The Generals (Revolution 2), by Simon Scarrow
As a result of their fateful encounter at the Battle of Waterloo (the only battle in which they faced one another), the names of Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, will always be inextricably linked, and there may be a tendency to think of them as great rivals or lifelong adversaries. As historian Andrew Roberts illustrated in Napoleon and Wellington, however, you can compare them, contrast them, look at the parallels in their lives all you want, but you can’t make that argument – Napoleon did not have much to say about Wellington, and while one was a successful general in a democracy, the other was an Emperor as well as being the most successful military leader of his generation. All of this underscores how ambitious it is of Simon Scarrow to embark on a four-book series of novels offering fictionalised accounts of both Napoleon and Wellington’s entire lives from birth onwards (both were born in 1769), and following the courses of their entire careers.
In effect, Scarrow is actually writing two sets of books here – one about Napoleon, one about Wellington. In the first volume, Young Bloods, he cheekily suggested the two may have met as military cadets, but that apart, it is hard to see how their paths can cross before the Battle of Waterloo, which will presumably occupy a substantial part of the final volume in the series. Nowhere is this more true than in this second volume: while Colonel Wellesley (as he then was) spends much of the book in India, developing his military skills, Napoleon is variously in Egypt, Italy, Paris and the Swiss Alps, and their actions have little direct bearing on each other; Scarrow throws in the occasional reference to Wellesley looking at newspaper reports about Napoleon’s meteoric rise, but if you took those out, you would have an enjoyable ‘fictional biography’ of each character that was entirely self-contained.
The Angel Maker, by Stefan Brijs
The small Belgian village of Wolfheim turns out almost to a person to greet the returning Dr. Victor Hoppe after a spell of 20 years in academia. With him are his three baby sons, each one, (some might say), blighted with the physical characteristics of their father: hair-lipped and bright red hair. There’s no sign of his wife, their mother, so over time, Wolfheim’s residents crank up the rumour mill, each trying to outdo the other with their possibly uninformed knowledge and ill-mannered hypotheses.
Did you know that Victor grew up in an asylum? That his mother died of insanity and, oh yes, that his father killed himself? Why won’t he mingle? Why does he keep the children indoors?
Victor has chosen to live once more in a village seemingly bored by its own company, its residents mesmerised by the return of a mysterious and strange character to its midst, locals in ignorant awe of Victor’s scientific background, in fear of God, with some elders predicting catastrophe for the village after simply glimpsing Victor’s disfigured children, but all of whom are reluctantly happy that Wolfheim has another family doctor.
Read by Dawn, Volume 3
UK publishing is seeing a long overdue revival in horror anthologies at the moment. Humdrumming‘s First Book of Horror Stories will hopefully be the first of many; the Black Book of Horror from Mortbury Press is already at volume three; and, of course, we shouldn’t forget the always welcome Mammoth Book of Best New Horror published by Constable and Robinson, soon to see its nineteenth incarnation, edited by Stephen Jones, our very own Ellen Datlow (except he’s British and a man…).
Bloody Books has also entered the fray with their Read by Dawn anthologies, curated by Adele Hartley (British, and a woman), also, as the title suggests, in its third year. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
Combine these publications with a couple of UK based magazines – PS Publishing‘s excellent Postscripts, (albeit with a good helping of science fiction and fantasy thrown in for good measure), and TTA Press‘ wonderfully new-born Black Static, formerly The Third Alternative, and to my mind, the best dark fiction magazine being published anywhere right now, and short story fans have a great deal to keep them occupied.
The Bellini Card, by Jason Goodwin
Following on from successes with The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card is Jason Goodwin’s third entry in his Yashim the Eunuch series of detective novels set in Ottoman Istanbul during the 1830s.
Yashim is a fixer for the royal household, utilising discretion and brainpower to sort out the most delicate of delicate problems. However, the old Sultan is dead, Viziers compete for the ear of the new, young Sultan and Yashim may not be in favour with any of them.
Yashim is instructed by Sultan Abdulmecid to travel to Venice in order to locate and recover Bellini’s 1479 portrait of his ancestor, Mehmet the Conqueror. But the Vizier, Reshid Pasha, warns Yashim not to go if he wants to gain favour with the powers that be behind the throne. Treading a delicate path, Yashim sends his friend, the stateless Polish ambassador, Palewski, on a secret mission to Venice to recover the painting for the Sultan.
Wiffle Lever to Full!, by Bob Fischer
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, goes the old joke; in actual fact, nostalgia is in rude health, and the rehabilitation of the 80s as a period worthy of retrospective visitation provides Bob Fischer with ample raw material for this engaging book. Sub-titled Daleks, Death Stars and Dreamy-eyed Nostalgia at the Strangest Sci-fi Conventions, Wiffle Lever to Full! is in part a memoir about growing up in Middlesbrough in the 80s, with a particular focus on the influence and effects of various science fiction TV shows on the author’s tender young self; in that respect, it feels very reminiscent of Andrew Collins’ Where Did It All Go Right?. The clear-eyed nostalgia provides a jumping off point for Fischer to embark on a summer of visiting the conventions and fan-meets that relate to his favourite shows, where he and his friends see the actors and their seriously committed followings. We also get plenty of background on the featured shows along the way, in many cases enough to make me want to go and watch them again!
I am only a few years younger than Bob Fischer, and we certainly have a lot in common as far as seminal TV viewing experiences go – I remember the first time I saw Star Wars on TV; I rememebr going to see Return of the Jedi in the local cinema; Peter Davison was my first Doctor in Doctor Who (the author’s was his predecessor, Tom Baker); I watched Robin of Sherwood on ITV, read Fighting Fantasy adventure books, found the first Star Trek movie boring, just like Bob, and pined for the toy of the Millennium Falcon (which I never got, just like Bob). I therefore fall squarely in to the target audience for this book, and it certainly unlocked a few forgotten memories from my own apprenticeships into geekdom.
The Electric Church, by Jeff Somers
In the criminally-underrated Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams introduced us to the Electric Monk. The purpose of this labour saving device, he explained thus: a bit like a video recorder, which is designed to watch television for you, the Electric Monk is designed to believe in things for you, saving you from having to do it yourself. Jeff Somers freely acknowledges the inspiration he got from Adams for the idea of Electric Monks, but the debt ends with the name: Somers’ Electric Monks are implacable foes, violent proselytizers of the sinister Electric Church. A human brain encased in a robotic shell, they are crossing the path of Avery Cates with increasing frequency – and he doesn’t like it much.
Cates is a gunner, a hired assassin scraping a living in what’s left of New York in Somers’ bleak vision of the future. Earth has been through a painful process of Unification, and Cates can just about remember back to before the wars that brought it about. At the age of twenty-seven, he thinks of himself as old, and the quality of life of Cates and his fellow citizens does, in general, seem to be non-existent. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is extremely pronounced – droids have replaced the need for human labour in almost all fields, so the majority of people are condemned to a nasty, brutish and short existence, numbed by rotgut gin.
Winterbirth, by Brian Ruckley
Brian Ruckley‘s debut, the first volume in the Godless World trilogy, is a welcome addition to the fantasy canon, and if you like your fantasy gritty and dark, you may well want to check this out. In terms of influences, it reminded me of Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, and of Bernard Cornwell’s Arthurian and Viking historical series, which might lack the overt fantasy elements but evoke images of the same kinds of martial society as we encounter in Winterbirth, dominated by grizzled sword-toting warriors, with feuds that pass down from generation to generation.
In many ways, we have the classic human / elf set-up to start with: the humans (or Huanin) of the martial society at the centre of the book are organised in to Bloods, large dynastic tribes, such as Lannis and Kilkry. Each Blood has a Thane, and those Thanes swear allegiance to the High Thane, of the Haig blood, so we end us with Kilkry-Haig, Lannis-Haig, etc. This society is reflected in that of The Bloods of the Black Road, a schismatic group unified by their religion who fled through the Vale of Stones in to the far north many generations before. Believing in a kind of bloody version of Calvinist Predestination, the Bloods of the Black Road have skirmished with the True Bloods for years, but it’s been all quiet on that front for a while, and the True Bloods are busy pursuing ambitions to the South. The Lannis Blood, traditionally in the front line of holding back the old enemy, is thus left dangerously exposed. It’s this setup which reminded me strongly of GRRM’s A Game of Thrones.
Under Control, by Mark McNay
Mark McNay’s second novel is a bleak tale of mental illness, drug addiction, dependency and selfishness set in… Norwich. But put all thoughts of Alan Partridge out of your heads because the immediate comparison that spring to mind for this book is Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, with its view of the seamier side of Edinburgh; it’s not a complete comparison though – McNay’s book is more accessible (not least because there’s no need for phonetically-rendered Scottish vernacular), and concerned as much with mental as with physical health, but some of its characters are equally memorable and well drawn.
Gary is a paranoid schizophrenic living in the community; Charlie is his girlfriend, and a street prostitute. Nigel is Gary’s social worker. At the beginning of the book, which starts with one of Nigel’s regular visits to Gary’s flat, things seem pretty normal, and the book charts Gary’s mental decline from that point and the the consequences it has for all those around him. His constant companion is Galileo, his alter-ego, a spitting, snarling, swearing, over-sexed nightmare who gradually comes to control Gary’s existence; considerable time is spent on Galileo’s experiences, as imagined by Gary, and these start to weave themeslves more and more in to the developing real-world plot as it nears its climax.
War plc: The Rise of the New Corporate Mercenary, by Stephen Armstrong
If the Reagan / Thatcher era of the 80s got us accustomed to one paramount concept, it was that of privatisation – outsourcing, selling on, hiving off – and very few things were exempt, from health-care to education, personnel to transport. We became used to the involvement of private companies in what was previously seen as the business of the state, and Stephen Armstrong’s compelling book documents the logical extension of that ethos in to the privatisation of war and armed protection, enabled by the end of the Cold War and the resulting ‘peace dividend’ that made for much smaller national armed forces.
Armstrong gives us an overview of the long history of the traditional mercenary, and points out that in the broad sweep of history, nationally homogeneous conscript armies are much less common than mercenaries in all their forms. We then get an overview of the mercenary sector in the post-WWII environment, often with the focus on Africa – Sandline, ‘arms to Africa’, the role of mercenaries in Angola and elsewhere, culminating in Simon Mann’s abortive coup plan in Equatorial Guinea.
Pelagia And The Black Monk, by Boris Akunin
Plump up the cushions, switch off the phone, crack open a bottle of something dark and red – the new Boris Akunin paperback, Pelagia And The Black Monk, has arrived.
Akunin specialises in superbly well written and intricately plotted mysteries set in 19th Century Imperial Russia that draw liberal inspiration from the greats of Russian literature. His exceedingly popular Erast Fandorin series is set in the heart of the Westward facing Imperial court and centres on the adventures of an itinerant hero, who is Holmes, Bond and Oscar Wilde rolled into one. Sister Pelagia on the other hand, is a nun and girls’ school gym teacher in the fictional provincial town of Zavolzhsk.
As a nun Pelagia is clumsy and shy but she also has a talent for deduction and detection that her patron, Bishop Mifanii, has frequent cause to rely on. In Pelagia And The Black Monk, she investigates murder and madness in a remote spa town run by a secretive order of Monks. Whereas the Fandorin books are urban and urbane, the Sister Pelagia series is resolutely provincial, taking place in a Russia that is quite unlike anywhere West of the Don. Within this alien geographical canvas, Akunin allows himself room to breathe, to digress, to play with the form, utilising the stylistic devices of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and the inspiration that dare not speak its name, Tolstoy. Yet his books are primarily great fun entertainments.
The Bookgeeks and the Curious Case of the Copy-Cat Catcher
The review in question (click to enlarge)
Five months since we launched Bookgeeks, Simon A describes our first experience of being on the wrong end of plagiarism.
Something happened this week that has made me start thinking about some of the unintended consequences that may attend the growth of User Generated Content around the publishing industry, especially where there is a link between status and rewards. The event in question was plagiarism – an Amazon Vine programme member, Kinkazzo, posted a review on Amazon that was substantially based on my own review of The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway. When I say substantially, it was probably about half of what I wrote, making up about two thirds of what he uploaded. Who knows whether he wrote the other bits himself or not, but he certainly seems to be a serial offender on Amazon (and who knows where else), adapting reviews from sites a great deal more august and established than your humble Bookgeeks.
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
I finished The Book Thief a few weeks ago, and since then I have been gathering my thoughts to write this review: after all, it’s not often you read a book narrated by Death (though unlike Terry Pratchett’s version, he doesn’t TALK IN BLOCK CAPITALS), set in Nazi Germany, about a family who risk their lives to harbour a Jewish fistfighter, and where the central character has a passion for books that she can only feed by stealing.
The narrative tone and style of this book entirely defines and permeates it – Death, whose tender affection for humanity might surprise us, is a damn good narrator (he assures us he does not carry a scythe around). He feels benevolent towards humanity, but at the same time is baffled by its capacity for destruction and violence. The events of the Second World War mean that Death is even busier than normal, but he is still able to be everywhere at once, all-knowing, all-seeing.
Zombiemania, by Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg & Andrew Hershberger
Professor Cabal: ‘You’re saying the knights have returned? That’s great!’
Maria: ‘Look at you. Kind and soft like a porcupine.’
Roger (to Betty just before he dies): ‘Don’t speak. That’s the only way you’ll be safe.’
Tombs of the Blind Dead (Spanish version), 1971
A bit of an oldie this, but one of those seminal books that’s destined to be around, and hopefully, popular for a long-time to come. Sub-titled 80 Movies to Die For, Zombiemania is a charmingly written and surprisingly personal, encyclopaedic look at the diverse world of zombie movies.
Published in 2006 by Telos, (who have some more comprehensive film-related books coming out over the forthcoming months), Zombiemania takes the reader back to the first zed movie, White Zombie, released in 1932 and includes all the faves, plus many other less well-known features right up to Romero’s Land of the Dead.
But wait! White Zombie may actually be only the first zombie movie… in English with sound. Blumberg and Hershberger’s research has led them to hypothesise that there may be another contender for title of the FIRST ZOMBIE MOVIE: a silent, Indian film titled Chalta Purza, (translated as The Zombie or Passing Show), also released in 1932. This is indeed a fine piece of geek-level research and one that has resulted in a question that (in my zedgeekeyes) desperately needs solving – when in 1932 was Chalta Purza released, before or after White Zombie? Will the puzzle of the FIRST ZOMBIE MOVIE ever be solved? (Caveat: the authors haven’t actually seen the film, so it might not even be about zeds… )
The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave
The Other Hand is a lovely book, but reviewing it is not necessarily an easy proposition. The back-cover blurb is deliberately enigmatic:
We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.
Very intriguing, and it had the desired effect on me – but if you have come looking for a review you probably want something more than such teasing, so I shall try and give you some insights without spoiling what makes this such an enjoyable book.
Perhaps it’s the essential subject matter which made the blurb writers decide to be coy: asylum seekers fleeing persecution, and the way they are treated when they arrive in the UK, are not comfortable subjects; what they are fleeing from may be even less palatable. Chris Cleave, in talking about the inspiration behind the book, has described the Immigration Detention Centre where he did some casual labour as a concentration camp, and he is on a bit of a mission to get us to think about the what it really means to take people who are fleeing for their lives and imprison them, for anything up to several years. The citations and references at the end of the book speak of a topic thoroughly researched, which should make it harder for people to dismiss the details Cleave provides as mere fiction.
The Streets of Babylon, by Carmina Burman
The Streets Of Babylon is another welcome entry to the increasingly crowded historical crime genre. Resembling a less dense Sarah Walters novel, TSOB is an enjoyable romp through the underbelly of Victorian London at the height of Empire.
It is 1851 and successful Swedish crime author, Euthanasia Bondeson, has just arrived in London with her beautiful niece, Agnes, to visit the Great Exhibition. The London they step into is the centre of the world, a teeming metropolis with the extremes of wealth and poverty rubbing up against each other at every turn.
Euthanasia is independent and determinedly single. Although self-contained, she and Agnes cheerfully become wide-eyed tourists taking in the sights and sounds of what they see as the muscular capital of the world. These sights include the huge Exhibition itself but also the aristocratic, artistic salons of Mayfair as well as the hovels and slums of Whitechapel, St Giles and Spitalfields. When on a trip to the British Museum the beautiful Agnes goes missing and subsequently turns up dead in the Thames, Euthanasia resolves to find out what happened.
Penguins Stopped Play, by Harry Thompson
A few years ago I read Harry Thompson‘s splendid novel This Thing of Darkness, an historical epic that followed the life and career of Charles Darwin, his voyages on the Beagle and his relationship with its captain, Robert FitzRoy. Penguins Stopped Play is a very different book, the last book that Thompson wrote before his death from lung cancer. We are used to humourous travel books that are informed by a central concept – Tony Hawkes and his fridge have a lot to answer for – and the concept here is Thompson’s ambition to play cricket on all seven continents of the world (including Antarctica, hence the penguins of the title). Unlike many similar books, the concept does not feel forced or imposed – as a long-standing team captain of a village cricket team, the Captain Scott Invitation XI, the idea of a cricket tour sounds like a natural extension of their previous forays overseas, and it doesn’t feel like it was organised purely to provide material for the book.
The first thing to say is that Harry Thompson was a very funny man – as someone who grew up with The Mary Whitehouse Experience, and who remembers back to the early days of Have I Got News for You and They Think It’s All Over, all shows he either wrote or produced, I hardly needed proof of his comedy credentials, but he flashes them on every page anyway. First and foremost, this is a very funny book about what happens when a bunch of fallible men set off on a rather ambitious venture based on their shared love of (but not necessarily aptitude for) cricket. Pen portraits of fellow players and descriptions of events both on and off the pitch are infused with a wry wit, and there was plenty to make me smile throughout. Particularly scorching treatment is reserved for British Airways, ‘organisers’ of the team’s round-the-world tickets – they scarcely need any help making themselves seem ridiculous, but Thompson throws in some digs anyway!
Blue at the Mizzen, by Patrick O’Brian
I’ve done it. I’ve finished the final (completed) volume of Patrick O’Brian’s twenty-volume series of maritime adventures, featuring those great companions Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. I was worried that I would feel a sense of anti-climax – after all, O’Brian did not intend this to be the final volume, and he was part way through writing the 21st book when he died. Instead, while I am disappointed to have reached the end, I find myself gratified by the conclusion of the book, which sees Jack finally on his way to hoist his flag as an Admiral (I think the title rather acts as a spoiler, there!). Other story-lines, such as Stephen’s new-found love and whether or not the object of his affections will agree to his proposal of marriage, were clearly intended to be resolved in planned future volumes. Alas, on that score Stephen is left dangling.
In Blue at the Mizzen Jack and Stephen resume their journey to assist the republican movement in Chile, building up its navy to resist the Spanish Royalists in Peru. With peace breaking out in Europe, much of the Royal Navy is being paid off and Jack is lucky to have a command at all; being on the far side of the world, ostensibly on a hydro-graphical survey mission, also reduces any risk of Jack being overlooked in the stiff competition for promotion to Admiral. The journey around Cape Horn to the Pacific is challenging for the crew of the Surprise, but they make it through, and once arrived in Chile Maturin and his colleague Amos Jacob immerse themselves in the complex local politics, while Jack does what he does best, working with the nascent Chilean navy to begin to make them ‘right seamen’, and finding time to capture a few prizes along the way.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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