and surviving by any means.

But really, that Stephen Baxter story, completely worth purchasing the book. I am not a member of this year's Worldcon so I cannot vote for it to win a Hugo. I am also not a full-fledged member of SFWA, and alas, cannot nudge it for a Nebula vote. If any of you out there have the power to do these things, read "Last Contact," let the world know its greatness, and make all things right.

The Taking

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 02:46:46 -0500

The Taking, by Dean Koontz, is an interesting book to read on a rainy day, because the first sign that things are awry in this suspense novel is an odd downpour. More than a downpour, in fact, a worldwide torrent of luminous, sweet-smelling rain that causes unusual behaviour in animals.

The novel's protagonist, Molly Sloan and her husband are awakened by the storm, and as communication with the outside world is cut off, and the sense of threat builds, they leave their isolated house to head for town.

The novel is well-written, with a poetical turn of phrase. The first half is an adept, intriguing and suspensful thriller, as you see glimpses of bad things (an alien invasion) happening in places faraway, and close to the Sloans. The second half lost some of the suspense for me, but stayed as interesting, and I found the end quite satisfying.

The book treads a fine line between seeming supernatural events and the thought of alien invasion, although Koontz early on quotes the famous line of Arthur C. Clarke that sufficiently advanced alien technology could seem supernatural.

The only real problem I had with the book was some ham-fisted authorial intrusion - a message against the idea that global warming is man-made, and another about the leniency of the liberal prison system. Apart from that, it's a pleasant and easy read in a few hours.

Unlike a reviewer on Amazon, I don't have an issue with Koontz inserting "religion and hope" into a novel, if it's done in an interesting and clever way, which Koontz does.

Looking at wikipedia, I have to note that many of the author's apparent "plot staples" feature in this book, so if you're a regular Koontz reader, you might find it familiar. That could be good or bad.

Overall, I'd say that The Taking is the kind of book you might want to check out of the library to read at the beach, or on an airplane. It's not going to become part of my permanent library, but it's not at all a bad book.

Trinity Blood, Rage Against The Moons

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:57:09 -0500

Trinity Blood is a reprint of a 2001 collection of stories. This book is the first of 6 volumes and is comprised of four short stories about characters that are a part of the Vatican’s AX Agency to combat vampires. Each story is connected to each other but this is not just one single story in four parts. Each section is completely separated from the rest with the exception of the last in which some events that occurred in a previous section were mentioned. Otherwise, only the characters and their mission are connected. Of the characters we meet, Father Abel Nightroad seems to be the author’s favorite. This seemingly mild-mannered and clumsy priest is also a deadly vampire killer. Other characters are Gunslinger or Tres Iqus, who is exactly what his name says, a literal killing machine; Hugue de Watteau, codename Sword Dancer is the one I found most interesting. Not only did we get a bit of his background, it was an interesting story that made me want to investigate the hints further.

While the characters and stories are fun and interesting, they come off as very comic book-like. A great deal of this may be due to the translation of the dialog, much of it sounds wrong for the characters and setting. After finishing the book I did a bit of research and apparently this book was later turned into actual comic books. I can understand the draw for a comic book from these stories. They have that over-the-top heroic feel that many comic books favor.

I found the book to be easily readable, fairly entertaining and at the very least, very nicely illustrated. I found it a bit simplistic, especially most of the dialog – though again, this may be attributed to the translator and not the original author. It will most likely appeal to comic and manga fans as well as other young adult readers.

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:16:33 -0500

There are two things I need to mention up front: one, I generally read anthologies from front cover to back, and two, I never like every story I come across. Thus, I was surprised when I found myself pleasantly enjoying story after story in Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge edited by Lou Anders, an unthemed anthology of science fiction tales from many well-known names in the field. Rather than dwell on the few stories that didn't work for me, I'd like to take a look at the ones that really stood out. Let's call these gems, yes?

In Lou Anders' introduction to Fast Forward I, he references the 1950s Orbit series of anthologies edited by Damon Knight and another later series compiled by Frederik Pohl from 1966 to 1980. Unfortunately, both of these were well before my time and therefore are lost to me in terms of comparison. But what I found most interesting was Anders own take on science fiction: a tool for making sense of a changing world. Surprisingly, for a planned unthemed anthology, this premise appears numerous times in the stories of Fast Forward I, particularly in Justina Robson's "The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One," Paolo Bacigalupi's "Small Offering," Stephen Baxter's "No More Stories," and Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld." Our world is constantly changing; how are we, as a people, to deal with it? Some of these authors have ideas how…

Fast Forward I opens quietly, with Robert Charles Wilson's "YFL-500" telling the devotional story of Gordo and the love he begins to feel for Iris, a woman whose coded dream gave him the inspiration to paint the acclaimed piece of art YFL-500. Set in the world of the Rationalization, a locality where humans are considered obsolete due to the precision and advances in robotics. This sort of future has been crafted many before, but what I found so eerily captivating about Wilson's take on it was just how calm and subdued humans were with their lives; there were no oppressive robots or evil henchmen or nasty overlords, just them and those considered obsolete living where they could off what little work they could do. Though the ending was a bit predictable after all the set-up, I found Gordo to be a strongly sympathetic character in a world where there was not a lot left but to try and love one another.

Paolo Bacigalupi's "Small Offering" is the most horrifying science fiction short story I've ever read. And for that fact alone you should read it. Dr. Lily Mendoza delivers babies in a future where delivering babies is more complex than ever. To say anymore would really ruin Bacigalupi's genius within, and so I sit here, urging you, you who is sitting there reading this, to pick up Fast Forward I, flip right to his story, and immerse yourself in one amazing, heart-wrenching, psychologically-damaging experiences one can craft with words.

Having only ever read Kage Baker's Company novels, I was excited to see a short story of hers in Fast Forward I that was set in a different world. We join Eugene Clifford, a teenage boy on an orbital spaceship above Earth, as he's running around serving to the Shooters. A new recruit, Charles Tead, has arrived though and it's Eugene's job to show him around. It's the Plotters job to find asteroids heading for Earth, plot their courses, and then inform Shooters who will take them out with superb precision. And it's just like high school: Shooters are jocks and jerks; Plotters are kids and twerps. But newbie Charles isn't going to be bullied around, planning to become a Shooter himself instead of a lowly Plotter. And Eugene might just suffer all the consequences. I enjoyed the harshness Baker poured into her Shooters, and Eugene, while mostly cowardly, does make for a decent hero in the end albeit Charles' doings.

Elizabeth Bear's "The Something-Dreaming Game" is based on the choking game that many teenagers and young children play to get a rush without using drugs. Bear's take on the "high" is something more otherworldly: Tara, a young girl with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, journeys elsewhere after playing the game where she meets Albert, an alien resembling a large centipede. And Albert needs Tara, needs her help. I enjoyed the absurdity that was the dream world where Tara went after playing the something-dreaming game, and Tara's mother, Jillian, definitely makes you feel for her situation. Bear's writing has always been stylistic, something of her own, and here it really shines. I just hope folks won't try playing "flat liner" (as I knew it when I was younger) in hopes of meeting aliens…

Ken MacLeod's "Jesus Christ, Reanimator" is both a light-hearted look at the blogosphere and the war while also questioning the nature of humanity. A man who is telling all he is Jesus Christ has descended upon the world. Some believe him to be a robot, others an alien. Many think he's just a liar looking for some time in the spotlight. A nameless journalist befriends Jesus after doing some interviews, hoping to find out the truth of the matter. Handled poorly, this type of story could be deemed trite and laughable, but MacLeod pours a lot of characterization into Jesus, making him into an almost cynical-yet-witty sort of person, which makes the ending all the more saddening. I'm not sure if I understood the politics of the story (and if there was something more to it than that, obviously I missed it), but I really enjoyed it regardless.

I will freely admit that I enjoy cat stories, even if the cats in them aren't quite normal felines. In Mary A. Turzillo's "Pride," Kevin is smuggling lab animals out of Franklin Agricultural College to prevent any more experiments from happening. He takes in one deformed cub that he names Jonesy, which he soon comes to learn is a bit too much to handle. This is silly fun, especially Kevin and Sara's "relationship," but has that hint of seriousness that makes it all worth it.

Can Gene Wolfe ever do wrong? I'll say no to that, but others might always disagree. In "The Hour of the Sheep," Tiero is writing a book suggested to him by the President-Protector. The story is not his own, being that of his father's, and he's having some trouble getting the words right. Tiero, the greatest swordsman alive, faulting with a pen! It's the classic story within a story, and though it fuses both aspects of science fiction tropes and epic fantasy staples, it works more than well. Wolfe knows how to weave both stories around one another, all while keeping Tiero the focus.

There's also two pieces of poetry wedged into Fast Forward I, but I'm not really big on poetry and therefore can't offer any kind of opinion on it. But it's there, for those that are interested. I can say this though: Fast Forward I is a great anthology, filled with numerous and diverse stories and is bound to please any fan of science fiction.

The Seventh Shrine, #1

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:30:54 -0500

The Pontifex, Lord Valentine, arrives at the ruins of an age-old city to investigate the ghastly dismembering murder of an archaeological team member, which has proven just as horrific as it is alluding to those who knew the Metamorph called Dr. Huukaminaan. The mystery of the murder is clear and the details of the death strange, but Valentine is persistent to unearth the killer. He’ll take, it seems, any excuse to remain outside of his castle, the Labyrinth, which in his opinion is more like a prison than a kingly estate. There are a number of Metamorphs who are not speaking, leading Valentine to believe there is more to the murder, possibly something pertaining to the ancient rituals of the legendary Seventh Shrine.

Happening after the last of the Majipoor chronicles, The Seventh Shrine by Robert Silverberg insipidly opens with Valentine and company’s arrival at Velalisier. Upon being welcomed by the others of the archaeology team, a slew of much erroneous and bland historical details is pressed upon us, forcing what little action there was to come to a halt. Instead, we must now trudge through “just-so-you-know-Bob” dialogue, meaningless cultural facts, and the slow turn of discovery.

The artwork, done by Anders Finer (who also worked on George R.R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight), is colorful and stylistic, but after a few pages begins to feel monotonous. I’m not sure who’s at fault for this though; the story itself is fairly uneventful, the art having very little to work off of. Most of the shots are of Valentine and company, standing around, talking, looking out over the landscape, standing around, talking, looking around, standing, talking, maybe walking, talking. You get the point, I hope. The characters are clear and the watercolor-style of each painting has a soft touch to it; I was just hoping for more variety.

Production-wise, The Seventh Shrine is off by several marks. I noticed many formatting errors, which led to clunky paragraphs of text. The text itself is not very large and often fills only half the page; this is fine when an illustration accompanies it on the same page, but otherwise it makes the design seem rather bland. I have not read the story before so I do not know if it is broken down into small sections, but it seemed like it was as there were a couple of different scenes that didn’t line up correctly one after the other. Unfortunately, there is not way of discerning this as no symbols are provided in between the sections. Sometimes it appears to be a formatting error—an extra return mark, maybe—and other times it feels like the story is jumping from scene to scene with no transition of any kind.

This is issue one of two, and both parts will eventually be compiled into one volume. Amazon.com is telling me it's 164 pages long, but I'm counting more around 30 pages total. Maybe I'm dumb when it comes to mathematics. I’d read issue two if it came to me, but I’m in no way needing to read it, which is a shame considering I’ve only experienced half the journey so far. Unfortunately, this mystery isn’t one I’m dying to see solved.

The Rising

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:57:11 -0500

Jim Thurmond is locked in an underground shelter that he built for Y2K, in Virginia. The zombie invasion is already in full swing. His dead pregnant wife is outside pawing on the door and calling his name.

“The dead scrabbled for an entrance to his grave. His wife was among them, as ravenous for Jim in death as she’d been in life. Their faint, soulless cries drifted down through ten feet of soil and rock.

The kerosene lamp cast flickering shadows on the cinder block walls, and the air in the shelter was stale and earthy. His grip on the Ruger tightened. Above him, Carrie shrieked and clawed at the earth.

She’d been dead for a week.”

Going mad and on the verge of suicide Jim gets a call from his son from his first marriage in New York. The boy is trapped in the attic of his house with the dead step-father trying to break the door down. The cell battery dies. Knowing his son is alive rejuvenates him and he vows to escape his bunker and make it to his son to save him. On his way he meets up with an elderly preacher left to defend gods will, an ex-junkie prostitute from Baltimore (including scenes in the Baltimore Zoo), and a scientist who is responsible for the breach that allows the zombies to invade and cross over.

To give you an idea of Keene’s resolve and willingness to go all the way, when Jim escapes the bunker he comes into direct contact with his dead wife. She pulls back her robe and reveals that her belly has been gnawed open by the zombie baby creating a large cavity. He pleads with his wife to stop then is forced to kill both her and the unborn child, whom he finds out only now, is a girl. Keene doesn’t treat such an event lightly; he presents all of the moral difficulties in clear light. Jim’s decision isn’t an easy one, nor should it be, and Keene lets it carry the appropriate weight and importance.

The action kicks off right on the first page and the barrage of action, suspense and adventure never once let up. The Rising is relentless in its assault on the reader. But it’s much more then a catalogue of violent confrontations with the recent dead. Brian Keene is a solid writer with a sharp eye for detail and those quiet moments that make human contact and our relationships real. As the shreds of humanity bond together it’s the strengthening or the exploiting of these bonds that will define the individuals involved and humanity as a whole.

One new twist that Keene adds to the zombie canon, which could very well have turned into a gimmick, was to have animals that were zombies. This could have fallen on its face but Keene shows us very quickly that undead animals are just as scary, if not at times more so, then their (un)human counterparts. This being my first Keene novel I quickly learned to trust in his imagination as he fully explore this idea.

Normally the reason behind the origin of the zombies is biological in nature, but Keene presents us with an enigmatic world where demons (for lack of a better term), that had been banished to a hellish existence on another plane by god, have broken through to our world inhabiting our dead bodies. They indiscriminately kill to provide more vessels for their fallen brethren.

Unlike Romero's plodding zombies Keene's are possessed of a certain level of intelligence. They are fast when need be, or more specifically when the body allows it. They communicate with each other. They can operate motor vehicles, weapons and machinery. All of this escalates the level of tension if not downright claustrophobia when are human protagonists are faced with a legion of zombies. The zombies also retain the memories of the host body which allows for some unsettling moments when a demon is articulating something and the bodies old memories keep interjecting.

There is a larger back story at work here. The zombies are becoming increasingly organized and centrally located in major cities. They also seem to be able to communicate with each other over long distances though it isn’t clear yet if it is some sort of telepathy or if the undead animals act as messengers. Plus the full back story of the demons: their relationship to god and their pure hatred of humans isn’t fully explained yet, with only dark hints being provided.

Without dealing in specifics the ending is abrupt. It just stops in mid action, with no explanation or even an indication that there is a sequel to The Rising called The City of The Dead. I think this bears mentioning because without knowledge of the sequel this would cause many a reader to not like the book regardless of all the goodness that had come before

--Brian Lindenmuth